The court decision in the Tornado Cash case, which caused great controversy in the cryptocurrency world last year, seems to pave the way for another big debate. The Dutch court sentenced Alexey Pertsev, the developer of Tornado Cash, to 64 months in prison. Pertsev was found guilty of money laundering activities.

The court found the 31-year-old developer guilty of money laundering activities totaling $1.2 billion. The court found that even if the developer wrote open-source code, if the application was used by criminals, the person who wrote the program would be guilty. The panel ruled that even if the developer was unable to control the movement of criminals or did not act in concert with them, he should be considered guilty.

“Tornado Cash is a tool intended for criminals”

Pertsev was held responsible for $1.2 billion worth of cryptocurrencies laundered through Tornado Cash between 2019 and 2022 and received a 64-month prison sentence.

“Tornado Cash in its nature and functioning is a tool intended for criminals,” said one of the judges.

Following Pertsev’s arrest, the US Department of Justice also banned Tornado Cash in the country. The application, which runs on the Ethereum network, was allegedly used by the Lazarus hacker group affiliated with the North Korean state, and the laundered cryptocurrencies were allegedly used to develop North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

In recent weeks, the US also banned Samurai Wallet, a mixer service provider on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Privacy or crime?

Supporters of cryptocurrency argue that such tools protect people’s financial privacy and that their use in criminal activity does not change this fact. Many argue that because of the crimes committed with the US dollar, people who own dollars cannot be considered criminals.