Tornado Cash developer Alex Pertsev tweets for first time following prison release

Quick Take

  • Tornado Cash developer Alex Pertsev has returned to Twitter following his release from prison in the Netherlands.
  • “Sorry I was afk for a while, what did I miss?” he wrote. 

Alex Pertsev, the Tornado Cash developer arrested in August 2022, is back on Twitter.

Pertsev was released from prison on April 26, as previously reported by The Block, and is subject to ankle bracelet monitoring. The Dutch courts had shot down previous efforts to secure Pertsev's release. 

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Pertsev was arrested in the days after the U.S. government sanctioned Tornado Cash, an Ethereum-based transaction mixer frequently used to launder stolen coins. 

Law enforcement authorities worldwide have long targeted transaction mixers and most recently seized $46 million in bitcoin as part of an operation against a service called ChipMixer

Pertsev's arrest and subsequent incarceration drew some criticism on the grounds that Pertsev shouldn't be penalized for developing open-source code. The incident also raised questions about the future of law enforcement actions against distributed protocols like Tornado Cash.


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Editor

To contact the editor of this story:
Larry DiTore at
[email protected]