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Legitimate Privacy Tool or Dirty Money ‘Laundromat’? Lawyers Debate Role of Tornado Cash on Day 1 of Roman Storm Trial

Published

20 часов ago

15 июля, 2025

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NEW YORK — There is at least one fact that both the defense and the prosecution agree in the ongoing criminal money laundering trial of software developer Roman Storm: the product he helped to create and run — a once-popular crypto privacy tool called Tornado Cash — was exploited by hackers and cyber criminals to launder their dirty money.

What the parties do not agree on, and the fundamental question at the heart of Storm’s trial, is whether Storm was able to prevent this behavior, whether he knew which criminals were using the Tornado Cash protocol and how and, most importantly, whether he should be held criminally liable for creating a tool that bad actors used to cover their tracks.

Storm, 36, has been charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business — charges which, if Storm is convicted, carry a maximum combined sentence of 45 years in prison. His trial kicked off in Manhattan on Monday, and opening arguments took place Tuesday afternoon after lawyers selected a 12-person jury to oversee the three-week trial.

During the government’s opening statements, prosecutor Kevin Mosley told the jury that Roman Storm “knew that his business was laundering dirty money” and that he made millions of dollars doing it. Mosley said the jury would see a photo of Storm wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a washing machine with Tornado Cash’s logo on it — evidence that he allegedly knew exactly what Tornado Cash was being used for.

Storm, Mosley said, turned a blind eye to the hackers using his platform and ignored pleas from scam victims who reached out to him, asking for help recovering their money. Though prosecutors claim Storm either told the victims he couldn’t help them or ignored them entirely, Mosley said Storm maintained full control over the Tornado Cash platform, even tweaking it “to make it even better for criminals to hide their money.”

Some of Tornado Cash’s users included North Korea’s infamous state-sponsored hacking organization, the Lazarus Group, which used Tornado Cash to launder the proceeds of its 2022 hack of Axie Infinity’s Ronin Network. Mosley told the jury that, by allegedly facilitating the Lazarus Group’s money laundering, Storm and his “co-conspirators” — fellow developers Alexey Pertsev and Roman Semenov — violated U.S. sanctions against North Korea. Mosley said Storm knew Tornado Cash was helping North Korea skirt U.S. sanctions because he allegedly texted Semenov and Pertsev, “guys, we’re done for” after news of the Axie Infinity hack broke.

Storm’s lawyers, of course, see the facts of the case very differently. In her opening statements to the jury, Keri Axel, a partner at Waymaker LLP, said that Storm’s text to Pertsev and Semenov after the Axie Infinity hack had nothing to do with sanctions, and everything to do with the impact of the hack on Tornado Cash’s reputation, as well as the price of the TORN token, which suffered in the wake of the hack. The washing machine t-shirt, she said, was a joke “in poor taste.”

Storm, Axel said, didn’t work with hackers or scammers, and didn’t want them using his product.

“These criminals, acting without any assistance from Roman [Storm], misused Tornado Cash,” Axel said. “You will not see any evidence that he communicated with them or assisted them, absolutely none.” The fact that Tornado Cash was continuously exploited by bad actors “ultimately killed his dream” of creating a privacy tool that was widely adopted and respected throughout the crypto community, Axel said.

It is privacy — and the legitimate need and desire for it — that sits at the core of Storm’s defense. His lawyers told the jury that their client, a Kazakhstan-born U.S. citizen who taught himself to code while working odd jobs as a bus boy and a security guard before jumping to the tech industry, was inspired to create a privacy tool after meeting Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who she described to the jury as a “crypto rockstar.”

While Axel admitted that Tornado Cash was “misused” by bad actors, she said that they represented a minority of the tool’s users — most of whom she said were normal people using Tornado Cash to preserve their privacy.

“It’s not a crime to make a useful thing that’s misused by bad people,” Axel said, comparing Tornado Cash to a smart phone used to scam people, or a hammer used to break into homes.

She explained to the jury that, because the blockchain is public and easily searchable, any known wallet address can be searched, and its transactions (and the value of its contents) can be viewed by anyone. Axel explained that, in the crypto industry, loss of privacy has led to the recent string of kidnappings and attacks on high-net worth individuals and executives.

“How would you feel if someone took your bank account and published it on the internet?” Axel asked the jury. “You would feel exposed and probably unsafe.”

Axel told the jury that they would hear testimony from a host of victims and hackers, none of which could be directly connected to Roman Storm. The hackers, she said, were only testifying “in the hopes that they can get leniency in their own criminal cases” and that Storm lacked the power to help their victims.

First witness

After opening statements concluded, the government called its first witness, a Taiwan-born Georgia resident named Hanfeng Ling. Ms. Ling told the court how she was the victim of a pig butchering scam in the fall of 2021, that began with a wrong-number Whatsapp message. The scammer convinced Ling to transfer nearly $200,000 from her savings account to purchase crypto and then “invest” the crypto in a fake foreign exchange trading platform.

