Tornado Cash Dev Found Guilty

Alpha Team
August 07, 2025

Jury Convicts Tornado Cash Developer

Jury Delivers Partial Verdict: On Wednesday, a Manhattan jury convicted Roman Storm of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, facing up to five years in prison. Charged in 2023 with three counts, the jury deadlocked on conspiracy to commit money laundering and sanctions evasion after four days of deliberations. Judge Katherine Fallia issued an Allen charge to urge agreement, but no resolution on the other charges, leading to potential retrial. Prosecutors requested Storm's remand due to ties to Russia.

Trial Features Key Arguments: In the three-week trial, prosecutors argued Tornado Cash facilitated over $1 billion in money laundering, including millions for North Korea's Lazarus Group, with Storm profiting. A witness testified to losing $250,000 to a scammer using the tool. Defense contended it was a privacy tool for ordinary users, not controlled by Storm, dismissing prosecution claims as a "cover story." This highlighted the tool's operations since its 2019 launch.

Community Expresses Strong Reactions: The U.S. Treasury blacklisted Tornado Cash in August 2022, later ruled unlawful. Crypto advocates protested the verdict: DeFi Education Fund expressed disappointment, stating "we hoped for a different outcome" and will advocate for developers' rights. Coin Center's Peter Van Valkenburgh said "This needs to be appealed." Blockchain Association called it a "dangerous precedent" and urged appeal with support. Storm called the charge "bullshit" and vowed to "fight, fight, fight."Read More.

️ On today's Top Picks:

💸 Ripple $XRP acquires Rail for $200M.
🚀 1Money Network launches Public Testnet.
🪂 Magic Eden launches $ME season 2 airdrop.
🖋️ Trump to sign executive order allowing crypto in 401(k)s.

Read time: ⏰ 5 minutes

Crypto News

• ⭐️ Tornado Cash $TORN developer Roman Storm found guilty on money transmitting charge; jury could not reach a verdict on money laundering and sanctions evasion charges.

• Tether $USDT acquires minority stake in Bit2Me & leads its €30M funding round; funding to support Bit2Me’s expansion across the EU and strengthen its operations in Latin America.

• CZ files motion to dismiss FTX estate's $1.76B clawback lawsuit; FTX's lawyers alleged that Binance and its former leadership improperly received funds when they divested their FTX ownership stakes.

• US SEC declares crypto liquid staking activities are not considered securities.

• ⭐️ Ripple $XRP acquires Rail, a stablecoin-powered platform for global payments, for $200M.

Alpha

• Camp launches Act 3 of the Incentivized Summit Series; teases, "We’re nearing the summit’s final ascent."; to potentially launch TGE & airdrop soon.

• ⭐️ 1Money Network launches Public Testnet; 1Money raised $20M in Seed funding in January.

• Superform introduces the Superform Foundation; to potentially launch TGE & airdrop soon.

• Guild posts, "A new era of Guild begins today," on X; join "Our Guild" to earn Guild Gems.

• ICYMI Alpen launches Public Testnet; Alpen recently raised $8.5M in Strategic funding led by Cyber Fund & DBA.

Airdrops

• Airdrop, Checkers, & Points by Olimpio.

• ⭐️ Magic Eden launches $ME season 2 airdrop; Magic Eden traders, ME stakers, & more are eligible.

• INFINIT launches $IN airdrop claim; INFINIT Stones holders, INFINIT Discord contributors, & more are eligible.

• ICYMI Succinct launches $PROVE TGE & airdrop claim; Succinct community members, open-source developers, & more are eligible.

• ICYMI Towns launches $TOWNS TGE & airdrop claim; Towns users with activity between June 7th, 2024 & July 10th, 2025 are potentially eligible.

• ICYMI Airdrop, Checkers, & Points (July 28th) by Olimpio.

Finance News

• ⭐️ US President Trump to reportedly sign executive order allowing crypto, private equity, real estate, & other alternative assets in 401(k) retirement plans.

• US President Trump imposes 100% tariff on imported chips and semiconductors; exempts companies building in the USA; Nvidia $NVDA & Apple $AAPL exempt due to US investments.

• US President Trump imposes additional 15% tariff on Japan.

• US President Trump imposes additional 25% tariff on India.

• SharpLink $SBET raises $200M to buy more Ethereum $ETH; currently holds ~521,939 ETH worth ~$2B.

• CEA Industries $VAPE raises $500M to buy $BNB as its primary treasury reserve asset; deal was led by YZi Labs.

Security and Exploits

• ICYMI Arkham uncovers 127,426 Bitcoin $BTC (~$14.4M) heist from Lubian, a Chinese mining pool, in 2020; attacker may have exploited a vulnerability in the algorithm LuBian used to generate its private keys.

• ICYMI Google releases Android security updates patching multiple security vulnerabilities; includes two Qualcomm flaws being actively exploited in the wild.

Token Unlocks

• Immutable $IMX / ~$13M / AUG 08th
• Movement $MOVE / ~$7M / AUG 09th
• io[.]net $IO / ~$8M / AUG 11th
• Solayer $LAYER / ~$17M / AUG 11th
Sourced from Tokenomist

Funding

• SuperGaming raises $15M in Series B funding led by Skycatcher & Steadview Capital.

• BOB raises $9.5M in Strategic funding led by Castle Island Ventures.

• BlindPay raises $3.3M in Seed funding from several investors.

The Degen Farmer

Top stablecoin yield farms of the day, more than $3,000,000 in TVL. DYOR and step up your farming game!

PROTOCOL	ASSETS	APY
Aerodrome Slipstream (Base)	EURCUSDC	68.57%
Hyperion (Aptos)	USDTUSDC	51.80%
Curve DEX (Ethereum)	IDAIIUSDCIUSDT	46.31%
Merkl (Ethereum)	KPDUSDC	35.00%

. . .

Socket: First Chain Abstraction Protocol

Socket: The first chain-abstraction protocol, Socket empowers developers to build applications that seamlessly interact across multiple blockchains as if they were one. By unifying liquidity, users, and assets, Socket eliminates the complexities of cross-chain operations, offering a secure, efficient, and decentralized framework for the multichain future.

Bungee: Powered by Socket, Bungee is a global liquidity marketplace that simplifies cross-chain swaps. With over $20B in volume and integrations in major wallets and dApps, Bungee finds the fastest, cheapest, and most secure routes to move any token across any chain, delivering a gasless and user-friendly DeFi experience.

v2 & Solana: Bungee’s newly launched v2, the Open Liquidity Marketplace, makes trading across chains even smoother with BungeeAuto ensuring reliable swaps and access to deeper liquidity pools. Now, with Solana support, you can bridge from over 30 EVM chains to Solana in a snap, swapping tokens to dive into its thriving memecoin markets with minimal hassle.

👉 Swap smarter with Bungee v2 today!

. . .

That’s it for today’s edition! See you soon.

Reply

or to participate.