BREAKING: Striking pretrial conference call today in US v. Storm, the Tornado Cash trial.

It seems clear government prosecutors will characterize all efforts to market Tornado Cash to *any* user as part of a conspiracy to launder North Korean funds. 

folo 
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For instance, substantial portions of the indictment are devoted to the front-end interface, which "attracted a large customer base and was a key component of the Tornado Cash service."

The prosecution will be implicitly arguing that Tornado Cash only provided privacy to non-criminal users because it needed enough liquidity to service North Korean Hackers.

It was clear this was meant to establish venue for charges of both money laundering conspiracy and sanctions violations conspiracy.

The prosecution as a whole shares this implicit presumption: that all aspects of TC's operation were inextricably nefarious.

oh so its just a coincidence that it is the state with the BitLicense-a weighted whoswho of campaign contributions.. read as: red tape that a stiff breeze could take even a good actor out of compliance..

Today's remote hearing covered several issues, but the most important was the question of venue/jurisdiction - that is, why this case is being tried in the Southern District of New York. 

The prosecution indicated that venue would derive from testimony of a witness who was a Tornado Cash user in the jurisdiction - but *not* the perpetrator at the center of criminal charges.