The $2 billion Tornado Cash case is a turning point for criptocurrency privacy

The defendant was not blind when he didn’t look away from the abuse: Tornado Cash is a shortcut for financing crimes and terrorism

Although Pertsev cannot dictate how users interact with Tornado Cash directly through the blockchain, he and the other developers were in de facto control, the prosecutors argued, because they operated the web interface through which the majority of transactions were fed. While Pertsev added functionality to the web interface that allowed legitimate users to separate their funds from those arriving from known criminal addresses, they characterized the effort as “too little and too late.”

The Dutch prosecutors claim the money laundered through Tornado Cash accounted for more than 30% of the funds. Meanwhile, Pertsev looked away and did nothing to stop the criminal activity. “Pertsev wasn’t blind; he knew perfectly well what was happening but chose not to intervene,” the prosecutors wrote in the filing.

The panel of judges in the Netherlands found a man guilty of money-laundering.

“With Tornado Cash, the defendant created a shortcut for financing crimes and terrorism,” said the court in a statement, translated from Dutch. He did not take responsibility for looking away from the abuse.

The arrest of Pertsev sparked protests among cryptocurrency and privacy advocates, some of whom demonstrated outside the courtroom on the opening day of the trial. His defenders claim it is unjust for a developer of open source software to be held responsible for the behavior of users, and say the verdict will have a chilling effect on the development of privacy-preserving software.