Law & Policy

next up: drop the DoJ charges against Roman Storm

Ethereum

PRIVACY WINS... kind of. The 3 charges against Roman remain despite TC being lifted from US treasury’s sanctions list. If he loses, we lose everything we’ve fought to build the so-called future of finance: 

1) Sanctions Evasion
Roman is charged under the
North Korea sanctions program, which is separate from TC sanctions, which could continue to make devs face criminal liability

2) Operating unlicensed MSB
Every dapp that enables financial tx would have to register as an MSB and employ KYC, report suspicious txs etc. A slippery slope for the gov to control what DeFi is. 

3) Committing money laundering
Devs can still be charged for third party misuse of open and permissionless protocols while banks pay fines and get a slap on the wrist. 

TLDR our regulatory woes for DeFi, financial privacy, and open-source development are not over until the DOJ drops the charges against Roman Storm.

Farcaster-native research: https://paragraph.xyz/@matthewb | prev. Juicebox, Nouns, RAW DAO | casting about coffee, hi-fi, and other rabbit holes