Ross Ulbricht 2.0: Roman Storm Faces 40 Years for Writing Code to Protect Your Privacy

This is not justice. It’s a war on our privacy.

Roman Storm never laundered money. He never moved funds for North Korea. He never managed anyone’s crypto. He didn’t run a dark web operation, sell stolen identities, or traffic anything illegal. What he did do was write code — open-source, decentralized code — that became part of a privacy tool some people used to break the law. For that, he now faces over 40 years in prison.

Sound familiar? Think Silk Road and Ross Ulbricht.

Welcome to America in 2025, where writing code that empowers privacy is more dangerous than running a hedge fund into the ground or bombing a hospital in Gaza. Where developers are prosecuted not for what they did, but for what someone else might have done using their tools. And where the state has made it clear: if you dare give people privacy, you are the enemy.

Storm’s case is about Tornado Cash, an Ethereum-based privacy protocol he helped develop back in 2019. The idea was simple: let users shield their crypto transactions from public view using cryptographic mixing. It’s not so different from using cash instead of a credit card. Or using a VPN to hide your IP address. In other words, it’s privacy—not crime.

But in the eyes of the U.S. government, Storm is being painted as a co-conspirator in international money laundering because North Korean hackers and other criminals also used the tool. According to the Department of Justice, Storm and his co-developer Roman Semenov “knowingly facilitated money laundering.” But as the Cointelegraph report notes, “there is no evidence that either man directly laundered funds or profited from the specific crimes committed using the protocol.”

Think about what that means: If a thief makes a phone call before robbing a bank, should AT&T be on trial? If a criminal sends an email with Gmail, is Google liable? Of course not. But when it comes to privacy-focused crypto tools, the rules go out the window.

The Free Thought Project has warned for years that the war on privacy would escalate from covert surveillance to overt criminalization. We saw it with Ross Ulbricht, sentenced to life in prison for creating the Silk Road marketplace. We see it with the prosecution of Roger Ver, relentlessly pursued for daring to promote peer-to-peer financial freedom. And now we see it with Roman Storm, a software developer who believed in decentralization.

The DOJ’s indictment alleges Storm conspired to launder over $1 billion, including funds linked to the Lazarus Group — a North Korean hacking organization. But it’s not just the scale of the accusation that’s absurd — it’s the implications. As Cointelegraph rightly warns, “if the prosecution is successful, it could set a dangerous precedent for open-source developers whose code is used by others for illicit purposes.”

In fact, back in April, TFTP published a piece titled “The Great CBDC Bait-and-Switch,”  explaining how the state is pivoting from building a central bank digital currency (CBDC) to quietly regulating and co-opting stablecoins instead. The goal isn’t innovation. It’s control. And that same logic is what’s driving the case against Storm: if you can’t stop decentralized tech, criminalize its creators.

Storm’s defense is simple. Tornado Cash is not a company. It has no CEO, no customer service line, and no off-switch. The developers moved toward full decentralization years ago. The code runs autonomously, and like any open-source protocol, anyone can use or interact with it. “Storm’s defense will likely center on the fact that Tornado Cash is an autonomous protocol — not a company — and that he had no control over how it was used once deployed,” according to Cointelegraph.

That distinction is critical. Because if the state wins this case, then publishing open-source software becomes criminal conduct if someone else misuses it. That would destroy the very foundation of internet development. And let’s be clear: the government knows exactly what it’s doing. It wants to set a precedent that chills privacy innovation.

We should all be alarmed.

In a world where surveillance is normalized and digital cash is being replaced with programmable tokens, Tornado Cash is not the threat—it’s the resistance. And people like Roman Storm, Roger Ver, and countless unnamed developers in the crypto trenches are our last line of defense.

So why now? Why push this case when even the Treasury Department’s sanctions against Tornado Cash were recently overturned in court? In fact, “a U.S. court recently ruled that the Treasury overstepped its authority by sanctioning the Tornado Cash protocol itself — a significant win for the crypto industry,” as Cointelegraph reports. But this prosecution continues anyway. Because this is about sending a message: build tools that protect privacy, and we will ruin your life.

What’s more disturbing is that the current administration claims to be rolling back Biden-era overreach in crypto. But if Trump really opposes the surveillance state, why is his DOJ continuing this crusade? Why are they prosecuting code writers while promoting stablecoins embedded with surveillance hooks?

That’s why coins like Zano matter more than ever. Zano is not just private by default. It’s architected from the ground up to resist surveillance. Its new fUSD stablecoin (Freedom Dollar) isn’t run by any corporation or central bank. It’s fully decentralized, maintained by code, and controlled only by its users.

The future belongs to builders like Roman Storm. The real criminals are not the developers but the bureaucrats who criminalize privacy while cozying up to mass surveillance contractors like Palantir.

As the Storm trial unfolds, the crypto community, free speech advocates, and privacy supporters must rally. “The case has become a flashpoint for the crypto community, which sees it as a broader attack on privacy, decentralization, and freedom of speech,” notes Cointelegraph. Because if publishing open-source code becomes a crime, then freedom itself is hanging by a thread.

Article posted with permission from Matt Agorist

The post Ross Ulbricht 2.0: Roman Storm Faces 40 Years for Writing Code to Protect Your Privacy appeared first on The Washington Standard.