- Crypto personalities are supporting Tornado Cash devs in ongoing legal battle.
- Nym CEO thinks Alexey Pertsev’s 64-month sentence is “radically unfair and unreasonable.”
- Vitalik Buterin donated $113K to support the “Free Alexey and Roman” campaign.
Top crypto personalities are continuing to support the Tornado Cash developers in their legal battles with government authorities.
Nym CEO Harry Halpin criticized a Dutch court’s 64-month sentence of Alexey Pertsev, with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin donating $113,000 in ETH to support the legal defense of Pertsev and Roman Storm.
According to reports, Halpin criticized Pertsev’s sentence, characterizing it as “radically unfair and unreasonable.” He argued that the punishment is not proportional, noting that the court sentenced Pertsev because someone in North Korea used software he developed.
Halpin likened the scenario to jailing Richard Stallman, the Linux developer, because people in North Korea used his product, or punishing Bill Gates for those who may be using stolen copies of Windows.
The Nym CEO expressed his disappointment with the Dutch court for not learning from a World War II scenario where the Nazis exterminated most of the Netherland’s Jewish population due to sophisticated identity tracing systems. Halpin urged Pertsev to appeal the judgment.
In a related development, the “Free Alexey and Roman” campaign is gaining momentum and receiving support from several sectors of the crypto community. A verifiable transaction on Etherscan, the Ethereum blockchain explorer, shows that Vitalik Buterin donated 30 ETH to support the Pertsev and Storm legal defense.
Details of the transaction reveal the transfer originated from Buterin’s wallet and reached a Juicebox address linked to the “Free Alexey and Roman” legal defense fund. A crypto privacy advocacy group created the “Free Alexey and Roman” fund to provide legal representation for the pair.
The fund has raised 593 ETH, equivalent to $2.2 million, as of this writing. The authorities charged both developers with money laundering due to their role in creating the Tornado Cash privacy solution.
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