Vitalik Buterin Condemns Criminalizing Code, Speaks Out for Tornado Cash Developers

Original Author: Brian Danga

Original Compilation: Block Unicorn

Summary

• Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published 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 legal defense fund, supported by backers including Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation, has raised over $6.3 million (as of 2025). This comes amid increasing global law enforcement pressure on privacy-focused crypto tools.

Vitalik's Open Letter

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published 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 out on bail after a judge ruled he was not a flight risk, but he still faces a potential maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Vitalik framed the core of the prosecution as targeting software development itself, rather than direct financial harm. Storm is a co-founder of Tornado Cash, a non-custodial cryptocurrency mixer that U.S. authorities allege was used to launder over $1 billion in illicit funds. In August of this year, a jury found Storm guilty of unlawfully transmitting funds but failed to reach a unanimous verdict 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 that data not being recorded in corporate or government databases.

"I have supported Roman Storm's work from the beginning because I deeply 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, creating software with flashy ads but fundamentally flawed foundations, Roman's applications remain functional years after he stopped developing them—this alone, in my view, makes him more deserving of respect than many of today's so-called 'consumer tech' products."

Industry Support Grows as Privacy Tools Face Mounting Legal Pressure

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 for decades, the ability to control personal information was a default state, describing modern privacy tools as attempts to preserve protections that existed before the advent 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 activity.

Vitalik's support extends beyond testimony. In December 2024, he donated 50 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 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 stated he donated $500,000 to Storm's defense fund, adding to a previous $50,000 commitment from his venture studio LambdaClass. The Solana Policy Institute announced 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 involving $1.2 billion in transactions between July 2019 and August 2022.

In the United States, the co-founders of Samourai Wallet were arrested in April 2024 on money laundering charges. Prosecutors alleged 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 sent a joint letter to Senate committee leaders stating 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, when asked in December 2025 during an Oval Office meeting if he would pardon Samourai Wallet's Keonne Rodriguez, U.S. President Donald Trump indicated he might review such cases, saying, "I've heard about that, I'll take a look."