Original Author: Brian Danga
Original Compilation: Block Unicorn
Summary
- Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin issued an open letter on Friday in support of Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm. Storm was convicted in August on charges of conspiracy to commit unlawful money transmission and faces up to five years in prison.
- Storm's defense fund has received support from backers including Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation, totaling over $6.3 million (as of 2025). Meanwhile, global enforcement against privacy-focused crypto tools is intensifying.
Vitalik's Open Letter
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin issued an open letter on Friday in support of Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm. Storm was convicted in August on charges of conspiracy to commit unlawful money transmission and is currently awaiting sentencing in a U.S. court.
Storm was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice in August 2023 and remains on bail, with the judge ruling he poses no flight risk, though he still faces up to five years in prison.
Vitalik positioned the core of this prosecution as targeting software development itself, rather than direct economic harm. Storm is a co-founder of Tornado Cash, a non-custodial cryptocurrency mixer that U.S. authorities say was used to launder over $1 billion in illicit funds. In August of this year, a jury found Storm guilty of unlawfully transferring funds but failed to reach a consensus on other money laundering and sanctions charges.
Vitalik positioned privacy tools like Tornado Cash as necessary defenses against systemic data exploitation, noting that he had used Roman's software to purchase technical tools and support human rights charities, with this data not being recorded in corporate or government databases.
"I have supported Roman Storm's work from the beginning because I firmly believe in the importance of privacy, and I am an active user of privacy tools, including those developed by Roman," Vitalik wrote. "Unlike some, who use these causes as a pretext for profit, developing software with flashy advertisements but fundamentally flawed underlying code, Roman's applications remain functional years after he stopped development—this alone, in my view, makes him more respectable than many so-called 'consumer tech' products in the world today."
As Privacy Tools Face Increasing Legal Pressure, Industry Support Is Growing
Vitalik's letter places Storm's case within a broader argument that data protection should be seen as fundamental infrastructure, not a niche political issue. He wrote that in recent decades, the ability to control personal information was a default state, describing modern privacy tools as attempts to preserve protections that existed before the emergence of widespread digital surveillance.
In the letter, Vitalik stated that these protections are neither novel nor extreme, describing them as safeguards historically applied to personal communication, physical movement, and financial activities.
Vitalik's support extends beyond testimony. In December 2024, he donated 50 Ethereum (ETH) to Storm's legal defense fund, worth approximately $170,000 at the time. The non-profit Ethereum Foundation donated $500,000 to the fund in June of last year and pledged to match $750,000 in community donations. In October 2025, the Ethereum Foundation and Keyring jointly launched a legal defense fund specifically for Tornado Cash developers.
The scope of support has extended beyond the Ethereum ecosystem. According to the fund's official website, in 2025 alone, Storm's defense fund raised over $6.39 million. Blockchain privacy researcher Federico Carrone stated that he donated $500,000 to Storm's defense fund, adding to the $50,000 previously pledged by his venture studio LambdaClass, further increasing the total. The Solana Policy Institute stated in August 2025 that it had donated $500,000 to support Storm and Tornado Cash co-founder Alexey Pertsev.
This wave of support comes as crackdowns on privacy tool developers intensify globally. Storm's co-founder Alexey Pertsev was sentenced to 64 months in prison by a Dutch court in 2024 for money laundering, related to $1.2 billion in transactions between July 2019 and August 2022.
In the U.S., the co-founders of Samourai Wallet were arrested in April 2024 on money laundering charges. Prosecutors alleged that the wallet's mixer processed over $2 billion in illicit funds between 2015 and 2024. Co-founder Keonne Rodriguez was sentenced to five years in prison in November 2025, while William Lonergan Hill was sentenced to four years.
Meanwhile, advocacy groups are pushing for legislative safeguards. In August 2025, over 110 cryptocurrency organizations jointly sent a letter to Senate committee leaders, stating that they could not support key market structure legislation without clear protections for software developers. This followed a statement from a senior Department of Justice official that "writing code" is not a crime.
As previously reported, U.S. President Donald Trump, when asked in an Oval Office meeting in December 2025 whether he would pardon Samourai Wallet's Keonne Rodriguez, indicated he might review such cases, saying, "I've heard about it, and I will look into it."
