In the conclusion of the same statement to the court, they pointed out that under Dutch law the maximum prison sentence for money laundering on the scale that Pertsev is alleged to have committed is eight years and they requested that Pertsev be sentenced 5 years and 4 months if he is convicted.
The tornado rolled in
Cryptocurrency advocates focused on privacy and civil liberties will be closely watching the outcome of Pertsev’s case, which many see as a sign of how law enforcement and Western regulators will draw the line between financial privacy and money laundering — including in some cases immediate compliance.
Tornado Cash’s Storm trial in a New York court later this year, as well as the US indictment last month of Samourai Wallet’s founders, which prosecutors say provide characterization security similar to Tornado Cash’s, which is more likely to directly set a precedent in US law. But Pertsev’s case could suggest a direction for those cases, said Alex Gladstein, chief strategy officer at the Human Rights Foundation and an advocate for using bitcoin as a human rights tool.
“What happens in the Netherlands will color the New York case, and the Tornado Cash cases will really color the outcome of the Samourai case,” Gladstein said. “These cases will be historic in the precedents they set.”
Gladstein, like many cryptocurrency privacy advocates, argues that anyone considering the value of tools like Tornado Cash should look beyond its use by hackers in countries like Cuba, Venezuela and India, where activists and dissidents need to hide their financial transactions from repressive governments. “For human rights activists, it is essential that they have money so that the government cannot monitor it,” Gladstein said.
Regardless of the verdict in Pertsev’s case or co-founder Roman Storm’s in the fall, the Tornado Cash founder’s core argument—that Tornado Cash’s underlying infrastructure has always been out of reach them—have been proven right: Tornado Cash still exists.
According to Chainalysis, when the tool’s centralized web-based interface went offline last year following U.S. sanctions and the arrest of two co-founders—Roman Semenov, who remains free for now—Tornado exchanges Cash has dropped nearly 90%, according to Chainalysis. But Tornado Cash is still online, still operating as a decentralized smart contract. In recent months, Chainalysis has seen its usage intermittently increase again. More than 283 million USD was poured into this service in March alone.
In other words, whether it represents a public utility for privacy and financial freedom or an uncontrollable money-laundering machine, its creator’s claim has been proven: Tornado Cash remains beyond their—or anyone’s—control.
