attorney at the time, Jessie Liu, had this idea of using financial investigations in a way that was not limited to just white collar crime, or even narcotics cases, but also for cyber investigations, to national security investigations, and in civil cases. He had the sense of “this is getting bigger, and we should start looking into it.” There was another prosecutor, Christopher Brown - you know, the other Chris Brown - and he had taken an interest in this when we were both working on financial crime in the Washington, D.C. It’s when I was a prosecutor that I really learned about it.

This conversation was edited for clarity and brevity. Crypto lawyers have drawn on his prior decisions in the context of the Tornado Cash sanctions, for example.įaruqui spoke with Protocol about the power of his position, and what people in crypto should understand about the law. But the ways Faruqui has weighed on cases that have come before him can give lawyers clues as to what legal frameworks will pass muster. Bitcoin’s immutable ledger was used to find the perpetrators.Ī magistrate judge doesn’t set precedent in the same way as a Supreme Court justice - stare decisis only must be obeyed by lower courts, and Farqui’s is not the highest. Particularly well known was a case involving a dark-web site called “Welcome to Video,” which had facilitated some 360,000 downloads of sexually exploitative videos of children to 1.28 million members worldwide using bitcoin. There, Faruqui prosecuted cases that involved terrorism, child pornography, and weapons proliferation. Attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., that called themselves the “Bitcoin Strikeforce,” and worked with agencies like the IRS and FBI in federal investigations. Rather, before taking the judge position Faruqui was one of a group of prosecutors in the U.S. His knowledge isn’t the product of spending time on crypto Twitter. “I don't think these tweets are necessarily presenting Ukraine so differently than what most of the western world at least sees as a country that's being unfairly invaded,” he said. Srinivasan added that Ukraine is portrayed by the western world in a generally positive light, and tapping into the humor understood by the West and more specifically young people helps the country remain in a favorable light.

On Saturday morning, the account posted a video depicting Russia’s attack on Ukraine and calling on fellow countries to help it defend itself.

On Friday, the account posted a Twitter thread detailing ways users can help Ukraine. Ukraine’s Twitter account hasn’t been humorous as of late. “And that's why we see a different sort of set of tweets occurring now.” “ pushing the aggressor back to where now what we see is absolute desperation,” he added. “It's important that we look at social media as sort of a propagandist media wing of any sort of political entity,” Srinivasan told Protocol. Ramesh Srinivasan, an information studies professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the tweets may not be a sign of weakness, but a soft power tool the country can use to assert its sovereignty over Russia.

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