Alexey Pertsev, one of the developers of Tornado Cash, has been released from prison while he appeals his conviction. On X, he reported that the Dutch court granted him freedom under electronic monitoring.
Pertsev has been released from prison by a Dutch court while he awaits an appeal against his conviction for facilitating money laundering from his platform. The court’s decision marks a significant turn in the Tornado Cash case, which has sparked controversy in the cryptocurrency community and among privacy advocates.
BUY BITCOINOn X, Pertsev shared a post, indicating that he will be released from prison this Friday, February 7. Although he has not been released from his charges, he thanked the gesture and the crypto community for all the support provided, indicating that he will now have time to work on his defense of justice. While under electronic monitoring, Pertsev will focus on the case, to appeal the sentence issued in May of last year against him, after being found guilty of money laundering charges.
The Tornado Cash developer has been in prison since August 2022, when he was arrested by authorities in the Netherlands. Pertsev argued that he should not be held responsible for the actions of those who used Tornado Cash for illicit purposes.
A conditional release
Pertsev's release, scheduled for Friday, follows an appeal by his lawyers after he was found guilty of money laundering by a Dutch court in May 2024 and sentenced to five years and four months in prison.
Despite being granted a stay of pre-trial detention, Pertsev has stated that his release does not represent “real freedom” as he remains under electronic monitoring. In response to this news, the price of the TORN token, associated with Tornado Cash, experienced an increase of more than 20%, reflecting a positive market reaction to the release of the protocol developer.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Pertsev's trial and defense arguments
During the trial last year, Pertsev argued that he could not be held liable for third parties' illicit use of the Tornado Cash protocol. However, the court dismissed this argument, holding that Pertsev and the other co-founders of the decentralized protocol should have implemented more robust measures to prevent its use for criminal purposes.
The court's stance has sparked criticism and concern in the developer community that it could set a dangerous precedent criminalizing the creation of open source software tools, regardless of their subsequent use.
Despite the situation, however, Alexey Pertsev and Tornado Cash have elicited a number of supportive reactions within the cryptocurrency community and among those who support freedom. For example, Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has publicly expressed his support for Pertsev, donated to a legal defense fund for Pertsev, and criticized the sanctions imposed on Tornado Cash by the Treasury Department.
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Late last month, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas overturned sanctions imposed by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Tornado Cash, ruling that the protocol’s immutable smart contracts could not be classified as “property” under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), and therefore OFAC had overstepped its authority.
The court ruling has been seen as a victory for privacy advocates as it could set an important precedent for the regulation of decentralized technologies, and may strengthen Pertsev's arguments for his appeal.
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