V condemns criminalizing code and speaks out for Tornado Cash developers

Written by: Brian Danga

Translated by: Block unicorn

Summary

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a public letter on Friday in support of Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm. Storm was convicted in August on charges of conspiracy to commit illegal money transmission and faces up to five years in prison.

Storm’s defense fund is supported by backers including Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation, totaling over $6.3 million (as of 2025). Meanwhile, law enforcement efforts against privacy-focused encryption tools are also intensifying worldwide.

Vitalik’s Public Letter

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin issued a public letter on Friday supporting Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm. Storm was convicted in August of conspiracy to commit illegal money transmission and is currently awaiting a verdict from a U.S. court.

Storm was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice in August 2023 and remains on bail. The judge ruled he does not pose a flight risk, but he could still face up to five years in prison.

Vitalik frames the prosecution as targeting the software development itself, rather than the economic damages directly caused. Storm is a co-founder of Tornado Cash, a non-custodial cryptocurrency mixer that U.S. authorities say has been used to launder over $1 billion in illegal funds. In August, a jury found Storm guilty of illegal money transfer but failed to reach a consensus on other money laundering and sanctions charges.

Vitalik views privacy tools like Tornado Cash as essential defenses against systemic data exploitation, noting he has used Roman’s software to purchase technical tools and support human rights charities, with these data not 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 people who use these endeavors as a pretext for profit, developing flashy but fundamentally flawed software, Roman’s applications remain usable years after he stopped developing them — just on that basis alone, I believe he is more deserving of respect than many so-called ‘consumer tech’ products today.”

Industry Support Grows Amid Increasing Legal Pressure on Privacy Tools

Vitalik’s letter places Storm’s case within a broader argument that data protection should be regarded as fundamental infrastructure rather than a niche political issue. He wrote that over the past decades, controlling personal information has been a default state, and modern privacy tools are described as safeguards that existed before widespread digital surveillance.

In the letter, Vitalik states that these protections are neither novel nor extreme, but rather historical safeguards applied to personal communication, physical movement, and financial activities.

Vitalik’s support extends beyond mere words. In December 2024, he donated 50 ETH (approximately $170,000 at the time) to Storm’s legal defense fund. The non-profit Ethereum Foundation donated $500,000 to the fund last June and pledged to match community donations with an additional $750,000. By October 2025, the Ethereum Foundation and Keyring jointly launched a legal defense fund specifically for Tornado Cash developers.

Support has expanded beyond the Ethereum ecosystem. According to the fund’s official website, Storm’s defense fund raised over $6.39 million in 2025 alone. Blockchain privacy researcher Federico Carrone donated $500,000, adding to a previous pledge of $50,000 from his venture capital firm LambdaClass. In August 2025, the Solana Policy Institute announced a donation of $500,000 to support Storm and Alexey Pertsev, co-founder of Tornado Cash.

This wave of support comes amid a global crackdown on privacy tool developers. Storm’s co-founder Alexey Pertsev was sentenced to 64 months in prison by a Dutch court in 2024 for money laundering involving $1.2 billion in transactions from July 2019 to August 2022.

In the U.S., co-founder of Samourai Wallet was arrested in April 2024 on money laundering charges. Prosecutors allege that the wallet’s mixer processed over $2 billion in illegal funds between 2015 and 2024. Co-founder Keonne Rodriguez was sentenced to five years in prison in November 2025, while William Lonergan Hill received a four-year sentence.

Meanwhile, advocacy groups are pushing for legislative protections. In August 2025, over 110 cryptocurrency organizations jointly wrote to Senate committee leaders stating they could not support key market structure legislation without explicit protections for software developers. A senior Department of Justice official previously stated that “writing code” is not a crime.

According to earlier reports, U.S. President Donald Trump, during a December 2025 Oval Office meeting, was asked whether he would pardon Keonne Rodriguez of Samourai Wallet. He responded that he might review such cases, saying, “I’ve heard about this, and I will look into it.”