Jay Clayton's War

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There’s something refreshingly straightforward about Elizabeth Warren. The Senator says she hates the crypto industry and her actions back up the fact that she indeed does. She’s an enemy of the industry that labels herself as such. 

It’s harder with Jay Clayton. 

The Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) continues to pursue cases that signal open hostility to the crypto industry and its developers, but with the full support of the president ("Jay Clayton is GREAT!!!"), no one in the industry seems to want to say his name.

Jay's Crypto Enforcement Legacy

Jay Clayton hasn't proven to be much of a friend to the crypto industry since he chaired the SEC during Trump's first term:

• He pioneered crypto regulation by enforcement before Gary Gensler made it an exact science.
• He took relentless aim at ICO fundraising, forcing the industry toward the airdrop/points era that we're only now emerging from.
• He blocked the approval of Bitcoin ETFs at every opportunity.
• Jay Clayton's parting action before Gensler took over was filing a lawsuit against Ripple over unregistered securities sales (XRP was eventually ruled not to be in itself a security).

In short, Jay Clayton walked so Gary Gensler could run.

But the difference is that while Gensler's era of influence is over, Trump appointed Jay Clayton to yet another prestigious role last year where he has continued to wage enforcement actions against developers in the crypto industry, despite second-term Trump's public advocacy for regulators to do the exact opposite.

This reality came into focus again yesterday, when Jay Clayton requested a retrial on two charges against Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm.

Storm was a developer for the crypto mixing protocol, and while it was a Biden-era appointee who brought the case against Tornado Cash's devs in 2023, Jay Clayton has gone to great lengths since his appointment to ensure the project's developers end up behind bars.

It's all a little bizarre because, in 2025, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) dropped the sanctions against Tornado Cash smart contracts that had cleared the way for SDNY prosecutors to go after its developers in the first place.

It would have made sense for Jay Clayton to drop the charges then, but he didn't. Trump has never commented publicly on the case. Neither has crypto + AI czar David Sacks.

In August, Storm was convicted of operating an unlicensed money transmitter (the same charge that Jay Clayton scored a guilty plea from Samorai Wallet's developers last year, too), but the jury was deadlocked on a money laundering charge and rejected a sanctions evasion charge.

Now, Jay Clayton wants a do-over – to establish legal precedent that would be catastrophic for crypto developers.

Getting Louder on Values

Almost all of the major crypto lobbying groups are devoting significant energy to crypto developer protections and fighting to end the misuse of the federal money transmission licensing statutes right now – that's awesome.

We need to hear more from crypto's top execs, investors, and builders, though.

While Trump has plenty of friends and donors across crypto who have supported his campaign and his family's various crypto businesses, our industry’s leaders have seemed to spend their political capital very carefully this past year. Most – understandably – seem to be publicly loudest about issues impacting their corners of the crypto industry, but not many of them have said a peep about Roman Storm's case.

Just take a look at this (unofficial) list from the Defiant of attendees of Trump's March 2025 White House Crypto Summit. The list of 25 "industry bigwigs" has plenty of familiar names who have grown close to the Trump Administration over the past year, but only a single executive on this list has tweeted anything publicly about Storm – I just checked each one.

And while I hope there are some errant public statements or podcast comments from these guys somewhere that I missed, as far as I can tell the only executive on this list who has personally tweeted about Roman Storm's case is Paradigm's Matt Huang whose venture firm has gotten loud and directly donated to his defense fund (something Bankless has also done).

Trump's status as a self-declared crypto president has been good for the industry. We haven't gotten everything we've wanted, but it mostly feels like we've gotten a fair shake so far in early legislative efforts.

But just because Trump's political appointees have largely embraced crypto as a technology and asset class, doesn't mean they understand its values. It's up to us to fully convey that we're a value-driven industry, and that we expect a crypto-friendly administration not to attack or erode those values.

Privacy is not a crime. Neither is creating open source software.

Jay Clayton needs to hear that.

More of our industry's leaders need to say it, too.

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