Developer Freed: Tornado Cash's Alexey Pertsev Out of Prison

Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev is set to be released from prison on Friday, ending his pretrial detention as he prepares to appeal his conviction on money laundering charges. The Dutch resident, who has been in detention since 2022, will be released under electronic monitoring, according to his appeals lawyer, Judith de Boer.

Pertsev's release comes ahead of his appeal against a 64-month prison sentence handed down by a Dutch court in May 2024. The developer was convicted for his role in creating Tornado Cash, a coin-mixing service used to mask the flow of Ethereum transactions. Pertsev initiated the appeal after a U.S. federal appeals court found that sanctions against Tornado Cash were unlawful.

Pertsev's prosecution has drawn criticism from privacy advocates who believe he is being unfairly targeted for writing code. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has described the prosecution as chilling for software developers. The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court ruled that immutable smart contracts, which cannot be altered or controlled by an entity, cannot be classified as "property" as the sanctions implied.

Dutch prosecutors allege that Tornado Cash's software enabled criminals to launder more than $1 billion in illicit funds from at least 36 hacks of decentralized and centralized digital asset platforms. Among the funds funneled through the mixer were the more than $600 million worth of cryptocurrencies siphoned from the Ethereum network in the Ronin hack in 2022.

Meanwhile, Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Storm faces prosecution in Manhattan, charged with facilitating money laundering through the Ethereum-based crypto mixer. In September, a New York court denied his motion to dismiss the charges, finding that his free speech argument was irrelevant to the statute under which charges were brought. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and venture capital firm Paradigm are among the organizations supporting Storm's legal defense.