Gm! Lawyer working on tech, the law, and memes. Currently Privacy Engineering @GoogleDeepMind
New York, NY
Joined December 2016
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Alexei retweeted
Coin Center’s Seven Takeaways from the Storm Verdict:
▪️ 1. The sole conviction—unlicensed money transmission (18 U.S.C. § 1960)—turns mainly on legal/regulatory interpretation (“does this count as money transmission?”), not jury fact-finding.
▪️ 2. The court, at the motion-to-dismiss stage, discounted FinCEN’s stated guidance on what counts as “money transmission” in crypto and treated the category as broader than “control of customer funds.”
▪️ 3. With “money transmission” defined that broadly, the jury’s room to decide facts was narrow; the court’s interpretation largely dictated the outcome.
▪️ 4. DOJ’s prior “end regulation by prosecution” memo didn’t fully resolve §1960 issues left things open for continued prosecution; the DOJ dropped the failure-to-register theory but not the “knowingly transmitting criminal funds” theory. Coin Center’s view: both hinge on “transmitting” and are improper against developers excluded by FinCEN guidance.
▪️ 5. The BRCA (Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act), now attached to CLARITY and passed by the House, would confirm that non-controlling developers aren’t money transmitters. It can’t help Roman retroactively, but the Senate should pass it in upcoming market-structure debates.
▪️ 6. Coin Center fellow Michael Lewellen is suing DOJ for a declaration that publishing/maintaining his software isn’t unlicensed money transmission. Coin Center will continue supporting this effort to correct the legal interpretation.
▪️ 7. Coin Center is sorry Roman faces sentencing on a theory that contradicts the regulator’s guidance. He should appeal the denial of his motion to dismiss; Coin Center will assist however possible.
Alexei retweeted
I welcome in-kind creations and redemptions for crypto-asset ETPs, a feature that ETP sponsors and investors have wanted since the initial approvals of crypto-asset ETPs: sec.gov/newsroom/press-relea…
Alexei retweeted
Why I support privacy:
vitalik.eth.limo/general/202…
instant pre-order
PRINCIPLES OF BITCOIN: Technology, Economics, Politics and Philosophy
Published by Columbia University Press, foreword by Alex Gladstein
Available for delivery in the US starting March 31, 2025
What is the book about? And what makes this #Bitcoin book different? 🧵👇
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Alexei retweeted
Crypto has always been libertarian at heart.
Most of us working here never wanted government to buy our bags or give blockchains a regulatory moat. We just wanted the boot off our necks so we could compete in the free market.
Less strategic reserve, more protections for devs 🙏
Alexei retweeted
This is the Internet's one good legal take on the USAID thing
The imminent constitutional law argument over executive powers to shutter agencies (like USAID) may actually be a pretty close call and a fascinating area of administrative and separation of powers law.
The Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 mostly just empowers the president to do things at his will, like create a dedicated agency for foreign aid. It generally does not obligate him to do specific things. Yes there are some aid packages that he is obligated to provide (because of appropriations) but I'm not sure they must be provided through a particular process or agency (like USAID). That's where the heart of this legal question will ultimately sit.
It's all rather similar to the statutory authority for foreign sanctions (which is my area of expertise) the president is empowered to sanction people but the details of exactly how and when (and whether he should do it at all) are often (though not always) non-obligatory and left to his discretion.
For me, both of these statutory schemes, and many more, are clear examples of why we need to revive the non-delegation doctrine of our constitution. Congress should make law, not the president. Where Congress delegates lawmaking authority to the president by writing highly discretionary statutory schemes (the president may do x,y,z, or nothing at all) without clear limits and obligations, the whole system becomes hyper-partisan and prone to wild swings in policy as administrations come and go.
This isn't partisan. The party out of the White House typically laments and attacks executive discretion while celebrating and expanding it when they are in the White House. The American system should do better than this ceaseless war between factions, and the Court should be in the business of simply striking legislation that hands too much lawmaking power to the president.
Alexei retweeted
The prosecution of Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm raises larger concerns "that could chill the future development of privacy-enhancing technologies more broadly," EFF argued in its brief. coindesk.com/policy/2025/01/…
Whenever this hits the timeline, i stop to watch it.
Share this with your friends. Teach them what is Bitcoin. Great explanation by @valkenburgh
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Nice - "to protect Americans from the risks of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), which threaten the stability of the financial system, individual privacy, and the sovereignty of the United States"
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Alexei retweeted
make Ethereum world peace again 🦄
> decentralization, credible neutrality (so even if nation states are at war they will still be able to enter into smart contract-based deals with one another -- including treaties -- and back their word with large stake)
believe in something
There is no reason to be anything but over the moon bullish for ETH, Ethereum Layer 1 and the Metropolitan Ethereum ecosystem, from what I am seeing. Bitcoin and Solana are and will continue to be great at what they do, and I look forward to forging deep integration with both ecosystems as Web3 evolves.
Nothing will be able to rival the breadth and depth of the foundational Ethereum ecosystem wrt progressively rigorous decentralization, credible neutrality (so even if nation states are at war they will still be able to enter into smart contract-based deals with one another -- including treaties -- and back their word with large stake), censorship resistance, developer base, massive transaction throughput, low latency, and universal composability. Much of this is here and more will be improving fast over the next couple of years.
Major institutions now feel comfortable building on Ethereum, because of its size, maturity, talent base and roadmap. Just as every company needed to migrate to the web in the 90s and 00s, the gold rush to Web3 is about to massively accelerate. Web3 -- the re-decentralized web -- is the natural evolution of the open protocol and open spec-based internet and web. Most traditional businesses will start to migrate to Web3 over the next few years. And wildly creative memecoin, AI memecoin, NFT, social graph and gaming degen activity will be there -- as well as on other major platforms. Most importantly, Metropolitan Ethereum will be the most trusted platform for DeFi.
There are multiple giant projects that I am aware of that will help anyone who is uncertain about Ethereum's powerful future to grow delirious with Bull Fever. 2025 is the year the world will move significantly on-chain. The major inflection point that we have all been waiting for is now in the rear view mirror and the paradigm shift to a progressively decentralizing world is now in full gear and will rapidly accelerate.
Alexei retweeted
A lot of folks seem unsure exactly what the 5th circuit Tornado Cash news today actually is. It's good news though not the end of the story: a publication of the November opinion and mandate, remand to the district court for remedies. This should foreclose the possibility of en banc review by Circuit (which is good). Gov't could still appeal to Supreme Court although that might be unlikely at this point. District Court will still need to decide whether the remedy is nationwide vacatur (anyone in US can use immutable contracts) or more limited relief (plaintiffs can use contracts and other parties may need to bring their own suits). Nationwide vacatur is what we should be rooting for.
