Roman Storm 🇺🇸 🌪️ retweeted
Celebrating privacy and @davidzmorris’ new documentary covering @rstormsf’s trial.
V fitting time as we reach the final hours of our privacy funding round on @OctantApp.
Writing code should not be a crime. Roman’s been unfairly prosecuted and is now going into his second s a LOT more visibility and awareness.
V fitting time as we reach the final hours of our privacy funding round on @OctantApp.
Writing code should not be a crime. Roman’s been unfairly prosecuted and is now going into his second s a LOT more visibility and awareness.
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Roman Storm 🇺🇸 🌪️ retweeted
“Free Roman Storm!” a powerful call to action from @balajis at TOKEN2049 Singapore, alongside @mert, @tyler & @Cameron. @Rstormsf, cofounder of Tornado Cash, has become a symbol of the fight to protect open source development, and financial privacy.
Mert also highlighted how ZcasStorm’s legal defense, demonstrating why privacy preserving money matters, especially when supporting politically sensitive causes.
The outcome of this case will have profound implications for open source developers in the future of financial privacy.
FREE ROMAN STORM.
Mert also highlighted how ZcasStorm’s legal defense, demonstrating why privacy preserving money matters, especially when supporting politically sensitive causes.
The outcome of this case will have profound implications for open source developers in the future of financial privacy.
FREE ROMAN STORM.
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Roman Storm 🇺🇸 🌪️ retweeted
Roman Storm has been targeted by a DOJ weaponized by the previous administration. The whole industry knows it.
Why, after a deadlocked jury is the prosecution continuing to attempt to ruin this man?
If the war on crypto is over, why are the crypto prisoners still being ed?
buff.ly/0F1icTS
@rstormsf @freeromanstorm @token2049
Why, after a deadlocked jury is the prosecution continuing to attempt to ruin this man?
If the war on crypto is over, why are the crypto prisoners still being ed?
buff.ly/0F1icTS
@rstormsf @freeromanstorm @token2049
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Roman Storm 🇺🇸 🌪️ retweeted
The Tornado Cash case raises a key question:
Can software developers be held responsible for the open-source code they produce?
It could be the important tech-legal case of its time.
In his new documentary, @davidzmorris tells the full story and shows it's part of a recurrent theme of coder-vs-government faceoffs in history.
He previews the brilliant "Tornado Cash: Breaking Code" at Pubkey, NYC, next Wednesday.
luma.com/8v5af7ec
Can software developers be held responsible for the open-source code they produce?
It could be the important tech-legal case of its time.
In his new documentary, @davidzmorris tells the full story and shows it's part of a recurrent theme of coder-vs-government faceoffs in history.
He previews the brilliant "Tornado Cash: Breaking Code" at Pubkey, NYC, next Wednesday.
luma.com/8v5af7ec
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Roman Storm 🇺🇸 🌪️ retweeted
Roman Storm is still being prosecuted for open-source privacy software.
Banks move billions with light penalties. Developers get the book.
Privacy is not a crime. Code is speech.
Sign & share: freeromanstorm.com
Banks move billions with light penalties. Developers get the book.
Privacy is not a crime. Code is speech.
Sign & share: freeromanstorm.com
I wrote code. Now I face 45 years in prison because others misused it.
Code that no one controls. Code that no one can change or shut down.
Yet somehow, I’m being held responsible for what others chose to do with it.
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Roman Storm 🇺🇸 🌪️ retweeted
Full speech and transcript x.com/coincenter/sta…
Peter Van Valkenburgh's speech at the 2026 Coin Center Annual Dinner.
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Roman Storm 🇺🇸 🌪️ retweeted
"Coin Center wasn’t founded to collect favorable exercises of government discretion. We’re here to establish legal limits that survive the officials who happen to agree with us. Our mission was never simply to get the government to say yes to crypto.
Washington increasingly crypto when it can find an issuer, a compliance department, a transparent ledger, and a freeze function."
