Tornado Cash founder Roman Storm’s gets $500,000 to appeal guilty verdict ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

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Hi! Eric here.

Roman Storm is getting ready for Round Two.

The Tornado Cash co-founder may still be reeling from his three-week courtroom drama that culminated in a guilty verdict of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmission business, but he’s already scooping up donations to mount an appeal.

Storm’s lawyer Keri Axel, has confirmed that they’ll appeal the verdict.

The Ethereum Foundation offered another $500,000 donation to fund Storm’s appeal on Thursday, according to its official X account.

“Privacy is normal and writing code is not a crime,” the account tweeted.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin was among major donors who added nearly $5 million into Storm’s war chest ahead of the trial.

Over the past three years, Tornado Cash has become a cause célèbre for the crypto industry as Storm and his fellow co-founder Alexey Pertsev have been prosecuted in the US and the Netherlands, respectively.

A third co-founder, Roman Semenov, was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department in 2023, but remains at large.

As Storm’s backers see it, privacy, a core tenet of the cypherpunk ethos, is in peril.

While the Tornado Cash co-founder dodged the more severe charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to evade sanctions, the sole guilty verdict still left the crypto community bruised this week.

They argue that the guilty verdict doesn’t reflect how Tornado Cash and other protocols operate.

“The principle guiding the DOJ charges in this case is limitless,” Amanda Tuminelli, executive director at the DeFi Education Fund, told Aleks Gilbert. “It basically says that any person who creates a tool that somebody else uses ... is responsible for that third party’s conduct.”

Others say it could even put future development in the industry at risk.

Both Storm and his lawyers appeared ready to keep working towards his full vindication.

“We’re gonna keep fighting,” Storm told reporters and supporters as he left the court on Wednesday.

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