A federal jury in Manhattan is about to obtain an education in the mixture of cryptocurrency, the future of “DEFI” and how the North Korean dictator Kim Jong a pay for his nuclear weapons.
The selection of the jury begins on Monday and the defenders of CyberPrivacy say that the verdict will shape the very future of decentralized finance, or DEFI. This is the blockchain-based system where users can lend, borrow and gain interest on cryptocurrencies to anyone, bypassing banks, scholarships or the stock market.
According to FXSTREET.COM, an online resource for currency traders, the DEFI market has a market value of around $ 121 billion.
Opening declarations can start on Tuesday.
“If I lose my file, Defi puts me with me”, the only defendant of the trial, the Software Developer based in Seattle, Roman Storm, rather pronounced in a podcast a week ago.
Storm is one of the creators of Tornado Cash, a software tool that “mixes” cryptocurrency, the scrambling of transactions to make them even more anonymous. It allows users to deposit and remove the crypto from a shared pool, obscuring their identity.
Federal prosecutors claim that between 2019 and 2022, Russian expatriates of 35 years knowingly allowed pirates and fraudsters to use tornado money to jostle and whiten more than a billion dollars – and made millions itself in the process.
“Tornado’s cash service was used to whiten large volumes of criminal products with the knowledge and participation of the accused,” the deputy prosecutor of US Thane Rehn told the judge in 2023, when Storm pleaded not guilty during his first appearance of the Manhattan court.
Prosecutors are particularly concerned about hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto who, according to the storm, bleached the storm for the Lazare group, the famous cybercrime organization sponsored by North Korea credited with the Sony Pictures Hack 2014, a bench of $ 81 million Bangladesh in 2016, and the Ransomware Wannacry 2017 attacks.
Federal and United Nations officials say Kim uses the Lazare group to finance its nuclear missile program.
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In 2022, the Biden Treasury Department prohibited American citizens from using tornado species, saying that the Lazare group and other cybercrookes used it to wash more than $ 7 billion in penal products. The Treorian Trump department raised these sanctions without explanation in March.
A cause of famous
The storm is now a cause of famous among the defenders of the confidentiality of Defi and the blockchain.
The Memoirs of Amicus on his behalf were deposited by the Blockchain Association, Coin Center, the EDUCATION FUND, the paradigm and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
He also received significant financial support.
According to freeromstorm.com, more than $ 2.5 million in the cryptocurrency ether supported by Ethereum, ether for the Tornado cash developer, the Tornado species developer, the legal defense of Perteev, thanks to fundraising by the Ethereum, paradigm and others.
Pertesev was found guilty of money laundering before a Dutch court last year. A third co -founder in species of tornado, Roman Semenov, was accused of a storm but remains a fugitive.
Defense supports in court documents that Storm had never had control or money guard that crossed his cryptocurrency mixture and never knowing cybercriminals.
“I had no contact with criminals, criminal organizations, illicit actors, North Koreans,” Storm said on the crypto podcast in America.
Prosecutors say that communications show the opposite, one in which Storm has declared to its co -founders: “The guys, we are fucked” like the bits, so to speak, have struck the fan.
Privacy defenders and complain about complaining that his prosecution persists despite a memo note in April announcing that the office “will no longer target the exchange of virtual currencies, mixing and tumbling services and offline wallets for the acts of their final uses”.
“The Ministry of Justice is not a regulator of digital assets,” said the memo. Signed by Trump’s lawyer who has become an American prosecutor general Todd Blanche, he criticized the Biden administration to “continue a reckless regulatory strategy by prosecution”.
Storm lawyers did not respond to requests for comments on Friday. A spokesperson for the American lawyer’s office in Manhattan refused to comment on the current affair.
Tornado money continues to turn
Tornado money continues to turn.
Storm told Podcast Crypto in America last week that everything he had done was to write code. “I didn’t think I am responsible for managing the way someone uses the software,” he said.
And once the Tornado Cash code has been released in the world, it has crowned automatically, he told Podcast. He could not reverse the switch if he tried, he said, because no switch of this type exists.
“Correct,” replied Storm when the podcasters asked if the Tornado Cash was still operational. “It has always been running. Just like the Ethereum network, the Bitcoin or Internet network,” he said.
“It is immutable and decentralized,” he said. “It’s unstoppable.”
Storm remains free of a deposit of $ 2 million and risks up to 40 years in prison if he is found guilty.
“I have no 100% response at the moment,” he said when the podcastors asked if he intended to take a stand. “I can, or not.”
The trial is expected to last at least three weeks.
