Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin reaffirmed his support for Roman Storm on January 9, 2026, framing privacy as a legitimate need and warning against the criminalization of code. He shared the message on X and accompanied it with a letter ahead of Storm’s scheduled sentencing on January 22, 2026.
Storm was convicted by a Manhattan jury in August 2025 on one count of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money-transmitting business, while jurors deadlocked on separate money-laundering and sanctions-related charges. The court could impose a custodial sentence of up to five years at the January 22 hearing, and the case sits in the shadow of Alexey Pertsev’s May 2024 sentence of 64 months, which is currently under appeal.
Done. Re-posting the contents for public consumption: pic.twitter.com/8nUrnkAz9w
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 9, 2026
Sanctions reversed, prosecutions continued
The Tornado Cash regulatory path has been uneven, and the legal system is still defining where “tool” ends and “criminal conduct” begins. U.S. Treasury sanctions first applied in August 2022 were overturned in a November 2024 appellate decision that concluded immutable smart contracts could not be treated as property under the statute cited, and Treasury later lifted the sanctions on March 21, 2025.
Good interview from Roman Storm. His trial is coming soon in 10 days.
Privacy of messaging without backdoors is now widely accepted, and many in business and government regularly use tools like Signal.
Given the extremely regular hacks of centralized databases that we see… https://t.co/oGuCVk3kqe
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) July 4, 2025
Even with that reversal, criminal proceedings involving protocol developers have continued, leaving open questions about how developer responsibility is assessed when open-source software is used by third parties. The result is an ongoing ambiguity that affects compliance planning around privacy-enhancing tooling.
Support for Storm has also taken an organized, capital-backed form. A defense fund co-launched by the Ethereum Foundation and Keyring Network raised more than $6.39 million in 2025, including a $1.25 million pledge from Paradigm. Separately, the Ethereum Foundation provided $1.25 million toward Pertsev’s legal defense, underscoring sustained institutional backing for developers involved in privacy-tech litigation.
Why the January 22 decision is a policy signal
Buterin’s position centers on civil-liberty and innovation risk, arguing that punishing developers for downstream misuse of open-source tools can create a chilling effect on research and public-good software. He has said he personally used Storm’s software to protect transaction privacy and criticized broad access to centralized personal data, positioning the dispute as one about whether privacy tools are inherently suspect or part of normal digital infrastructure.
With sentencing set for January 22, stakeholders are effectively stress-testing the boundaries of developer liability. The outcome can influence compliance costs for privacy-focused projects, shape how markets price regulatory risk around anonymity tools, and affect sector sentiment and the pace of innovation in privacy-preserving protocols.
