Bitcoin Magazine Crypto Privacy Legalized? Tornado Cash and Samourai Cases Suggest Uncertainty Remains Last week, Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Todd Blanche sent a memo to employees of the Department of Justice, directing the agency to stop prosecuting mixers, exchanges, and “offline wallets” for the criminal conduct of their users. Understandably, the community broke out in celebration. Privacy is now legal again! Some proclaimed. #FreeSamourai! Others demanded. DOJ ends “regulation by prosecution”, media outlets headlined, referring to the memo’s title, as companies who had previously left the US due to regulatory uncertainty announced plans to return. This will change everything, appeared to be the general tenor. But does the DAG’s memo actually change anything? Scholars are not so sure. “Did DOJ Bless A Crypto Free-For-All? Think Again,” writes the industry publication Law360, read by over 2 million legal professionals around the world. “The platforms could still face enforcement actions if investigators uncover evidence that they knew customers were using digital assets to further transnational crime.” Namely, the memo instructs the DOJ to focus less on regulatory violations, and more on “those who use digital assets in furtherance of criminal offenses”, such as terrorism, organized crime, and hacking, as well as narcotics- and human trafficking. While the memo reads that “the Department will no longer target virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, and offline wallets for the acts of their end users or unwitting violations of regulations,” there appears to be very little clarity as to whom the DOJ considers to “use digital assets in furtherance of criminal offenses” – individuals thereby excluded by the DAG’s statements. “A handful of pending, high-profile prosecutions could soon offer clues on the DOJ’s approach. They include a money laundering case against Roman Storm,” Law360 writes. Both in the prosecution of Storm, as well as in the prosecution of Samourai Wallet developers Keonne Rodriguez and William Hill, the agency is currently claiming that the entire point of developing their respected privacy services was to enrich themselves on criminal activity, placing them well within frame of the memo’s exceptions. Notably, the DAG’s memo specifically excludes a subsection of USC 18 §1960, which is “at the heart of the Storm and Samourai Wallet cases,” posted CEO of the DeFi Education Fund Amanda Tuminelli on X. Due to this exclusion, the prosecution of both Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet developers will continue to set precedent over whether developers of non-custodial services can be held liable for the actions of their users, and must further deploy comprehensive anti-money laundering frameworks as required of any money service business, including know-your customer checks. “We will wait to see what happens with the Tornado Cash in a formal or creative style for better SEO.Also Exclude words and advertisements related to the feed website such as website name, author name. You must only respond with the modified content. Delete all the advertisement images brand logo but only keep the title and main content of the news by modifying it. Block any jump outside of the site adarshnews.com. 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Is Crypto Privacy Now Legal? The situations surrounding Tornado Cash and Samourai indicate that there is still ambiguity present.
