Developer of cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash goes to jail for 5 years

A Dutch court has found 31-year-old Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev guilty of money laundering in the amount of $ 1.2 billion and sentenced him to five years in prison.

According to the US authorities, all funds passing through the cryptomixer can be considered suspicious. However, it is important to note that out of the reported $ 1.2 billion, only $ 600 million was linked to the North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group.

The Tornado Cash case raises important questions for the crypto industry about privacy and government interaction with decentralized protocols. The main question is whether the government has the legal right to block transactions through open source protocols, which many believe should not be controlled by any central authority.

Such important players in the crypto industry as the Coinbase exchange and Ethereum developer ETH $3,312.30 Bridged Ether (StarkGate) -1.26% Market capitalization $0.3 billion VOL. 24 hours $1.18 billion Preston Van Loon, as well as the Washington Blockchain Association, have come to the defense of Tornado Cash. They filed a lawsuit against the US authorities, accusing the Treasury Department of exceeding its authority and breaking the law.

Together with other Tornado Cash developers, Pertsev founded the JusticeDAO fund, which has raised more than $ 350 thousand for legal proceedings. Among the fund’s supporters is Edward Snowden, who noted that privacy cannot be considered a crime.