The D.C. Circuit upheld on September 25 Roman Sterlingov’s 150-month sentence for operating Bitcoin Fog, a bitcoin mixing service. Sterlingov had sought access to Chainalysis Reactor software source code used for wallet tracing, but his request failed because he did not demonstrate its materiality to his defense. The court allowed defense experts to inspect Reactor’s heuristics under a protective order without requiring source code disclosure. The Reactor-based testimony proved reliable: the software correctly identified 4 of 5 known Bitcoin Fog addresses, and a separate case test showed 99.9 percent accuracy for clustering and attribution. This ruling sets precedent for how proprietary blockchain analysis can become admissible courtroom evidence.
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