Trump’s Crypto Crusade: Save the Devs Before They Disappear Into the Blockchain Abyss!

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Ah, the DeFi Education Fund, that charming cabal of crypto enthusiasts, has loftily penned a plea to the ever-resplendent Trump administration, begging—nay, beseeching!—it to halt the “lawless prosecution” of open-source software conjurers. Among their champions stands Roman Storm, architect of the enigmatic Tornado Cash, a service that mixes cryptocurrencies as one might scramble eggs—though with rather more legal yolk on the floor. 🤡

In a letter dated April 28, addressed to the crypto czar of the White House, David Sacks (a name as golden as the hopes invested in him), the group implores President Trump to pull the plug on what they dub the Biden-admin’s “lawless campaign” aimed at turning software development into a criminal enterprise. How dreadfully modern! How deliciously Kafkaesque!

The letter shines its spotlight particularly on Storm, charged last August with assisting in laundering an eye-watering $1 billion through his digital cyclone. His trial looms like a gloomy thundercloud in July, while his partner-in-code, Roman Semenov, has vanished to the snowy realms of Russia, apparently more elusive than the truth in this saga. 🕵️‍♂️❄️

The Fund asserts, with unmistakable bravado, that holding developers accountable for others’ nefarious use of code is not merely “absurd in principle” but threatens to send a frostwind through the land of American innovation—freezing it solid as a blockchain ledger in winter. One does wonder if ice skates would now be the official footwear of crypto devs. ⛸️

Moreover, this prosecution stands in stark defiance of Treasury’s own Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) guidance during Trump’s previous reign—which gracefully declared that developers of peer-to-peer protocols are not money transmitters. Imagine the Treasury twirling on its heels like a prima ballerina caught off balance. 🎭

This “legal environment,” they declare with the passion of a Shakespearean actor, “does not just chill innovation — it freezes it.” Worse yet, it emboldens those political inquisitors armed with subpoenas instead of torches, threatening every open-source developer, from sundry industries to the humble basement coder, like a dystopian snowstorm of justice. ❄️⚖️

A federal court in Texas played its part in this tragicomedy by ruling the Treasury’s sanctions on Tornado Cash a most curious overreach. It’s as if the Lone Star State decided to toss a spanner into the gears of Washington’s overenthusiastic machine. 🤠

When the Price of Freedom Includes High-Octane Crypto Drama

Gracious thanks were tendered to Trump for his ambitions to crown America the “crypto capital of the planet.” Quite the throne, if you ask me.

Yet, lest we forget, such coronation ceremonies are futile if the very bakers of the cryptographic bread are locked away for daring to bake. 🍞🔐

“We ask President Trump to protect American software developers, restore legal clarity, and end this unlawful DOJ overreach. The job’s not finished, and the stakes could not be higher.”

Jake Chervinsky, the legal wizard of Variant Fund, dismisses the Justice Department’s case as “an outdated remnant of the Biden administration’s war on crypto.” One might say it’s like prosecuting the inventor of the wheel for traffic accidents—absurd, tiresome, and slightly comedic.

“There is no justification in law or policy for prosecuting software developers for launching non-custodial smart contract protocols,” he opines, in words that would make even the sternest regulatory overlord crack a reluctant smile.

As of this carefully composed moment, the petition enjoys the support of 232 illustrious signatures, among them Coinbase’s Fred Ehrsam, Paradigm’s Matt Huang, and Ethereum’s Tim Beiko—titans who must surely find this legal tempest as vexing as an unexpected miner’s fee. ⛏️💸

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2025-04-29 05:40