We have stablecoin legislation. Great. Stablecoins are useful products issued by financial institutions. But we still need to protect the right to build things that don’t require financial institutions.
Will the law tolerate software nobody controls, communications nobody intermediates, computer programs you run yourself, and transactions nobody has unilateral authority to reverse? Those are the harder questions."
Washington increasingly crypto when it can find an issuer, a compliance department, a transparent ledger, and a freeze function."
We have stablecoin legislation. Great. Stablecoins are useful products issued by financial institutions. But we still need to protect the right to build things that don’t require financial institutions.
Will the law tolerate software nobody controls, communications nobody intermediates, computer programs you run yourself, and transactions nobody has unilateral authority to reverse? Those are the harder questions."
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Roman Storm 🇺🇸 🌪️ retweeted
Dear Secretary Bessent @SecScottBessent,
My name is Everett Stern. In 2010 I was a compliance officer at @HSBC. From a back office in New Castle, Delaware, I watched billions of dollars move to drug cartels, sanctioned regimes, and terrorist organizations. The enemies of the United States. I documented it, I escalated it, and when the bank would not act, I took it to the @FBI, the @CIA, and eventually the @SECGov.
The result was a $1.92 billion settlement. At the time, it was one of the largest in American history. It was also about five weeks of the bank’s profit. Not one banker was charged. Not one went to prison.
I paid a different price. I lost my career, my savings, and my place in the industry I had trained for. I was blacklisted. Every door in American finance closed at once. I slept on a camping cot in a 300 square foot apartment because I could not afford a bed, and I waited tables at @PFChangs to eat. I tell you this not for sympathy, but so you understand that I know exactly what it costs to do the right thing in American finance, and exactly how little the system does in return.
I made that sacrifice because I believed it would change something.
Yesterday, your department fined @BankofAmerica $1.2 billion for failing to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions, some of it tied by your own findings to Chinese laundering networks, narcotics, and the southwest border, alongside 475 apparent sanctions violations touching Russia, Iran, and global terrorism. The bank admitted it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act.
Fourteen years after HSBC. A bank with “America” in its name. And once again, not one individual charged.
Secretary Bessent, I want to say plainly what I believe you already know. The fines are not working.
A fine is paid by shareholders, absorbed by the balance sheet, and forgotten by the next earnings call. Bank of America reported earnings this morning. Nobody who set the alert thresholds, nobody who decided the 2024 cease and desist could wait, nobody who chose the backlog over the law will lose a single thing they value. Their lives are untouched. That is the entire reason the behavior repeats.
This is money laundering. This is blood money. Money that reaches a cartel buys fentanyl that kills Americans. Money that reaches a terrorist organization buys the next attack. This country has fought a war on drugs and a war on terror for decades, at enormous cost in lives and treasure, and all the while we have allowed the financing to flow through institutions we charter and regulate. Cut off the money and we win. We have never seriously tried.
There is also a question of equal justice that I cannot let go.
Before I walked into the FBI building to report HSBC, I stopped in front of the Great Seal on the wall and read the words engraved beneath it: “Justice is the defense of our liberty.” I believed that. I still want to. But every day in this country, people go to prison for crimes that are nothing next to moving money for the people who want Americans dead. A suit, a title, and a corporate badge should not be a shield from the consequences that apply to everyone else. If a street dealer goes to prison for what he sells, the banker who moved the cartel’s money should be standing next to him.
I also want to raise something that is rarely said in these conversations. Why has no one inside Bank of America come forward the way I did? The answer is that everyone in American banking knows what happened to me, and to the whistleblowers who came after. The last person who spoke up is the only policy anyone believes. That is a culture problem, and it starts with leadership, in the banks and in the agencies that regulate them.
This is not a political issue. It has spanned administrations of both parties. It is a national security issue, and I am asking you to treat it as one.
Three things would change the math overnight.
