Today, the jury for the Tornado Cash trial concluded its third day of deliberation, as many in the Bitcoin and crypto space continue to wait restlessly for a verdict.
As someone who’s been in the courtroom for most days of the trial as well as these three (boring) days of deliberation, I, too, am more than ready for this trial to come to an end…
…but I’m happy it hasn’t yet.
Is that because I’m a maniac who likes sitting in an empty courtroom toward the southern tip of Manhattan without my phone or laptop, weekday after weekday, only to then spend my evenings publishing work and catching up on the news cycle?
No, sirs and ma’ams — it surely isn’t.
It’s because a number of lawyers with whom I’ve spoken have stated that the longer the deliberation takes, the better chance there is of Storm not being found guilty.
Zack Shapiro, head of policy at the Bitcoin Policy Institute, told me as much last week and also shared his thoughts on the matter in an X post on Wednesday.
“My guess is that the longer the deliberation takes, the better,” wrote Shapiro.
“The reasons why Roman Storm isn’t guilty (e.g. the t-shirt being a joke, and the immutable smart contract not “transmitting funds”) are nuanced and a bit complicated. A knee jerk reaction that money laundering = bad isn’t,” he added.
“So if we hear that [the] jury reached a verdict in the first half of the day tomorrow, that’s probably bad news. Whereas a prolonged deliberation means they are wrestling with the concepts.”
So, please, members of the jury, wrestle away with the admittedly very-difficult-to-grasp concepts in this case, and take your time coming to a conclusion as to whether or not you want to put a young software developer in jail for 45 years for creating novel noncustodial crypto privacy technology that, yes, some mega-bad actors used but that was primarily used by those who simply wanted to anonymize their crypto transactions.
I’m happy to stomach the mix of anxiety and boredom as I sit patiently in that quiet courtroom downtown, awaiting your decision.
