Tornado Cash Developer Was Convicted and jailed

[DiMarxist]

It's a sad day in the history of crypto. Who would've thought developing a decentralized mixing protocol would bring the attention of mainstream governments (particularly, the US government)? After all, only crypto funds are mixed. Not Fiat. Governments shouldn't have jurisdiction on this.

Unfortunately, Tornado.Cash developers made a mistake by revealing their identities. Now they're paying the price of what they did. Satoshi was smart by staying anonymous during Bitcoin's early days. He knew what was coming beforehand. If all other developers followed Satoshi's footsteps, crypto land would be a better place. Luckily for us, Tornado.Cash and similar mixing protocols are decentralized. If one goes down, another one will take its place. Expect government opposition to keep up for as long as crypto lives.

Decentralization in the cryptocurrency is the best and when developers reveal their  identity then they put themselves into trouble. And yes it is only Cryptocurrencies are mixed and not Fiat but it is the Fiat that was converted exchange to the cryptocurrency so they believe that the person used his fiat and buy the coin and mixed it to different accounts so they can't locate the destination of the coins.
So with that people can use mixers to launder money and that the fear of the US government. Satoshi Nakamoto knew all these and that was why he didn't reveal himself to the world. And I don't know why the developers of Tornado Cash revealed themselves. Were they looking for fame or what? He was not wise enough.

[Abiky]

Decentralization in the cryptocurrency is the best and when developers reveal their  identity then they put themselves into trouble. And yes it is only Cryptocurrencies are mixed and not Fiat but it is the Fiat that was converted exchange to the cryptocurrency so they believe that the person used his fiat and buy the coin and mixed it to different accounts so they can't locate the destination of the coins.
So with that people can use mixers to launder money and that the fear of the US government. Satoshi Nakamoto knew all these and that was why he didn't reveal himself to the world. And I don't know why the developers of Tornado Cash revealed themselves. Were they looking for fame or what? He was not wise enough.

Yes. I'm afraid so. Many developers are only looking for fame and fortune these days. They don't actually care about crypto's true principles. If they did, they would've followed Satoshi's footsteps by remaining anonymous. Some of them come up with the excuse that they reveal their identities to make their project look legit under eyes of investors and VCs. Anything that's made by unknown developers/founders would be flagged as a scam.

We will continue to see governments fighting against privacy in crypto for as long as it lives. At least, not all governments will oppose privacy. As long as decentralization is preserved, there should be nothing to worry about.

[wxa7115]

Tornado Cash Developer Was Convicted and jailed

I got an email message from freedom.Tech that Alex Pertsev who was the developer of the "Ethereum based privacy tool called Tornado Cash" has been in court for sometimes and today And he was "he was sentence 5 years in imprisonment for creating a decentralized cryptocurrency project. The government is seriously attacking the decentralized cryptocurrency projects. Is it that the cryptocurrency activities are affecting the economy of the world?

And even now people wonder why Satoshi disappeared and we have known nothing about him since then, it is obvious that if he comebacks then governments all over the world will try to blame him for everything that has happened since the creation of bitcoin.

So it is entirely possible he could get a conviction that put him in jail for the rest of his life, so if any developer is out there thinking about creating a tool to enhance the privacy of others, they should make sure to do what they can to remain as anonymous as possible.

[batang_bitcoin]

The government is seriously attacking the decentralized cryptocurrency projects.

Not decentralized crypto projects but privacy-oriented services. Remember the mixing service as well? they've taken down the majority of them.

Is it that the cryptocurrency activities are affecting the economy of the world?

I don't think so, they're against to the service of increasing privacy and that's why they're taking down each that they can.

[Churchillvv]

It's not the first time we are seeing attacks on anything that has to do with decentralisation. The governments especially US government does not like anything that is beyond there control.

They get nervous any time they hear about a decentralised crypto project, it usually seems some one is about to drag power with them and I believe that Satoshi would have been jailed if he was know just as they are failing the few people who didn't hide their identity while creating a decentralised protocol.

I think Alex made a huge mistake for showing his identity, he should have learn from Satoshi who knew how the government will react when they find something like bitcoin and disappeared till date, if Alex was hide to an extent I guess he would have escaped all these sentences.

