Tornado Cash Developer Alexey Pertsev Leaving Prison on Supervised Release

Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev will be released from prison on Friday, ending his pretrial detention ahead of his attempt to appeal his conviction last year on money laundering charges.

The Netherlands resident, who has been in detention since 2022, is in the process of appealing his conviction on money laundering charges in connection with his work on developing Tornado Cash, a coin-mixing service used to mask the flow of Ethereum transactions. A Dutch court handed down a 64-month prison sentence to Pertsev in May 2024.

Judith de Boer, Pertsev’s appeals lawyer, confirmed to Decrypt that Pertsev’s release is imminent.

“With his release, we can now fully engage in his defense and prepare for the appeal under more equitable conditions,” she said.

Perstev initiated an appeal of his conviction after a U.S. federal appeals court found last November that sanctions against Tornado Cash were unlawful. For months, the developer had petitioned a Dutch court to grant him bail, with little success.

On X, Perstev wrote that a return to home will give him “a chance to work on my appeal and fight for justice.”

“It is not real freedom, but it is better than prison,” he added. “Today, a Dutch court suspended my pretrial detention under the condition of electronic monitoring.”

Perstev’s prosecution became a lightning rod among privacy advocates who believed the developer was being unfairly targeted for simply writing code. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin once described Perstev’s prosecution as chilling for software developers.

“The Alexey thing is definitely really unfortunate,” he said at a Berlin conference in 2024. “I think a lot of people have been going under the assumption […] that just building software is something that’s okay and is a totally legal and legit way to fight for privacy.”

When the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court weighed in on the Tornado Cash sanctions, the court found that immutable smart contracts, which can’t be altered or controlled by an entity, can’t be classified as “property” as the sanctions implied.

Pertsev received a five-year prison sentence from a Dutch court last May for money laundering in connection with Tornado Cash. The developer’s lawyers appealed the decision shortly thereafter with the Netherlands’ Court of Appeal s-Hertogenbosch, which pushed back hearings for Pertsev’s appeal late last year.

Dutch prosecutors have alleged 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 Ethereum network Ronin 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 that statute under which charges were brought.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and venture capital firm Paradigm are among organizations that have contributed to Storm’s legal defense. Last month, Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang said the firm’s $1.25 million donation was going to a crucial fight.

On X, he said: “The prosecution’s case threatens to hold software developers criminally liable for the bad acts of third parties, which would have a chilling effect in crypto and beyond.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward