Crypto Privacy Inventor Charged, Faces 40 Years Up The River

INVENTOR OF CRYPTO PRIVACY SOFTWARE TORNADO CASH FACES 40 YEARS IN PRISON

Crypto, as in cryptocurrency, is a booming industry that is still in many ways a frontier market that everyone is still trying to figure out. Everyone, of course, meaning governments and banks who want to respectively control it, and marginalize it to maintain an oligopoly. But in recent years tracking crypto transactions has improved a great deal, making it harder (in theory) for bad actors to move, launder or hire illicit services anonymously. But privacy is still important, and not everyone wants every transaction in their lives tracked. So a man named Roman Storm invented a crypto privacy software to make that possible for anyone. Now, this inventor is facing charges that could mean 40 years behind bars (up the river…).

TORNADO CASH MAKES ANY CRYPTO TRANSACTION TOTALLY ANONYMOUS AND UNTRACKABLE

The 35-year-old Storm is a software developer who lives in Seattle, Washington. His crypto privacy software Tornado Cash, aka a “mixer,” aka a “tumbler,” makes it possible for people to send money from one place -say, a bitcoin account- to another place. A great example of this is people who used Tornado Cash to send funds from Bitcoin to Ukraine, but in a way that Vladimir Putin couldn’t track. In other words, people donating in support of Ukraine wouldn’t have to worry about getting poked by a palladium umbrella tip. To me, that sounds pretty reasonable and functional.

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BAD ACTOR NORTH KOREA USED TORNADO CASH TO LAUNDER $1 BILLION, BUT WHY BLAME THE INVENTOR?

So why has Storm been charged with a veritable life behind bars a possibility? Because North Korea used his crypto privacy software to launder about $1 Billion of Bitcoin. That’s a bit less reasonable and functional. But should this inventor face charges? Criminals and terrorists use iPhones, but no one is going after Tim Cook. And surely bad actors use Microsoft Excel to cook and organize their books. Is anyone prosecuting Microsoft? Not at all, because they produced neutral products that can be used in different ways with an infinite variety of intent. Personally, I wouldn’t mind sending (and receiving!) money from family and friends without a record going to Big Brother. Any Big Brother.