0/ The Tornado Cash legal saga continues.
Alex Pertsev is still fighting for his freedom.
Guest thread by @ameensol spotlighting @alex_pertsev's legal case in the Netherlands and the ongoing battle to protect privacy. 🧵
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1/ Today Alex will be sharing his story at the Dutch Blockchain Week in Amsterdam.
His legal counsel Judith De Boer will also lead a discussion about his case.
The critical topic: Should developers of decentralized software systems be held liable for the crimes of their users?
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3/ Tornado Cash is a neutral, open-source, and immutable privacy tool.
I’ve used it for payroll. Vitalik used it to privately send donations to Ukraine. And others have used it for everything in between.
Since its inception, Tornado Cash has been used to anonymize $8B +, the vast majority for legitimate purposes.
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4/ In May 2024, for his development of Tornado Cash, Alex was convicted of money laundering and sentenced to 64 months in prison.
He is currently out of prison pending his appeal for retrial, but is unable to travel outside of the Netherlands.
Years of his freedom are at stake.
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5/ What is also at stake is a dangerous precedent.
As Judith explained at ETHDam last year, in Alex’s case, the court argued that because Alex made Tornado Cash immutable, he is liable for all future criminal uses of the tool by others.
piped.video/watch?v=ZZ-eGzTc…
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6/ In this interview, Joachim Schwerin (@EU_Commission) explains why holding a creator of a public tool liable for the crimes of users creates a chilling effect, and “is absolutely in contradiction to everything [the EU] is doing in the data economy”.
piped.video/xwgTfo39u4M?t=180
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7/ Last year, Joachim and several others created the “Digital Freedom Declaration”, which I signed as well.
Our position is that privacy is a fundamental human right, and that developers of privacy tools should be free to innovate without fear.
digitalfreedom.page/
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8/ As Judith explains: “legal certainty is one of the basic principles of criminal law”.
As signers of the DFD, we are not opposed to regulations, but to builders being punished for not following legal requirements that were not explicitly established.
piped.video/watch?v=xwgTfo39…
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10/ In fact, the Tornado Cash Compliance Tool was a key component of a policy paper authored by Fabian Schar, a blockchain professor at the University of Basel.
He argued that Tornado Cash should be regulated, and recommended the use of the Compliance Tool to do so.
Jun 25, 2026 · 1:08 PM UTC
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11/ In the 80s and 90s the original cypherpunks fought—with code and ultimately in courts—in order to earn the right to build, use, and publicly distribute encryption technology.
Now, it is our time to defend our right to privacy in our financial systems.
pet3rpan.medium.com/before-b…
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12/ I am in Amsterdam today to support Alex and help amplify today’s discussion, but Alex could always use your help too!
Please share this thread to raise awareness, and if you have the means, consider donating to his legal defense.
juicebox.money/v2/p/713
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13/ Finally, today’s thread might have been about Alex, but Roman Storm’s legal battle in the US is also still ongoing.
Please follow @rstormsf as well as @alex_pertsev, and if you can, support Roman’s legal defense too.
freeromanstorm.com/
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14/ Thank you @ethereumfndn for the opportunity.
This is the last tweet in the thread.
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