Ms. Ling’s testimony will continue on Wednesday. Nathan Rehn, the lead prosecutor, told the court that he expects her testimony will be followed by four more government witnesses on Wednesday.

The bulk of Storm’s trial is expected to take place over three weeks, followed by jury deliberation.

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The Protocol: Layer-2 Eclipse’s Airdrop Goes Live

Published

23 минуты ago

16 июля, 2025

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Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Margaux Nijkerk, CoinDesk’s Tech & Protocols reporter.

In this issue:

Eclipse Launches $ES Airdrop, Distributing 15% of Token Supply
Risc Zero’s ‘Boundless’ Incentivized Testnet Goes Live
Bitcoin Devs Float Proposal to Freeze Quantum-Vulnerable Addresses — Even Satoshi Nakamoto’s
Aethir and Credible Introduce First DePIN-Powered Credit Card

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Network News

ECLIPSE TOKEN GENERATION EVENT: Eclipse, the layer-2 that combines technology from the Ethereum and Solana blockchains, shared that it has gone live with an airdorp of its $ES token. The team behind the network shared that the initial distribution will occur over the next 30 days, and a total of 1 billion $ES tokens have been minted, with distribution structured to go to community incentives and long-term protocol sustainability. Of the supply, 15% is allocated to an airdrop and liquidity provisions for core community members and developers who have supported the network from the start. 35% will support ecosystem growth and research and development, aimed to help scale the network. Contributors will receive 19% of the supply, including team members, with a four year vesting period and three year lockup schedule. The remaining 31% is for early supporters and investors, who are subject to a three year lockup schedule to commit to Eclipse’s roadmap long-term. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.

RISC-ZERO “BOUNDLESS” INCENTIVIZED TESTNET GOES LIVE : Boundless, the decentralized zero-knowledge (ZK) compute marketplace powered by RISC Zero, has launched its incentivized testnet (which it is calling “Mainnet Beta”) on Base, Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network. With Boundless’ incentivized testnet, developers can build and test applications in an environment as if the protocol is in fully live format. The network has already landed early support from industry heavyweights like the Ethereum Foundation, Wormhole and EigenLayer. A decentralized marketplace for zero-knowledge compute connects those who need zero-knowledge proofs — such as developers building rollups, bridges, or privacy-preserving applications — with a distributed network of independent “ZK provers or miners” who generate and verify those proofs. Instead of relying on centralized parties, this model allows anyone with the right hardware to contribute computing power and be rewarded for doing that cryptographic work. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.

NEW BITCOIN PROPOSAL TO FREEZE QUANTAM-VULNERABLE ADDRESSES: A new Bitcoin draft proposal wants to do what’s long been unthinkable: Freeze coins secured by legacy cryptography — including those in Satoshi Nakamoto’s wallets — before quantum computers can crack them. That’s according to a new draft proposal co-authored by Jameson Lopp and other crypto security researchers, which introduces a phased soft fork that turns quantum migration into a ticking clock. Fail to upgrade, and your coins become unspendable. That includes the roughly 1.1 million BTC tied to early pay-to-pubkey addresses, like those of Satoshi’s and other early miners. “This proposal is radically different from any in Bitcoin’s history just as the threat posed by quantum computing is radically different from any other threat in Bitcoin’s history,” the authors explained as a motivation for the proposal. “Never before has Bitcoin faced an existential threat to its cryptographic primitives.” — Shaurya Malwa Read more.

THE FIRST DEPIN POWERED CREDIT CARD: Aethir, a decentralized GPU cloud network, has teamed up with Credible Finance, a lending protocol, to introduce what they call the first credit card and loan product powered by a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN). The move is designed to give Aethir’s native ATH token holders and node operators access to stablecoin credit without liquidating their tokens — a step toward blending on-chain infrastructure with real-world financial capital. The product, which debuted on Wednesday, lets eligible users collateralize their ATH tokens to access a revolving credit line or preload a no-fee card with ATH or stablecoins on Solana. Loan approvals and limits are determined by Credible’s AI-driven credit engine, which evaluates a user’s on-chain activity, asset holdings and transaction history. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.

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In Other News

Ripple has expanded its institutional custody services into the Middle East, partnering with UAE-based tokenization platform Ctrl Alt to support Dubai’s government-led real estate digitization initiative. The deal will see Ctrl Alt use Ripple’s custody infrastructure to store tokenized property title deeds issued by the Dubai Land Department (DLD) on the XRP Ledger (XRPL). — Shaurya Malwa Read more.
SharpLink Gaming (SBET), the Nasdaq-listed firm with a crypto treasury strategy centered on ether ETH, on Tuesday said it has become the largest corporate holder of the asset with 280,706 ETH worth roughly $840 million at current prices. The firm raised $413 million via the issuance of over 24 million shares between July 7 and July 11, according to a press release. It purchased a total of 74,656 ETH over the past week at an average price of $2,852 each. Roughly $257 million of that fundraising remained for future ETH acquisitions, the firm said. — Kristzian Sandor Read more.

