After Donald Trump Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht enlarges, calling calls from the crypto community for the release of the co-founders of the Tornado Cash, and attracted considerable attention. This momentum led to the release of Alex Ptsev, a developer of the cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash, of pretrial detention in the Netherlands. Faced with money laundering, PTSEV has been released under electronic monitoring, so that he can prepare his profession.
Torn rallies as Regulator Tornado released co-founder
Alex Ptsev, co-founder of the cryptocurrency mixing service tornado cash, has announced that a Dutch court has set his pretrial detention and has allowed him to switch to electronic monitoring while he prepares to appeal.
Alex said: “Freedom is priceless, but my freedom costs a lot of money. My house arrest was only possible thanks to the work of lawyers, who were paid from your donations. My fight is not over yet and for a final and self -assured victory I still need your help. “
The announcement led to an increase in the price of Tornado Cash’s token, torn, which rose nearly 20% before setting up at $ 13.72.
Dutch authorities arrested Alex PTSEV in August 2022 after American sanctions against Tornado Mixer and his developers. PTSEV was confronted with accusations of facilitating money laundering and it is negligent to prevent illegal financial activities on the platform.
In May 2024, a Dutch court sentenced Pertev to five years in prison, and found that his involvement in Tornado Contant has helped criminal funds in white. The court acknowledged that Tornado -Contant Money could be a neutral tool, but stated that developers had the responsibility to prevent abuse.
After his arrest, the Russian National began to actively address his conviction and to ask for bail. Despite various attempts, his bail requests were constantly refused. His defense argues that he has only created open-source software and should not be criminalized for how others choose to use it.
Debate is about the liability of the developer
On November 26, the FIFFH Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Treasury to remove addresses linked to Tornado Cash from the list of blocked persons and entities.
This decision was considered a great victory for PTSEV and Roman Storm, another developer of Tornado Cash who was arrested in August 2023 and was awaiting the process.
Read also: Ethereum Community Backs Developer and Tornado Cash Co-founder, calls for the help of Trump
The court noted that punishing the protocol would not prevent malicious actors from using it, because smart contracts work independently and cannot be owned, checked or changed. The ruling also suggested that legislation would be updated to better regulate the use of crypto mixers.
Proponents claim that these services are mainly intended to protect the privacy of users. However, there have been many cases where criminals used these services to launch money white, which has attracted the attention of law enforcement agencies around the world.