Refer individuals for criminal prosecution. Not the analyst in the queue. The executives who set the thresholds and chose the risk. One banker in handcuffs would do more than every fine in Treasury’s history combined.
End “too big to jail.” An institution cannot be too big to fail and too big to jail at the same time. If it is the first, it must be held to a higher standard, not a lower one.
And if Bank of America will not act as America’s bank, review its charter. A national charter is a privilege granted on behalf of the American people. It should be conditioned on not moving money for the people trying to kill them.
Secretary Bessent, you said yesterday that these actions send a clear message that even the biggest institutions are not above the law. With respect, the institution was never the problem. The people inside it are above the law, and they know it. Until that changes, I will keep writing letters like this one, and the next bank will keep paying the next fine.
I gave up everything I had to stop this. I am asking you to use the power you have to finish it.
Respectfully,
Everett A. Stern
HSBC Whistleblower
Founder and Intelligence Director, Tactical Rabbit
My name is Everett Stern. In 2010 I was a compliance officer at @HSBC. From a back office in New Castle, Delaware, I watched billions of dollars move to drug cartels, sanctioned regimes, and terrorist organizations. The enemies of the United States. I documented it, I escalated it, and when the bank would not act, I took it to the @FBI, the @CIA, and eventually the @SECGov.
The result was a $1.92 billion settlement. At the time, it was one of the largest in American history. It was also about five weeks of the bank’s profit. Not one banker was charged. Not one went to prison.
I paid a different price. I lost my career, my savings, and my place in the industry I had trained for. I was blacklisted. Every door in American finance closed at once. I slept on a camping cot in a 300 square foot apartment because I could not afford a bed, and I waited tables at @PFChangs to eat. I tell you this not for sympathy, but so you understand that I know exactly what it costs to do the right thing in American finance, and exactly how little the system does in return.
I made that sacrifice because I believed it would change something.
Yesterday, your department fined @BankofAmerica $1.2 billion for failing to report more than $5 billion in suspicious transactions, some of it tied by your own findings to Chinese laundering networks, narcotics, and the southwest border, alongside 475 apparent sanctions violations touching Russia, Iran, and global terrorism. The bank admitted it willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act.
Fourteen years after HSBC. A bank with “America” in its name. And once again, not one individual charged.
Secretary Bessent, I want to say plainly what I believe you already know. The fines are not working.
A fine is paid by shareholders, absorbed by the balance sheet, and forgotten by the next earnings call. Bank of America reported earnings this morning. Nobody who set the alert thresholds, nobody who decided the 2024 cease and desist could wait, nobody who chose the backlog over the law will lose a single thing they value. Their lives are untouched. That is the entire reason the behavior repeats.
This is money laundering. This is blood money. Money that reaches a cartel buys fentanyl that kills Americans. Money that reaches a terrorist organization buys the next attack. This country has fought a war on drugs and a war on terror for decades, at enormous cost in lives and treasure, and all the while we have allowed the financing to flow through institutions we charter and regulate. Cut off the money and we win. We have never seriously tried.
There is also a question of equal justice that I cannot let go.
Before I walked into the FBI building to report HSBC, I stopped in front of the Great Seal on the wall and read the words engraved beneath it: “Justice is the defense of our liberty.” I believed that. I still want to. But every day in this country, people go to prison for crimes that are nothing next to moving money for the people who want Americans dead. A suit, a title, and a corporate badge should not be a shield from the consequences that apply to everyone else. If a street dealer goes to prison for what he sells, the banker who moved the cartel’s money should be standing next to him.
I also want to raise something that is rarely said in these conversations. Why has no one inside Bank of America come forward the way I did? The answer is that everyone in American banking knows what happened to me, and to the whistleblowers who came after. The last person who spoke up is the only policy anyone believes. That is a culture problem, and it starts with leadership, in the banks and in the agencies that regulate them.
This is not a political issue. It has spanned administrations of both parties. It is a national security issue, and I am asking you to treat it as one.
Three things would change the math overnight.
