The Department of Justice’s recent indictment of Roman Storm and Roman Semenov for their work building the now-sanctioned Tornado Cash protocol has revealed a much bigger picture of the U.S. government’s interest in the protocol. The DOJ noted that the infamous North Korean Lazarus Group accounted for hundreds of millions of dollars of the $1 billion in illicit funds the Romans allegedly helped launder.
The two coders are now caught up in a geopolitical conflict between the U.S. and North Korea, and the actual crimes almost don’t matter. The prosecution of Storm, Semenov, and their colleague Alexey Pertsev is meant to stand for the international community of Good Guy nations going hard against an international pariah.
The trouble is, you can sanction Tornado Cash and charge its founders with any imaginable crime, but that isn’t going to shut off the actual smart contract, said The Node. Storm and Semenov are being charged with facilitating money laundering for writing and publishing self-executing code that will continue to function—i.e., continue laundering funds—whether they’re in jail or not.
The Node also noted that the existence of something like Tornado Cash is an issue of national security, but it wouldn’t be right to ask people to trade in liberty for security.