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Conviction of Tornado Cash programmer: Privacy is not a crime

On Tuesday a Dutch court sentenced the programmer Alexey Pertsev to five years in prison. The court found him guilty of money laundering because the "Tornado Cash" software he developed enables criminals to carry out completely anonymous and untraceable crypto transactions (so-called "crypto mixer")

Pirate Party Member of the European Parliament Patrick Breyer warns of the consequences of this conviction: “This ruling criminalises legitimate anonymity and all programmers who make it possible. The anonymity we enjoy when using cash, which protects our financial freedom, must not be criminalised when applied to digital currencies.The consequences of this approach could well extend to programmers of messenger software or anonymisation networks. It is in this spirit that the EU has recently placed strict limits on anonymous cash payments and is proposing the destruction of the digital privacy of correspondence (chat control or child sexual abuse regulation).

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