Crypto community outraged as court jails Tornado Cash developer for over five years

A Dutch tribunal has sentenced Alexey Pertsev, a developer progressive with Tornado Cash, to 64 months successful prison.

He was convicted of laundering $1.2 cardinal successful crypto done the Tornado Cash mixer betwixt July 9, 2019, and August 10, 2022.

Pertsev’s ineligible squad has a 14-day model to entreaty the court’s decision.

This verdict follows Pertsev’s arrest by Dutch authorities astir 2 years ago, successful August 2022. At that time, the US authorities had sanctioned the crypto mixing instrumentality for aiding entities similar North Korea-backed Lazarus Group successful laundering their amerciable proceeds.

The ruling successful Pertsev’s lawsuit could person important implications for the crypto sector, peculiarly arsenic different Tornado Cash developers look trials successful the United States. In August 2023, the Department of Justice (DOJ) brought charges against Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm, alleging wealth laundering and violations of US sanctions laws.

Crypto assemblage reacts

Pertsev’s condemnation has riled up members of the crypto community, who are criticizing the judgment.

Pablito, the caput of information probe astatine Blockfence, said the ruling was a “sad time for privacy, crypto and open-source.” He added that “the warfare is not over. Privacy is simply a quality right.”

Meanwhile, Alexandre Stachtchenko, a web3 expert, said:

“This has gone excessively far. It is clip to extremity this KYC and surveillance messiness earlier it eats ideology itself. I volition soon people a substance calling for enactment and support.”

Similarly, Michelle Weekley, the manager of merchandise improvement astatine Byte Federal, opined that the ruling showed crypto users either “participate successful AML/KYC regularisation oregon spell to jail.” She added:

“This is the existent combat and we either instrumentality down the planetary banking regularisation cartel oregon we conscionable use each their laws to the caller ecosystem and proceed to unrecorded nether their tyrannical dictatorship.”

The station Crypto assemblage outraged arsenic tribunal jails Tornado Cash developer for implicit 5 years appeared archetypal connected CryptoSlate.