Roman Storm Verdict: A Turning Point for DeFi | Jake Chervinsky & Amanda Tuminelli
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Bankless Nation. I'm joined by Amanda Tuminelli and Jake Stravinsky, two of my favorite lawyers in the crypto space. And I'll say individually, they are both great, but really when you bring them together, there is a greater than the sum of the parts moment. Think when you guys, come together on the podcast, because you guys have just worked together for for so long. Amanda, Jake, welcome back to Bankless. Awesome to be back.
Thanks for having me.
Okay. So we are, of course, on the heels of the Roman storm fallout, which we thought was going to be end of the story. It seems that we are actually in the middle of that story because there is seemingly going to be an appeal, at least that's the words that we hear from Roman as he walked out of the court case. Jake, maybe I'll kinda just start with you. What's your first reaction about the the verdict and where we where we have landed at the end of the Roman storm, case?
Well, so my first instinctual reaction is to be pretty devastated by the news that Roman was convicted on literally any account whatsoever. I do not think that any DeFi developer in The United States who did what Roman was accused of doing and what the government showed that he did in court, which was basically nothing more than build a noncustodial protocol that bad guys happened to use without his control and without his ability to stop them. It's insane to me that someone who has done that would be prosecuted and potentially incarcerated by the government. So my initial reaction is is just
Compared to thirty five. Yeah.
Yeah. Much better than that. And there's there's a good chance that in sentencing, the defense will make strong arguments that allow the judge to give him a sentence much less than five years. It's even possible in theory that he can end up just on probation. So for Roman, this is a really great result. For the industry, it's a really devastating result to see someone convicted and especially on this theory of money transmission that the government has been pushing that Amazza and I have been explaining is absolutely wrong and existential for a DeFi for such a long time. Yeah.
Amanda, what was your thoughts and takeaways?
I think Jake really covered it. I would just add that I I've heard you know, I was once a criminal defense lawyer, and I've heard people say that a hung jury is a success even if not a victory. And I think that is how it feels to me. It is absolutely a success that the jury did not convict Roman on money laundering and sanctions evasion, which are very serious charges, and also really what the government's theory was in this case. What they wanted and if they were compelling would have succeeded in doing was proving that Roman laundered money or assisted people in laundering money in a knowing
I do want to double down on the great victory for Roman. I know that that doesn't really set any hard precedent, but I made up this word when we this term when we talked to Peter from Coin Center last Friday. It's like a soft precedent that the fact that a developer is not going to jail for writing code. And so, yeah, maybe maybe I'm just trying to, like, really fig find out the silver lining here, but the soft precedent that a software developer, United States software developer is gonna go home and hang out with his daughter, and he's not gonna go to jail feels good to me. Maybe we can't rea
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