According to BlockBeats, the policy non-profit organization Coin Center published an analysis article on Tornado Cash founders Roman Storm and Roman Semenov being accused of illegal money transmission business. Coin Center believes that based on the current facts of the allegations, it is unclear whether they have actually violated the relevant laws.

The article explains that FinCEN’s virtual currency guidance issued in 2019 states that vendors that provide anonymizing software are not considered money transmitters. The defendants appear to meet FinCEN’s definition of anonymizing software providers more than money transmitters.

The government claims that the defendants “promoted” the Tornado Cash tool and “profited” from governance tokens associated with the smart contracts, but that these activities did not amount to “accepting and transmitting” currency.