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Regulatory and Policy

The House of Representatives on Tuesday did not vote on a procedural motion to advance a trio of crypto bills, but may vote Wednesday to advance the legislation. As it sped into its crypto-focused week on Tuesday, the U.S. House’s process toward passing digital assets bills ground to a sudden halt over a procedural vote as members of the House Freedom Caucus objected to the way some of the legislation has developed under Senate dominance. The legislation still has strong, bipartisan support, suggesting the procedural mishap may be overcome as a further vote was scheduled for later Tuesday afternoon. This vote was canceled less than 15 minutes before it was set to begin, so the matter may not be raised again until early Wednesday — the same day the Digital Asset Markets Clarity Act was set to be voted on. — Jesse Hamilton, Stephen Alpher, & Nikilesh De Read more.
A 12-person jury has been seated for Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm’s criminal trial, and opening arguments are set to begin later this afternoon in the Thurgood Marshall courthouse in Lower Manhattan. Seven women and five men with a diverse range of backgrounds and ages will decide whether the U.S. Department of Justice can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Storm engaged in conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to violate U.S. sanctions and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. — Cheyenne Ligon & Nikilesh De Read more.

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Calendar

July 16-18: Web3 Summit, Berlin
Sept. 22-28: Korea Blockchain Week, Seoul
Oct. 1-2: Token2049, Singapore
Nov. 17-22: Devconnect, Buenos Aires
Dec. 11-13: Solana Breakpoint, Abu Dhabi
Feb. 10-12, 2026: Consensus, Hong Kong
May 5-7, 2026: Consensus, Miami

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NEAR Surges 8% as Altcoins Turn Bullish

Published

60 минут ago

16 июля, 2025

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NEAR Protocol exhibited pronounced bullish momentum over the past 24 hours, ascending from $2.60 to $2.68.

NEAR is now up by 8% over the past few days having surged by 45% since Jun 17. The move reflects optimism across the wider altcoin ecosystem, with data points suggesting sustained upside.

A broader artificial intelligence (AI) token rally has propelled the sector’s aggregate market capitalization to $33.64 billion.

Fund manager Bitwise also published on post on X about how the Near Protocol would use «billions of AI agents» to manage capital and execute trades, adding fuel to Wednesday’s rally.

NEAR USD (CoinDesk Data)

Technical Indicators Highlight Trading Patterns

Overall trading range reached $0.16 representing 5.89% of the trading range during the 24-hour period under examination.
High-volume surge of 5.81 million tokens occurred at 16 July 14:00, significantly exceeding the 24-hour average of 2.55 million tokens.
Key resistance emerged at $2.70-$2.72 levels where price reversed on elevated volume during peak trading hours.
Support consolidated around $2.56-$2.62 with multiple successful retests throughout the trading session.
The final 60 minutes from 16 July 15:06 to 16:05 demonstrated a decline from $2.71 to $2.68 representing a 1.11% drop with a $0.05 intraday range.
Sharp sell-off period featured elevated volume spikes exceeding 230,000 tokens at 15:16 and 15:36 during the consolidation phase.

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.

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ICP Climbs With Broader Crypto Rally, Holds Gains Above $5.50

Published

1 час ago

16 июля, 2025

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Internet Computer (ICP) moved higher in tandem with a broad-based crypto market surge, climbing 1.89% $5.5354 after peaking at around $5.65 early on Wednesday. As capital rotated into altcoins following gains in bitcoin and ether, ICP followed suit with a 7% upswing, driven by early bullish momentum and strong support at the lower end of its range.

The 24-hour window spanning July 15 at 15:00 UTC to July 16 at 14:00 UTC saw ICP fluctuate within a $0.39 range. Volume during this rally exceeded 964,000 units, indicating robust participation from both large and small buyers as the altcoin sector gained steam.

After peaking, ICP transitioned into a sideways consolidation phase between $5.50 and $5.58. Two failed attempts to break above the $5.64–$5.66 resistance zone confirmed short-term exhaustion, according to CoinDesk Research’s technical analysis data model. The token remained well bid near $5.52, where fresh demand consistently emerged.

This consolidation reflects similar dynamics seen across Layer 1 tokens, which are seeing profit-taking after multi-session gains but maintaining higher support zones. ICP’s ability to hold steady in a tightening range mirrors the broader market’s pause after a strong leg up.

If bullish sentiment across the crypto market continues, ICP may challenge the $5.60–$5.66 resistance band again, supported by steady inflows and its strong positioning in the decentralized computing narrative.

Technical Analysis Highlights

ICP climbed 7% from $5.28 to $5.66 before consolidating in a $0.39 range.
Early rally supported by 964K+ volume, matching broader altcoin strength.
Resistance firmed at $5.64–$5.66 with two rejection attempts.
Price stabilized in a $5.50–$5.58 channel for much of the session.
Support formed around $5.52; buyers consistently defended this level.
ICP rebounded from $5.50 to $5.53 in the final hour on 19.8K+ volume.
Market structure remains bullish above $5.50 amid macro crypto strength.
Current price: $5.5354, up 1.89% on the day.

Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.