Amsterdam saw protest against the arrest of the Tornado Cash developer

Participants of a rally demanded the release of Alexey Pertsev and stated that “open source is not a crime”

22.08.2022 - 09:00

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What’s new? On August 20, a rally was held in the Dutch capital against the arrest of Alexey Pertsev, developer of the Tornado Cash cryptocurrency mixer. More than 50 people took part in the rally and demanded the developer’s release, CoinDesk reports. Pertsev was detained in Amsterdam on August 10. He is suspected of involvement in money laundering and concealing financial flows through Tornado Cash. According to authorities, the mixer was used to launder cryptocurrencies stolen through hacks.

News on the CoinDesk website

What did the protesters say? The protesters stressed that Alexey Pertsev is just a developer who is not responsible for the further use of the code by attackers. In addition, “open source is not a crime,” and law enforcement should prosecute the real criminals.

After the US authorities imposed sanctions against Tornado Cash, many representatives in the crypto community spoke out against such measures. Stefan George, the co-founder of Gnosis Chain, an Ethereum sidechain, said that writing open-source software should be recognized as “an expression of free speech.” Uniswap protocol founder Hayden Adams criticized the banning of the entire service because of the actions of individual attackers and called the precedent a threat to freedom of speech and privacy. The developers of Zcash also noted that this precedent could negatively affect the civil liberties of Americans.

For more details on what awaits DeFi projects after the sanctions against Tornado Cash, see GetBlock Magazine’s special feature.

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