Trump promised he would end the war on crypto. He hasn't. Roman Storm is out on $2 million bail, facing up to 40 more years for co-founding an open source privacy tool that never held a single user's dollar.
In April, FBI Director Kash Patel stood on stage at the Bitcoin Conference and spoke at a session titled "Code is Free Speech: Ending the War on Bitcoin." Asked in December about pardoning Keonne Rodriguez, Trump said, "I've heard about it, I'll look at it." Nothing since. Here is where each case stands.
1/ Roman Sterlingov: 12.5 years and $395.5 million in forfeiture, based on Chainalysis software whose source code the defense was never allowed to see. No server logs. No admin credentials.
2/ Roger Ver: faced 109 years over taxes on bitcoin he already owned, held 337 days in a Spanish jail cell fighting extradition, then resolved it with fifty million and a gag order. Not in custody. Still no pardon.
3/ William Lonergan Hill: 67 years old, autistic, extradited out of Lisbon where he was living quietly with his wife. Sentenced to 4 years anyway. In prison since January 2, 2026.
4/ Ray Youssef built Paxful to bank the unbanked. His Built With Bitcoin foundation funded schools. Mexico deported him to LAX. He is pretrial, released under court supervision, and barred from leaving the country.
5/ Ian Freeman ran a bitcoin exchange in Keene, New Hampshire. The government's money laundering theory rested on labels his own customers chose for their transactions, like "church donations." 8 years. The Supreme Court would not even hear it.
None of them is charged with hurting anyone. Six were charged under the same statute for building tools that let people trade and hold money privately and voluntarily, not for committing crimes. He already proved he can keep this promise: he pardoned Ross. Now keep it for the rest of them.