The co-founder of cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash, Roman Storm, has launched a fundraising campaign to cover his legal costs in a case with US federal authorities.

Roman Storm announced on the social network X the launch of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) to raise money to hire a lawyer. In his appeal, the developer of Tornado Cash asked subscribers to help him cover legal costs after US federal agents forcibly entered his home. The video with Storm has already received more than 1 million views on the Internet.

The website of the new fundraising fund states that the arrests of Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev are considered a direct attack on developments that use open source code. This could have devastating consequences for other developers who write and publish similar code.

Former CIA employee Edward Snowden, who has lived in Russia since 2013, supported the creation of a fund to help Roman Storm. He wrote in X that if the crypto community has the opportunity to help, it should be done. Privacy should not be a crime, Snowden said.

In 2022, the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) banned Americans from using the Tornado Cash cryptomixer, claiming it was being used by North Korean hackers Lazarus Group and other criminals to launder money through cryptocurrencies. The US Department of Justice arrested Storm, but the developer was released on bail in August 2023. Another Tornado Cash developer, Alexey Pertsev, was also taken into custody.

Let us recall that in November a group of Tornado Cash users appealed the court’s decision to add the service to the sanctions list. The plaintiffs believe that smart contracts are considered immutable and are not owned by anyone.