Defenders launched a petition asking for his release, which exceeds 2,000 signatures. Developers charge that “open source” is being criminalized and that if the case progresses “no one will dare to write and publish open source code.”
Days ago, a Tornado Cash developer was arrested in the Netherlands, accused of being involved in hiding financial flows and facilitating money laundering by mixing cryptocurrencies using the Ethereum Tornado Cash mixing service.
Two weeks after the arrest, around 50 people protested the arrest of Alexey Pertsev in Amsterdam’s Dam Square, claiming that his arrest could trigger damaging consequences for open source Blockchains.
Supporters of the developer of Tornado Cash launched a petition calling for his release, which exceeds 2,000 signatures. Alexey Pertsev’s arrest came two days after the US Treasury Department sanctioned Tornada Cash for “hiding criminal financial flows and facilitating money laundering.”
The Release Petition and the Arrest Claim
The microsite with the release petition states the following:
“Alex is now being accused of creating open source code that was used by Tornado Cash, a project that is being investigated in the US and Europe. But a developer has no control over how their open source code is subsequently used… So the accusations against Alex threaten to wipe out the entire open source software segment.”
During his detention, authorities charged Alexey Pertsev with being one of those who orchestrated money laundering. The organization that made the arrest is the FIOD, a public entity that works against fiscal crime, which pointed out that this type of decentralized advanced technologies that are used for money laundering receive greater attention from their agents.
“He is suspected of being involved in concealing criminal financial flows and facilitating money laundering by mixing cryptocurrencies through the Ethereum Tornado Cash decentralized mixing service.”
Developers Fear Working with Open Sources
Another argument made by the defenders of the Tornado Cash developer is the publication of open source, rejecting that it should be criminalized since companies like Tornado Cash operate with an “open source” business model, which was originally designed for cases of fair use in string privacy.
“The development of a tool is not prohibited, but if a tool has been created for the purpose of committing criminal acts, for example, to hide criminal money flows. The accusations against Alex threaten to wipe out the entire open source software segment. Nobody will dare to write and publish open source code, nobody will invest in the segment if they could be responsible for the use of the tool they created by other parties.”
Tornado Cash was launched in 2019 and since then has distinguished itself by providing a decentralized privacy solution without “technical filters” based on Ethereum. The app was widely used to hide the tracking of stolen funds from hackers. So the United States began imposing sanctions on the app, restricting its use in the crypto ecosystem.
By Audy Castaneda
