The fight over whether writing privacy-focused code is a crime is heating up on both sides of the Atlantic, and the crypto community is opening its wallet to defend two key Tornado Cash engineers.
While Storm prepares for an American courtroom, Dutch coder Alexey Pertsev is challenging a 64-month sentence he received in May for facilitating $1.2 billion in illicit transfers:
The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control delisted Tornado Cash’s smart-contract addresses in March after a U.S. appeals court found that self-executing code isn’t “property” that can be sanctioned. That ruling eased token restrictions but left the criminal cases untouched, turning Storm and Pertsev into focal points for the broader debate over privacy tools, developer liability, and open-source innovation.
If prosecutors prevail, critics say it could set a precedent that chills open-source development in decentralized finance. Conversely, a win for Storm or Pertsev could reinforce the argument that publishing code—even code used by bad actors—remains protected speech.
With millions of dollars now riding on their defenses and trial dates approaching, the legal outcomes for Tornado Cash’s developers promise to shape how courts treat privacy tech for years to come.
A malicious open-source project on GitHub disguised as a Solana trading bot has compromised user wallets, according to a July 2, 2025, report by cybersecurity firm SlowMist.
The U.S. Department of Justice has sentenced Dwayne Golden, 57, of Pennsylvania to 97 months in prison for orchestrating a fraudulent crypto investment scheme that stole over $40 million from investors.
The first half of 2025 has become the most damaging six-month period in crypto history, with over $2.1 billion stolen across 75+ separate incidents, according to new data.
A new breed of cyber-attack is sweeping through crypto media, exploiting site pop-ups and wallet-connect prompts instead of smart-contract bugs.