Roman Storm Speaks - Tornado Cash Developer on What’s at Stake
Bankless
Bankless
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 21 November 2024
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
📣DONATE TO ROMAN’S CASE
https://juicebox.money/@defend-roman-storm
Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm faces decades in prison after being arrested last year for creating open-source privacy tools on Ethereum. His case could define whether code is speech, if developers are liable for bad actors, and if Americans have a right to digital privacy.
With the full force of the U.S. government against him, Roman’s trial this April is a pivotal moment for digital rights. Bankless has contributed $50k to his legal defense—this is about protecting privacy for all of us.
Roman Storm, alongside his lawyer, joins us to discuss The Tornado Cash case and what’s at stake.
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TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Intro
2:36 Roman’s Spirits
3:58 Who is Roman Storm?
5:40 Why Tornado Cash?
7:06 House raiding experience
8:43 What Roman was charged with
10:00 Why Roman is not guilty
17:10 What’s at stake
22:31 How to help Roman
25:16 Closing & Disclaimers
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RESOURCES
Donate to Roman’s Case
https://juicebox.money/@defend-roman-storm
DeFi Education Fund - Amicus Brief - https://www.defieducationfund.org/_files/ugd/84ba66_063f9d1fd563466cadfa3f5434f918e9.pdf
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Not financial or tax advice. See our investment disclosures here:
https://www.bankless.com/disclosures
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We have a sobering episode today on bankless. |
| 0:04.8 | We have tornado cash developer, Roman Storm, on the podcast today. |
| 0:09.2 | Now, Roman, you might remember, he was arrested from his Seattle home just over a year ago. |
| 0:13.4 | This was in August of 2023. |
| 0:15.6 | He was arrested for the development and deployment of tornado cash, which we've talked about on |
| 0:20.5 | bankless as an open source |
| 0:21.8 | code was developed on Ethereum, and it provides privacy for blockchain transactions. He now faces |
| 0:28.4 | criminal charges in the United States and the prospects of decades in jail. Now, David and I think |
| 0:35.1 | Roman's case is the most important case for digital rights of the 2020s, this decade. |
| 0:42.4 | Is code speech? |
| 0:43.9 | If bad people use open source code to do bad things, do the developers of that code go to jail? |
| 0:50.0 | Are U.S. citizens allowed to even have digital privacy over their economic transactions? |
| 0:56.0 | All of those things are going to be decided in this case. And just also, on a personal level, |
| 1:02.9 | a man's life is at stake here. As you could see in today's conversation, the full weight of the |
| 1:08.4 | U.S. government is being leveraged to prosecute Roman Storm. |
| 1:12.5 | And so there's a massive power asymmetry here to correct for. |
| 1:16.3 | Roman's case is coming up in April and he needs funds for his legal defense. He doesn't have |
| 1:22.5 | the money to fight this alone. We're hoping the crypto community can step up to fund him. We gave him |
| 1:28.7 | $25,000 to Roman's case in the beginning of this year. And so in addition to that, we are also |
| 1:35.3 | giving him another $25,000 after this recording and hope that you will also, listener, join us to |
| 1:40.5 | support Roman and also our own fight to have a right to privacy in crypto because |
| 1:46.5 | that is also what is at stake in this case. I don't know if we will win this fight. The fight for |
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