Crypto in court. Key dates in cases against Roman Storm, Sam Bankman-Fried and others are coming up fast

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.

April 9

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.

April 10

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.

While the incident rocked users of Stream and affiliated DeFi protocols, the people behind the company were tight-lipped as to what happened — until December, that is, when they filed a lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco.

Stream’s co-founders accused Georgia resident Ryan DeMattia of using the $93 million to cover his losses after he defaulted on a personal loan.

They also accused Caleb McMeans of failing to honour an agreement he signed when he took control of the protocol and the Stream brand in January 2025.

McMeans’ deadline to respond is April 10. Which means we will soon hear his side of the story.

April 13 

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is serving a 25-year prison sentence for defrauding his customers. But he insists his trial was unfair, and he’s asked for a new one.

Prosecutors have opposed the request. Bankman-Fried has until April 13 to respond to their letter.

This back-and-forth is standard in a lawsuit. What makes this situation unusual, however, is Bankman-Fried’s insistence on representing himself.

His error-riddled push for a new trial has already drawn scrutiny from Judge Lewis Kaplan, who noted that Bankman-Fried never formally parted ways with his attorneys. The former billionaire can represent himself, or he can be represented by attorneys, the judge noted. But he cannot “do both at the same time.”

This is a problem because there is evidence Bankman-Fried may have indeed received outside help. Prosecutors noted that his most recent letter to the court was sent by mail carrier FedEx — a service that inmates aren’t allowed to access.

Moreover, FedEx tracking information shows it was picked up and shipped from Palo Alto or Menlo Park, California. Those cities are hundreds of miles from Bankman-Fried’s prison in Los Angeles.

Kaplan gave Bankman-Fried an April 15 deadline to provide an affidavit stating whether attorneys helped him draft his request for a new trial.

June 18

In 2024, a California man named Andrew Samuels sued Lido DAO and some of the industry’s most prominent venture capital firms. He alleged that Lido sold unregistered securities in the form of its governance token, LDO, and that the VCs should be held liable.

That’s because the backers — the list includes Andreessen Horowitz, Dragonfly, and Paradigm — held so much LDO that they effectively ran the project, Samuels alleged.

Paradigm argues that its relationship with Lido DAO doesn’t meet any of the criteria of a partnership: there was no agreement to run a business together nor to share in Lido’s profits and losses.

The judge wasn’t convinced, and he scheduled a trial for March 2027. That now seems unlikely — the case has been put on ice after the VCs went to an appeals court seeking an order that would compel arbitration.

Arbitration is an alternative method of settling legal claims. It’s relatively quick and cheap due to its less stringent procedural requirements.

The judge has requested regular status updates. The next one is due on June 18.

Aleks Gilbert is DL News’ New York-based DeFi correspondent. Have a tip? Email him at aleks@dlnews.com.