Refer individuals for criminal prosecution. Not the analyst in the queue. The executives who set the thresholds and chose the risk. One banker in handcuffs would do more than every fine in Treasury’s history combined.
End “too big to jail.” An institution cannot be too big to fail and too big to jail at the same time. If it is the first, it must be held to a higher standard, not a lower one.
And if Bank of America will not act as America’s bank, review its charter. A national charter is a privilege granted on behalf of the American people. It should be conditioned on not moving money for the people trying to kill them.
Secretary Bessent, you said yesterday that these actions send a clear message that even the biggest institutions are not above the law. With respect, the institution was never the problem. The people inside it are above the law, and they know it. Until that changes, I will keep writing letters like this one, and the next bank will keep paying the next fine.
I gave up everything I had to stop this. I am asking you to use the power you have to finish it.
Respectfully,
Everett A. Stern
HSBC Whistleblower
Founder and Intelligence Director, Tactical Rabbit
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I wrote code. Now I face 45 years in prison because others misused it.
Code that no one controls. Code that no one can change or shut down.
Yet somehow, I’m being held responsible for what others chose to do with it.
Code that no one controls. Code that no one can change or shut down.
Yet somehow, I’m being held responsible for what others chose to do with it.
I feel like the whole BoA money laundering thing should be talked about, but what's left to say?
I spent a year in prison for not filling out a form around selling Bitcoin and got in trouble because someone two degrees separate from me allegedly used it to launder funds. The amount in question was around $30k.
BoA launders $5b and has to give one fifth of it back to the government. No jail for anyone.
This is America.
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Roman Storm 🇺🇸 🌪️ retweeted
Bank of America admits WILLFUL AML violations and settles sanctions breaches.
Penalty: 3.9% of annual profits
@rstormsf helps build open-source privacy software. He gets a criminal conviction and faces retrial.
Banks get a fine. Developers face prison.
Make it make sense.
Penalty: 3.9% of annual profits
@rstormsf helps build open-source privacy software. He gets a criminal conviction and faces retrial.
Banks get a fine. Developers face prison.
Make it make sense.
BREAKING: The U.S. Treasury says it’s imposing $1.2 billion in fines on Bank of America for violating money laundering, sanctions laws. apnews.com/article/treasu…
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It's sad that we still don't have a mainstream privacy multisig wallet, where an on-chain proof shows a threshold of owners signed a tx, without revealing who the owners are or which of them signed.
A post-quantum private multisig on Ethereum needs hash-based signatures proven with a hash-based, zero-knowledge proof system: a STARK or FRI-based PLONK like Plonky3. KZG-based SNARKs are out. It's verifiable on L1 today but expensive, and there's no mainstream audited implementation yet.
A post-quantum private multisig on Ethereum needs hash-based signatures proven with a hash-based, zero-knowledge proof system: a STARK or FRI-based PLONK like Plonky3. KZG-based SNARKs are out. It's verifiable on L1 today but expensive, and there's no mainstream audited implementation yet.
Correction: for multisigs the ideal "safe" rule is that you want each signer to change their key after each operation.
(This is making an implicit assumption that ECDSA might become weak, but not to the point where any crack of it would be literally instant so you would literally have to worry about eg. in-mempool frontrunning)
You definitely still want to gather sigs offchain if possible, to minimize the number of hours between "sig revealed" and "key no longer active"
But again: it's very easy to lose funds from a misconfigured rushed upgrade, so ... don't rush anything.
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Roman Storm 🇺🇸 🌪️ retweeted
On the same day the US Treasury abolished a cryptocurrency mixer rule, SDNY weaponized a newly set precedent against Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm.
It could deem anyone using mixer-like technologies as engaged in a conspiracy to launder criminal proceeds.
It could deem anyone using mixer-like technologies as engaged in a conspiracy to launder criminal proceeds.
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.@elonmusk - today (Oct 6, 5:37 PM) my Tesla on FSD ran a red light at S 352nd St in Federal Way, WA. Clip attached. No one was hurt. Sharing so the team can take a look. It was quite scary.
