On Tuesday a Dutch court sentenced the programmer Alexey Pertsev to five years in prison. The court found him guilty of money laundering because the "Tornado Cash" software he developed enables criminals to carry out completely anonymous and untraceable crypto transactions (so-called "crypto mixer")
And see, there’s where the problem comes in. He never actually took the currency from the smart contract itself. In fact, it is still online and being used as of this day. And he is getting none of the currency just like he got none of the currency before. What they are going after him for is creating a front-end user interface to access the contract. I believe they did take a fee from that user interface since it made it simpler than interacting with the contract directly. The problem is that they are saying that by taking fees from that user interface, he is money laundering, but not everybody who used that user interface was using it for money laundering. A famous example is the creator of Ethereum used it to donate to Ukraine.
Even had the front end website not been running, that money would have still been laundered. I heard an explanation of it earlier that was saying something to the effect of, imagine a door at the edge of a field. There is no walls, there is no nothing else, just a door at the edge of a field. Anybody can come into that field and use it whenever they wish. Putting a lock on the door will not keep people out of the field. They can just walk in wherever the door isn’t.
He can write the code. He can release the source. Nothing is illegal until he takes currency.
And see, there’s where the problem comes in. He never actually took the currency from the smart contract itself. In fact, it is still online and being used as of this day. And he is getting none of the currency just like he got none of the currency before. What they are going after him for is creating a front-end user interface to access the contract. I believe they did take a fee from that user interface since it made it simpler than interacting with the contract directly. The problem is that they are saying that by taking fees from that user interface, he is money laundering, but not everybody who used that user interface was using it for money laundering. A famous example is the creator of Ethereum used it to donate to Ukraine.
He’s taking a fee in order to launder your money.
Even had the front end website not been running, that money would have still been laundered. I heard an explanation of it earlier that was saying something to the effect of, imagine a door at the edge of a field. There is no walls, there is no nothing else, just a door at the edge of a field. Anybody can come into that field and use it whenever they wish. Putting a lock on the door will not keep people out of the field. They can just walk in wherever the door isn’t.