Tornado Cash crypto mixer developer is now free from prison

Alexey Pertsev, a cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash developer, will now be able to leave imprisonment under electronic monitoring.

In an X post published yesterday, Pertsev wrote that he “will be free” this morning. He explained that a “Dutch court suspended my pretrial detention under the condition of electronic monitoring.” He concluded:

“This will give me a chance to work on my appeal and fight for justice. Thank you to everyone who supported me and who made this possible!”

Pertsev was sentenced to 64 months in prison last year for developing the Tornado Cash decentralized cryptocurrency mixer. The service in question facilitated the laundering of $1.2 billion between July 2019 and August 2022.

He has since appealed his conviction, and sanctions imposed on Tornado Cash by the United States Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in 2022 were deemed illegal by a judge in late November. The ruling also raises issue with an attempt at committing an unlawful action:

“We decline the Department’s invitation to judicial lawmaking—revising Congress’s handiwork under the guise of interpreting it. Legislating is Congress’s job—and Congress’s alone.”

Much of the controversy over the prosecution of people involved with the Tornado Cash project stems from its decentralized and permissionless nature. Pertsev and other developers behind the project have no authority over the protocol that they launched, they can not stop it from operating or stop anyone from accessing it.

For this reason, their prosecution is often likened by crypto privacy advocates to a knife maker being prosecuted for being complicit in a stabbing committed with a knife he made — despite having no control over how the tools he made are used. Cryptocurrencies are extremely transparent by nature, meaning that anyone can check the balance and transaction connected to any wallet.

For this reason, there are many lawful reasons to use an anonymization service such as Tornado Cash. A prime example is to avoid becoming a target of a $5 wrench attack, where bad actors force the holder to cede their digital assets with physical force.

The news follows a slew of such crimes being committed. Last month David Balland — the co-founder of French cryptocurrency hardware wallet maker Ledger — was held for ransom and released days later. Dean Skurka — the president and CEO of Canadian cryptocurrency firm WonderFi — was also kidnapped and released after ransom payment in late 2024.

Also in January, Pakistani cryptocurrency trader Mohammed Arsalan was kidnapped wit the involvement of local law enforcement, with the perpetrators successfully extorting $340,000 worth of digital assets. During the same month, a Canadian volunteer moderator of a crypto forum was reportedly targeted in an attempted kidnapping by individuals allegedly planning to torture him to steal his Bitcoin.

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