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THE COURT: "How does speaking falsely become an overt act?" MR. ARAD: [three sentences of hand-waving] THE COURT: "A bit attenuated." When even the Rule 29 judge says your overt act is "attenuated," you have a problem.

@JacobRobinsonJD @LawofCodeFM @valkenburgh @amandatums @brianeklein Rare depth on a complex issue. Great work

Everyone in crypto should understand money transmission laws. This @LawofCodeFM podcast explains the history of money transmission, how rules are being (mis)applied, and what might change with draft legislation. Featured: @valkenburgh, @amandatums, @brianeklein and a snippet from @jchervinsky. This is the most comprehensive podcast I've ever done. Welcome to Law of Code, Season 2. Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 3:18 What's at stake? 4:40 Which developers are at risk 6:03 Custodial vs. non-custodial 9:32 What is a money transmission license? 9:47 Steamships, the telegraph & Western Union 12:14 The Bank Secrecy Act 13:38 Section 1960 15:26 The Patriot Act 19:39 FinCEN's 2013 and 2019 guidance 24:42 OFAC sanctions Tornado Cash 27:30 How Tornado Cash works 30:48 @coincenter v. Yellen 32:24 DOJ indicts @rstormsf, @semenov_roman_, @TorEkelandPLLC's client & Samourai Wallet devs 35:15 The Van Loon win @preston_vanloon 40:33 Developer losses 43:48 Bad facts make bad law 48:46 @brianeklein on @rstormsf's case 50:50 The Brady letter 57:00 @LewellenMichael sues for answers 1:09:24 The Blanche memo 1:18:46 The Galeotti speech 1:26:13 Catch-22 for developers 1:30:03 The chilling effect @fund_defi @jchervinsky 1:33:48 Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act 1:38:03 Promoting Innovation in Blockchain Development Act 1:45:28 What's next? Nothing in this podcast is legal or investment advice.

The jury hung on 2 of 3 counts. That alone tells you how thin the government's case was. At Rule 29 oral argument, the prosecution's theory was visibly struggling under the weight of its own contradictions.

The government's theory of the Storm prosecution, stripped to its essentials: →Opening your laptop is a felony →Clean money gets dirty by proximity →Telling the truth can be an overt act →Shipping a sanctions screener proves guilt →You must "withdraw" from immutable code

Government theory: improving an open-source privacy tool proves you built it for criminals. By that logic: if you build a faster car and a bank robber buys it as a getaway vehicle, you built the car for the bank robber.

@Cointelegraph It’s hard to talk about a real policy change while the Roman Storm case continues unchanged.

🇺🇸 JUST IN: Tornado Cash's Roman Storm defense team pushes back after the DOJ's Acting AG Todd Blanche suggested cases could be elevated, per Eleanor Terrett. Storm's lawyer argues the DOJ cannot credibly claim policy change while still pursuing the prosecution.

The government says Storm should have walked away once a "large part" of Tornado Cash users were criminals. Asked what "large part" means, the government couldn't say. 15%? 37%? 55%? "Nobody knows. When should he have walked away? Nobody knows." — Klein.

Even on a Rule 29 motion — where the judge must give the government every reasonable inference — Failla repeatedly signaled she wasn't buying it: "I may ultimately agree with you that the affirmative conduct posited by the government does not suffice."

The government called the public, on-chain, community-voted Tornado Cash relayer registry "concealment." It was proposed in a public Medium post, voted on by the community, and deployed on-chain. Per the government's own expert: "the founders did not control that vote."

@TheBitcoinConf @Kash_Patel @FBIDirectorKash Maybe worth asking Roman Storm and others facing charges how “code is free speech” is working out in practice.

BREAKING: FBI Director Kash Patel & Acting AG Todd Blanche will speak at Bitcoin 2026 next week 🇺🇸 Their panel will be called "Code is Free Speech: Ending the War on Bitcoin" ⚔️💬

Storm and his co-founders actually implemented the Chainalysis sanctions oracle — a real, working screening mechanism that blocked 100% transactions from sanctioned wallets —Klein The government's response? Doing the right thing was evidence of guilt. Heads I win, tails you lose

/cc: @VitalikButerin @ameensol @TuckerCarlson @coincenter

5/ The prosecution's theory: telling a hack victim a factually accurate statement can be an "overt act" of conspiracy because the *effect* of the truth was to discourage them from calling the police. This criminalizes reality. /end

1/ One of the government's "overt acts" in the money-laundering conspiracy: Roman Storm told a BitMart attorney he didn't control the protocol and couldn't recover their hacked funds. The government calls this a lie. 🧵

/cc: @valkenburgh @unstoppablebyhs @m_mosier_ @leamuirleyn

6/ Judge Failla cut right to it: "I am concerned that that allows the jury to convict Mr. Storm for not doing what he was not legally required to do." Arad had no answer. /end

1/ The government's star "willfulness" theory: Roman Storm should have added a *name-and-email login screen* to the Tornado Cash UI. Their expert calls it a "user registry." I have questions. 🧵