I know Tesla's answer: the engineers who wrote that code aren't criminals. The person ponsible. And that's right.
But the DOJ doesn't apply that rule to me. I wrote open-source code. People I never met misused it in ways I didn't control. Now I'm facing decades in prison.
Prosecutors compared me to "a getaway driver for a bank robbery." But I never drove anyone anywhere. I built open-source software that still runs today - because no one controls it. Not me, not anyone.
Elon, I know how much is on your plate. If you ever have a moment, I'd be truly grateful if you took a look at my case. I believe it matters for everyone building software in America. Thank you.
I know Tesla's answer: the engineers who wrote that code aren't criminals. The person ponsible. And that's right.
But the DOJ doesn't apply that rule to me. I wrote open-source code. People I never met misused it in ways I didn't control. Now I'm facing decades in prison.
Prosecutors compared me to "a getaway driver for a bank robbery." But I never drove anyone anywhere. I built open-source software that still runs today - because no one controls it. Not me, not anyone.
Elon, I know how much is on your plate. If you ever have a moment, I'd be truly grateful if you took a look at my case. I believe it matters for everyone building software in America. Thank you.
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Quick summary of my case for context:
I'm Roman Storm, co-founder of Tornado Cash: open-source, non-custodial privacy software that still runs today. I'm being prosecuted for code I wrote.
1. Tornado Cash's core smart contracts are immutable. No one, including me, can change or shut them down.
2. Tornado Cash is non-custodial. It never held or "transmitted" anyone's funds.
3. The jury couldn't agree on money laundering or sanctions. It convicted on one count: unlicensed money transmitting.
4. 15 days after that verdict, the DOJ's Criminal Division head Matthew Galeotti said "merely writing code without ill intent is not a crime," and that new charges under that exact statute "will not be approved" against truly decentralized, non-custodial software.
justice.gov/opa/speech/act…
5. The Fifth Circuit Court ruled in Van Loon v. Treasury that Tornado Cash's immutable smart contracts can't be owned or controlled by anyone.
ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/2…
6. Senators Lummis (R) and Wyden (D) told the DOJ that "direct receipt and control of assets are required elements of money transmission." Coinbase, Kraken, a16z, Paradigm and 30+ others warned Congress that under the DOJ's theory, "essentially every blockchain developer could be prosecuted as a criminal."
defieducationfund.org/_files/ugd/84b…
Just yesterday, Treasury withdrew its mixer rule, citing concerns it could have a "chilling effect on legitimate activity." Yet the government still wants to retry me on 2 more counts in April 2027.
I'm Roman Storm, co-founder of Tornado Cash: open-source, non-custodial privacy software that still runs today. I'm being prosecuted for code I wrote.
1. Tornado Cash's core smart contracts are immutable. No one, including me, can change or shut them down.
2. Tornado Cash is non-custodial. It never held or "transmitted" anyone's funds.
3. The jury couldn't agree on money laundering or sanctions. It convicted on one count: unlicensed money transmitting.
4. 15 days after that verdict, the DOJ's Criminal Division head Matthew Galeotti said "merely writing code without ill intent is not a crime," and that new charges under that exact statute "will not be approved" against truly decentralized, non-custodial software.
justice.gov/opa/speech/act…
5. The Fifth Circuit Court ruled in Van Loon v. Treasury that Tornado Cash's immutable smart contracts can't be owned or controlled by anyone.
ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/2…
6. Senators Lummis (R) and Wyden (D) told the DOJ that "direct receipt and control of assets are required elements of money transmission." Coinbase, Kraken, a16z, Paradigm and 30+ others warned Congress that under the DOJ's theory, "essentially every blockchain developer could be prosecuted as a criminal."
defieducationfund.org/_files/ugd/84b…
Just yesterday, Treasury withdrew its mixer rule, citing concerns it could have a "chilling effect on legitimate activity." Yet the government still wants to retry me on 2 more counts in April 2027.
