Pursue – Earlybirds Invest

Attorneys react to the partial verdict

The US can still bring Roman Storm back to court on the unresolved charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to violate North Korea sanctions. The decision would depend on several factors, including the likelihood of securing a conviction in a second trial.

“If the Trump administration wants the USA to be the crypto capital of the world, then the DOJ must not be allowed to retry the two deadlocked charges,” Chervinsky said.

Chervinsky described the partial verdict as “a sad day for DeFi,” warning that section 1960 under the US Code, which prosecutors used to charge Storm with operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, represents an existential threat to decentralized finance applications.

“All in all, this leads to a pretty depressing conclusion,” attorney Zack Shapiro wrote on X, but said that it was good the “draconian” prison sentences for the money laundering charges were off the table for now.

Law, Privacy, US Government, Court, Sanctions, Money Laundering, Tornado Cash

Source: Zack Shapiro

I think it’s reasonable to conclude that the government might not retry the mistried counts of money laundering given the political posturing

A US court overturned the Tornado Cash sanctions in January 2025, handing decentralized crypto and privacy-preserving protocols a major legal victory.

The sanctions were imposed by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in 2022, accusing the crypto mixing service of money laundering.

DOJ officials claimed the Tornado Cash protocol helped launder over $7 billion in crypto between 2019 and 2022 and was instrumental to North Korean state-sanctioned hackers laundering funds stolen through hacking.

Magazine: Tornado Cash 2.0: The race to build safe and legal coin mixers

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Major TradFi Institutions to Pursue Tokenization Efforts on Solana https://earlybirdsinvest.com/major-tradfi-institutions-to-pursue-tokenization-efforts-on-solana/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/major-tradfi-institutions-to-pursue-tokenization-efforts-on-solana/#respond Thu, 22 May 2025 16:58:38 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/major-tradfi-institutions-to-pursue-tokenization-efforts-on-solana/

A number of large banks and other traditional financial (TradFi) institutions are set to use the Solana blockchain for their tokenization efforts.

R3, a U.K. developer of blockchain technology for financial institutions, is teaming up with the Solana Foundation to bring the former’s clients and their tokenized real-world assets to Solana.

Through its blockchain platform, Corda, R3 holds over $10 billion in assets and counts the likes of HSBC, Bank of America, Bank of Italy and the Monetary Authority of Singapore among its participants.

Tokenization, the term for minting real-world assets such as stocks and bonds as digital tokens that can be traded on decentralized networks, is one of the principal use cases of blockchain technology attracting the attention and investment of the TradFi world.

A recent report by Boston Consulting Group and crypto payments company Ripple said the tokenization market could reach $18.9 trillion by 2033.

R3’s aim is to supercharge the scale and liquidity of the tokenized asset ecosystem by making the assets available on a public blockchain like Solana.

The total value of assets held on Solana may be dwarfed by Ethereum, but it processes more transactions and has more active addresses.

“As the world’s most used public blockchain, Solana … [is] the ideal foundation for the next generation of regulated digital finance,” R3 said in an announcement on Thursday.

The U.S. Department of Justice will drop part of one count of its case against Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm due to a recent policy memo, the agency said Thursday.

The DOJ will not go to trial on a charge alleging Storm failed to comply with money transmitter business registration rules, but still plans to go to trial in July over allegations he knowingly transmitted funds tied to crimes, conspired to commit money laundering and conspired to violate sanctions law, the DOJ said in a letter filed to the judge overseeing its case.

“The Government writes to update the Court regarding this case, which is scheduled for trial on July 14, 2025,” the letter said. “After review of this case, this Office and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General have determined that this prosecution is consistent with the letter and spirit of the April 7, 2025 Memorandum from the Deputy Attorney General.”

The April 7 memo, authored by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, directed prosecutors not to pursue cases where regulations may be unclear, or did not meet certain criteria, specifically saying the DOJ should end “regulation by prosecution.” Prosecutors in another case against the developers of crypto mixer Samourai Wallet have already asked a judge overseeing that case to pause it while they consider the memo.

In a statement, Brian Klein of Waymaker LLP told CoinDesk that his firm, which represents Storm, believes “that this case should never have been brought.”

“Its dismissal would be consistent with the policies of the Trump Administration and the principles outlined by the Department of Justice in its recent cryptocurrency guidance memo,” he said. “Roman’s prosecution is a threat to the entire crypto industry and the interests of justice will be best served by its swift dismissal. We will not cease to fight for Roman and that result.”

Klein spoke at CoinDesk’s Consensus 2025 conference in Toronto on Wednesday, where he also shared his view that the case should not have been brought.

“One of the defenses we’ve raised, which is recognized in the U.S., is that coding — literally typing out code — you are given free speech protections for coding,” he said. “It’s just as if you wrote a book or you did some other type of expressive activity.”