[Hispo]

Very expected considering we are talking about the United Stated and tools which were developed specifically to enhance privacy, and being abused by criminals to launder their money. The only surprise to me is how this guy managed to get sentenced only 5 years in prison, instead more time, usually when comes to these sort of crimes, prosecution would like to make an example out of a criminal and establish and very strong precedent to deter other from doing exactly the same this guy did.
Anyways, considering most of protocols which are used to enhance privacy, including the Blockchain or Monero, are free to use and free software, for anyone to download and run, it would seem this is a lost battle for a single jurisdiction like the USA. They cannot prosecute someone just by trying to protect their digital foot print.

Let us see if this is going to stop further development of mixers and tools aimed to protect privacy, I highly doubt it, though.

[Abiky]

It's not the first time we are seeing attacks on anything that has to do with decentralisation. The governments especially US government does not like anything that is beyond there control.

They get nervous any time they hear about a decentralised crypto project, it usually seems some one is about to drag power with them and I believe that Satoshi would have been jailed if he was know just as they are failing the few people who didn't hide their identity while creating a decentralised protocol.

I think Alex made a huge mistake for showing his identity, he should have learn from Satoshi who knew how the government will react when they find something like bitcoin and disappeared till date, if Alex was hide to an extent I guess he would have escaped all these sentences.

I'm afraid so. What was he thinking, anyways? Developers like Alex know that making a privacy tool would bring unwanted attention. Why do you think Satoshi never revealed his identity? Because he knew that creating a decentralized currency outside the reach of mainstream governments would bring terrible consequences in the long run. Satoshi would've been jailed if everyone knew who he/she was.

I sure hope crypto developers learn a valuable lesson with the recent incarceration of Alex. To help protect decentralization, privacy, and freedom, developers must never reveal their IDs to the public. Unfortunately, the majority only wants to attract investors than "sticking" with crypto's ideals. We'll be left with a small number of truly-decentralized projects in crypto land. At least, not all hope is lost. 

[d5000]

The hell are you talking about? Decentralized? Are you supporting people who facilitated so many criminals to laundering their billions of money? There are thousands of people's life savings there. It's kinda stupid to talk about decentralization when it's harmed many people.  [...] They deserved it. It was not even attacking. Tornado cash deserved it. It shall be 100 years rather than only 5 years.

Tornado cash was a tool which could be misused by criminals, but had also legitimate privacy usage.
With the same logic, you could say: "There are so many deaths due to car accidents! And cars were even used for terrorist attacks! Car manufacturers should all go jailed!"
Think again.

I don't know the absolute details from the case, but from what media reported, evidence of actual collaboration between the Tornado Cash developers and criminal groups is very thin. There were some mentions in internal communication that could be interpreted as to tolerate criminal use. But yeah ... you can "criminally use" a lot of things. For example, you can use computers and the Internet to distribute child abuse imagery. Should computer manufacturers and Internet providers also go jailed?

The only misbehaviour that could be attributed to the Tornado cash devs is that they ran the mixer as a service taking fees, and depending on the jurisdiction they were operating, they could have had to register a license for their business. But first that would never justify such a long sentence, and second Pertsev was actually not in control anymore of the service when they arrested him, as it was run by a DAO.

More on that topic is here: https://cointelegraph.com/news/tornado-cash-verdict-crypto-industry

Only hope I have is that the court where he was sentenced seemed to have been a minor provincial court, and Pertsev is appealing the sentence. A better informed judge could perhaps rule in a different way, as basic human rights are touched here.

Very expected considering we are talking about the United Stated

No, it's in the Netherlands. There is another case about other developers in the US though, so you probably confused both cases. FWIW, the US protects software development as a basic right (freedom of speech). US authorities also have clarified that at least their case isn't about developing open source tools.

[FanEagle]

To be fair, same happened with Robert as well, when you do something that enhances the possibility of someone doing something illegal, and that is your clear purpose, they do catch you and send you to prison eventually. That doesn't mean that you are going to be able to not come out, if you have a good lawyer then you can argue that it wasn't your intention and you were just using it for something more naive, which would all depend if you could convince the judge to rule in your favour.

But, it was clear from the first day that tornado cash was there to make sure that all the drug trade and money laundering keep going without an issue, do not think that anyone for a single second believed that it was for anything else than that.