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A new letter was filed today by SDNY:
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
The DOJ is still coming after me with everything it has. They really want to see me convicted.
It has been 1,139 days since my nightmare began.
They arrested me when my daughter was just 3 years old, and escorted her out of our home.
She is 6 now, and I don't know how I would ever explain to her that I'm being sent to prison for decades - for writing code.
Meanwhile, today the Department of the Treasury has admitted it was wrong about the mixer rules, citing a "chilling effect on legitimate activity."
Source: public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-20429.pdf
Yet in my case, the DOJ argued at the April 9, 2026 hearing:
"...even the legitimate transactions that went through Tornado Cash became illegitimate because they also facilitated the criminal ends of the money transmitting of the money laundering and of the sanctions evasion..."
(Docket 290, p.43 storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…)
The non-criminal branch of the U.S. government says: it's bad policy.
The criminal branch says: every transaction is a crime.
The Crypto War is still being waged against developers and open source, cementing an extremely dangerous precedent in the United States of America.
A new letter was filed today by SDNY:
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
The DOJ is still coming after me with everything it has. They really want to see me convicted.
It has been 1,139 days since my nightmare began.
They arrested me when my daughter was just 3 years old, and escorted her out of our home.
She is 6 now, and I don't know how I would ever explain to her that I'm being sent to prison for decades - for writing code.
Meanwhile, today the Department of the Treasury has admitted it was wrong about the mixer rules, citing a "chilling effect on legitimate activity."
Source: public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-20429.pdf
Yet in my case, the DOJ argued at the April 9, 2026 hearing:
"...even the legitimate transactions that went through Tornado Cash became illegitimate because they also facilitated the criminal ends of the money transmitting of the money laundering and of the sanctions evasion..."
(Docket 290, p.43 storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…)
The non-criminal branch of the U.S. government says: it's bad policy.
The criminal branch says: every transaction is a crime.
The Crypto War is still being waged against developers and open source, cementing an extremely dangerous precedent in the United States of America.
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On August 6, 2025, a Manhattan jury found me guilty of one count: conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business under 18 U.S.C. § 1960. They hung on money laundering and sanctions. I have not been sentenced. A motion for acquittal is still pending. Retrial of for April 26, 2027.
Fifteen days later, on August 21, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Galeotti, head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, said this in a published speech:
"Our view is that merely writing code, without ill-intent, is not a crime."
And: "where the evidence shows that software is truly decentralized and solely automates peer-to-peer transactions, and where a third party does not have custody and control over user assets, new 1960(b)(1)(C) charges against the third-party will not be approved."
"Generally, developers of neutral tools, with no criminal intent, should not be held responsible for someone else's misuse of those tools. If a third-party's misuse violates criminal law, that third-party should be prosecuted — not the well-intentioned developer."
Section 1960 is the statute I was convicted under.
I am not asking anyone to take my word for it. Read the Department's own remarks, then read what happened in my case.
DOJ speech: justice.gov/opa/speech/act…
#FreeRomanStorm
FreeRomanStorm.com
Fifteen days later, on August 21, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Galeotti, head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, said this in a published speech:
"Our view is that merely writing code, without ill-intent, is not a crime."
And: "where the evidence shows that software is truly decentralized and solely automates peer-to-peer transactions, and where a third party does not have custody and control over user assets, new 1960(b)(1)(C) charges against the third-party will not be approved."
"Generally, developers of neutral tools, with no criminal intent, should not be held responsible for someone else's misuse of those tools. If a third-party's misuse violates criminal law, that third-party should be prosecuted — not the well-intentioned developer."
Section 1960 is the statute I was convicted under.
I am not asking anyone to take my word for it. Read the Department's own remarks, then read what happened in my case.
DOJ speech: justice.gov/opa/speech/act…
#FreeRomanStorm
FreeRomanStorm.com
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