If there’s one thing that crypto fans and crypto haters can agree on, it’s that US President Donald Trump has given the industry almost everything it wanted since his inauguration in January 2025.
Emphasis on “almost.”
Crypto has been the beneficiary of clarifying legislation, friendly regulators, and the occasional presidential pardon. Still, many in the industry are furious that prosecutors never dropped their pursuit of crypto developers like Roman Storm, who allegedly violated money transmission laws.
“People are trying to put pressure on the White House to get involved,” one crypto attorney, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, recently told DL News. “People have also sent in letters [saying] you guys need to pay attention to this case. It’s going to set precedent for the industry in a way that’s really problematic.”
But that isn’t the industry’s only legal battle. According to one estimate, prediction markets are facing more than 60 lawsuits in state and federal court.
Prediction markets say they have found a loophole that allows them to offer sports betting in states that have long banned the practice, drawing a rare bipartisan rebuke from lawmakers.
But prediction markets also have powerful allies, such as Michael Selig, the chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The outcome of these cases will significantly impact the future of one of the few crypto products to have found mass appeal.
Below are several crypto court cases facing key deadlines in the coming months.
Storm is the founder of Tornado Cash, a crypto mixing service popular with privacy-conscious blockchain users and with cybercriminals, including hackers affiliated with North Korea.
Last year, a jury convicted him of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, which comes with a maximum prison sentence of five years.
But jurors were deadlocked on the most severe charges, conspiracy to launder money and to evade sanctions.
Shortly after the trial, Storm asked a federal judge to toss all three charges.
On April 9, prosecutors and Storm’s attorneys will make their case in a courtroom in New York.
Storm says that prosecutors’ evidence did not prove he had acted with criminal intent and that the case should never have been tried in New York. Prosecutors disagree, and have asked the judge to schedule a new trial on the money laundering and sanctions evasion charges.
In early November, the Ethereum-based yield protocol Stream Finance said an “external fund manager” had lost $93 million in crypto, or about 17% of its assets.
Story Continues