{"id":66113,"date":"2022-08-22T09:53:35","date_gmt":"2022-08-22T06:53:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=66113"},"modified":"2025-09-06T23:38:56","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T20:38:56","slug":"protest-in-amsterdam-over-arrest-of-tornado-cash-developer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/protest-in-amsterdam-over-arrest-of-tornado-cash-developer\/","title":{"rendered":"Protest in Amsterdam over arrest of Tornado Cash developer"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday, 20 August, a protest in support of Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev took place on Dam Square in Amsterdam. CoinDesk<\/a> reports.<\/p>\n

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On 12 August, Dutch authorities arrested<\/a> an unnamed man on suspicion of involvement in laundering funds and concealing illicit financial flows through a cryptocurrency mixer. Later it emerged that the person was Pertsev.<\/p>\n

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According to the publication, after a closed hearing the developer remained in custody for two weeks. The arrest of Pertsev sparked a backlash in the community. In announcing the protest, the initiative group said that the actions of the authorities create a dangerous precedent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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According to media reports, more than 50 people attended the protest. They called for the developer’s release and stated that open-source code is not a crime. One of the protesters told the outlet that the incident with Pertsev “forms a chilling effect that runs counter to innovation and against the community”.<\/p>\n

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“Alex is just a developer. They should pursue real criminals,” said Web3 developer Naomi Sketini.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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She said he bears no responsibility for criminals using the code for illegal activity.<\/p>\n

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“It’s the same as saying that the inventor of a knife is responsible for murders. That’s really ridiculous,” added a protest participant.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Source: CoinDesk<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Rodrigo Sapata, head of one of the blockchain projects, noted that the arrest could have consequences for developers in other fields. He urged updating legislation “for the open-source era”.<\/p>\n

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On 8 August, OFAC<\/span> added Tornado Cash’s site to the sanctions list, along with 39 Ethereum addresses and 6 USDC addresses linked to it.<\/p>\n

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According to the agency, since its creation in 2019, criminals have laundered more than $7 billion in cryptocurrency using it. Elliptic puts the figure at about $1.54 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Kraken CEO Jesse Powell described the sanctions against the mixer unconstitutional<\/a>, while TRM Labs analysts a compliance challenge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Members of the decentralised autonomous organization Tornado DAO urged the community to hire a team of lawyers to appeal the service’s blockage.<\/p>\n

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Later, the crypto-industry-focused advocacy group Coin Center said it intended to challenge the U.S. restrictions.<\/p>\n

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Follow ForkLog’s Bitcoin news on our Telegram<\/a> \u2014 cryptocurrency news, prices and analysis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Saturday, 20 August, a protest in support of Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev took place on Dam Square in Amsterdam. CoinDesk reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":66114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[718,1314],"class_list":["post-66113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-netherlands","tag-tornado-cash"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"20","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66115,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66113\/revisions\/66115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/u1f987.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}