Today in U.S. v. Storm, the defense continued laying out its case that the creation of Tornado Cash does not amount to criminal money laundering conspiracy. The day was mostly devoted to Matthew J. Edman of Naxo, a blockchain and cybersecurity expert. 🧵 of highlights:

🚨UPDATE: Chainalysis witness plans to plead the 5th to avoid self-incrimination after a phone call with the Government. This means that they may take the stand, but won't be testifying. This is after SDNY openly threatened defense witness Tom Schmidt of Dragonfly Capital with potential prosecution. Dragonfly Managing Partner Haseeb Quereshi described this as an attempt to "undermine a defense of Tornado Cash—to make it more difficult for the defense to call Tom to testify on the stand." Defense has asked the court to inquire what prosecutors told Chainalysis on the phone call, as the witness' decision came "out of the blue."

Tornado update crosspost from @theragetech This morning the defense challenged tracing testimony at the heart of the government case against Roman Storm.

It's a new week in the Tornado Cash trial, and the defense will be making its case. Likely included will be two witnesses from Chainalysis, after it was revealed that Chainalysis is said to have operated a Tornado Cash relayer. The defense had previously highlighted that SDNY alleged for Storm to have not just been in a conspiracy with his alleged co-conspirators, but also with others operating the Tornado Cash service, such as the relayers. Which means that, based on the Government's own logic, Chainalysis conspired with Tornado Cash to evade sanctions and launder criminal proceeds. Looks like an incredibly interesting week ahead.

Even if we put aside all political considerations, the aesthetics of this operation if creepy as fuck. Huge Orwellian vibe.

Day 11 of the @TornadoCash trial Today begins the third and maybe final week of the trial. Will share updates throughout the day in this thread 🧵:

“An evil man will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes." -Sun Tzu

While investigating the spam campaign of 2015, I stumbled upon a wallet which I believed to be the QuadrigaCX exchange but I wasn't able to confirm my theory. Years later, it appeared that these weird transactions were G.Cotten robbing his own exchange.

While investigating the spam campaign of 2015, I stumble upon a wallet which I believed to be the QuadrigaCX exchange but I wasn't able to confirm my theory. Years later, it appeared that these weird transactions were G.Cotten robbing his own exchange.

As of Thursday, in their Rule 29 response, the DOJ is still pushing this theory that Storm, by publishing TC software, provided a "valuable service" to a sanctioned entity because DPRK used the protocol. This flawed principle is limitless: if I make a hammer with no particular end user in mind and somehow that hammer ends up being used by DPRK, I provided them a "valuable service." But you don't see them going after Apple for the iPhone, Google for its tech suite, etc., even though these tech tools are used by the DPRK. That's because this is a gross distortion of the law. Back when we @fund_defi @jchervinsky wrote our amicus brief in support of @rstormsf's MTD, we reviewed over 100 sanctions cases and provided the court with a table of them - in every single case there was nexus between the sanctioned entity and the defendant, some evidence the defendant directly connected with the SDN or created a tool *for* the SDN specifically. There was no case - none - where a defendant made a tool with no particular end user in mind and was then convicted of violating sanctions because an SDN ended up with that tool in hand.