The Solana Policy Institute (SPI) has announced a $500,000 donation to the legal defense funds of Roman Storm and Alexey Pertsev, the developers behind the sanctioned Tornado Cash crypto mixer.
The donation comes as Storm was convicted in August 2025 on conspiracy charges for operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business, while Pertsev received a 64-month prison sentence in the Netherlands for money laundering.
SPI CEO Miller Whitehouse-Levine characterized the prosecutions as setting a “chilling precedent that threatens the software development industry,” arguing that neither developer took custody of user assets nor maintained control over the protocol after it was deployed.
Ethereum Foundation Leads Industry Support for Privacy Developer Defense
The Ethereum Foundation previously pledged $500,000 to Storm’s legal defense fund, which has raised over $4.7 million toward an ambitious $7 million target.
Foundation co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang stated that “privacy is normal, and writing code is not a crime” while calling upon the broader crypto community to contribute additional support.
Storm faces up to five years in prison on the money-transmitting conviction, with potentially decades more if prosecutors retry him on deadlocked charges of money laundering conspiracy and sanctions violations.
The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Tornado Cash in August 2022, alleging that $7 billion had been laundered through the platform since 2019, including frequent use by North Korea’s Lazarus Group hackers.
Federal prosecutors characterized Storm as someone who profited from “hiding dirty money for criminals,” while defense teams argued the protocol was designed as a privacy tool for legitimate users.
Among many others, crypto lawyer Jake Chervinsky criticized Storm’s conviction as “a sad day for DeFi,” arguing that Section 1960 should not apply to developers of non-custodial protocols who lack control over user funds.
The Free Pertsev & Storm organization and legal experts worry that the precedent could criminalize open-source development more broadly across the crypto ecosystem.
Cross-Border Evidence Challenges Complicate Crypto Prosecutions
Most recently, Storm’s defense revealed major problems with the government’s evidence collection from Dutch authorities following Pertsev’s arrest in the Netherlands.
The FBI’s extraction of what prosecutors claimed was Pertsev’s phone was missing author information for forwarded messages and showed incomplete file retrieval.
The misattributed Telegram message carried real consequences when Assistant U.S. Attorney Ben Arad referenced it during pretrial hearings, telling the judge it demonstrated the co-founders’ awareness of wrongdoing.
In Storm’s favor, defense attorneys characterized this as providing “false information” to both the court and potentially the grand jury that issued the indictment.
As it stands now, Tornado Cash users, developers, and crypto executives continue challenging Treasury sanctions in court, arguing that immutable smart contracts should not be subject to OFAC restrictions.
Technical Analysis Points to SOL Recovery Amid Latest Donation
Solana’s price action has formed another golden cross pattern on the SOL/BTC ratio at 0.0018841, where the 50-day moving average has crossed above the 200-day average.
Source: X/@cryptomanran
Historical precedent shows that previous golden crosses have led to explosive rallies of 19x and 340%, although diminishing returns suggest more modest gains as market capitalization grows.
The SOL/USD pair currently trades around $213.53 within a long-term horizontal range between $120 and $240, approaching key resistance at the “heaven’s door” level of around $235.
Multiple tests of this resistance suggest a heavy supply must be overcome for a continuation toward new all-time highs above the previous $260 peak.
Short-term price action shows SOL testing a key ascending trendline that has provided support throughout the current advance.
A successful hold of the ascending trendline support, combined with momentum building, could target the $235 resistance level. Conversely, failure below $210 might trigger a deeper correction.
The golden cross pattern provides the most compelling bullish argument; however, investors should expect initial volatility before any sustained advance materializes, potentially leading to new highs above $260.
The post SPI Backs Tornado Cash Devs with $500K Legal Fund, Says ‘Writing Code Is Not a Crime’ appeared first on Cryptonews.
