hannawilson0259c6f770c on Nostr: A breakdown of today's ruling in the Alexey Pertsev, Tornado Cash developer, case in ...
A breakdown of today's ruling in the Alexey Pertsev, Tornado Cash developer, case in the Netherlands and the implications this will have for open source developers going forward.
In the Netherlands, open source developers are now liable for how their software is used.
Alexey Pertsev, a 31-year old Russian national living in the Netherlands and one of the developers of the Ethereum-based privacy tool Tornado Cash, was today found guilty of money laundering by the Dutch court: he’s been sentenced to 64 months in prison. The fact that Pertsev never held custody of any cryptocurrency flowing through Tornado Cash — or could even control how the smart contract operated — was deemed irrelevant by the panel of judges, as he did contribute to the development of the software.
In line with Dutch public prosecutor Martine Boerlage, the court ruled that Tornado Cash was essentially ran like a business, operated by PepperSec, the company founded and operated by Pertsev and his two co-founders Roman Storm and Roman Semenov. Rather than just publishing code, the judges said, the trio benefited financially from the obfuscation of illicit funds through the tools they built.
In the Netherlands, open source developers are now liable for how their software is used.
Alexey Pertsev, a 31-year old Russian national living in the Netherlands and one of the developers of the Ethereum-based privacy tool Tornado Cash, was today found guilty of money laundering by the Dutch court: he’s been sentenced to 64 months in prison. The fact that Pertsev never held custody of any cryptocurrency flowing through Tornado Cash — or could even control how the smart contract operated — was deemed irrelevant by the panel of judges, as he did contribute to the development of the software.
In line with Dutch public prosecutor Martine Boerlage, the court ruled that Tornado Cash was essentially ran like a business, operated by PepperSec, the company founded and operated by Pertsev and his two co-founders Roman Storm and Roman Semenov. Rather than just publishing code, the judges said, the trio benefited financially from the obfuscation of illicit funds through the tools they built.