In the eye of the Tornado, a deep dive into the Alex Pertsev "pre" trial. The Case for Freedom

Transcript

hello everyone thank you so much for being here for this talk thank you eth Prague for having me and allowing the space to have these really important discussions and today it's my honor to present to you the pre-trial of Alexi perceive and the tornado cash case from the Netherlands perspective I'm Eleanor I'm the founder of cryptic canal and Alexi burtsev for some reason has impacted my life enormously in the last year I'm the the local ecosystem Community manager Meetup organizer

and something happened on my turf this man Alexi perceive a Russian Netherlands based software developer was arrested in the Netherlands on my turf on a place where I've been advocating for cryptocurrency and privacy and censorship resistance for the last six years he is many of you is everyone that I've welcomed at meetups people were wondering why are you sticking out for this man that you don't know and I said he reminds me of everyone that I've seen in the space I don't need to know the man I could see his work I could see his past talks at devconnect and I guess if you show me

what you work on I can figure out a little bit of Who You Are and he built something incredible him but also many other people have built something called Tornado cash tornado cash is a decentralized non-custodial smart contract mixer enabling privacy for all they built something fantastic something that could give this unique thing that we should pres that we should consider most precious in the world especially in our Cypher Punk era this is a tool that is

automated there's no maintenance after all this talk today and everything that happened in the last year the code is still running and people can still use it this is what I would call a public good some will argue the opposite but enabling Financial privacy for everyone when I judge someone by their commits and what they've done and contributing to open source development is something that I could stand by and support LX E4 this QR code leads to a dune dashboard um it's not a little bit this provided utility for a lot of people

seven billion 7.6 billion worth of eth were processed through tornado cash since 2019. not a not a small feat you know we usually look at projects and we want to see utility we want to see something that provides a service for all that solves a problem tornado cash did and continued continues to do that today I spoke about myself about Alexi about what he built and now there's two other entities in the story The ofac and the Fiat two entities that have started to work together or have worked

together for many years but in this case they were the prosecuting agents uh and what happened and what happened in the next couple of months so oh nice pictures 8th of August the ofax sanctions the tornado cash contracts weird unconstitutional they're not supposed to do that coin Center coinbase and others have started and filed lawsuits against ofac and their decision and for now it's still in the making two days later the Fiat arrests Alexi

burtsev in Amsterdam in the Netherlands connected not connected we're all led to just speculate ten days later I organized the protest I don't say I the community organizes the protest in Amsterdam to make a point to stand for Alexi and then follows a few months of confusing situation where we have to start learning about the law and we have to start figuring out how this is even possible why this is happening and I attend and promote the three next Pro for my hearings to this case we didn't understand what was going on

what is a pro forma how can he be jailed there are no charges I start reaching out to other privacy advocates in the Netherlands they won't speak they won't take a stance because their charges aren't made public there's this opacity this control of the narrative which prevents us as a community but also the larger world to understand what is going on and why this man is sitting in jail 260 days that's what they took from him on the 26th of April he's released it was a surprise I was at the hearing I thought it was going to be a hearing kind of as usual what changed we come back from the recess

he spoke Dutch for the first time or made some jokes in the court which was really endearing and it felt like he was standing up for himself and we come back from the recess and the judge is reading conditions of release in Dutch okay I'm not Dutch so it's like but I'm I think I'm understanding what's happening and he's going to be released under conditions so he's at that point not considered a Flight Risk anymore what changed not much the prosecution hadn't brought any new arguments we hadn't heard any new big argument or big reason for his release but he's out it was also on King's Day which felt a bit ironic for having stared at the king

for a few months in that courtroom there's always a portrait behind and then on King's day he's released and he can finally be at home pictures of the protest as you can see oh not on those pictures but a lot of the mark the not the marketing but the the narrative was that we thought that this was an attack on open software it is but in the Netherlands they want to make it about something else that's the chilling effect that's what they did they put a man in jail for 260 days eight months 17 days 6 240 hours think about that that's what they did that's the attack that's the fear that's

what they wanted us to all think what did he do he did something wrong right they wouldn't put someone in jail for that amount of time if he was innocent foreign I stand here in front of all of you today because I believe that Financial privacy is a human right that it is a Cornerstone of this new monetary system that we're building here at East Prague but here for the last 12 years and more we stand on the shoulders of The Cypher punks and of Builders of Open Source development that have enabled us today to just sit around enjoy ourselves have coffee and hack but

also give Financial privacy to all is this a trial by proxy well I don't know um it's a question mark ofac Fiat with this case have been the same in the U.S could they have made could they have jailed him with the reaction been different open source code is Free Speech question mark it is in the states but in the Netherlands it isn't is that the reason Alexi was jailed in the Netherlands what is happening in the U.S what is

this parallel these two different legal systems that are coming out the same problem I want to make the case for privacy software Developers there are Builders there are not Financial criminals they are dreamers they want to make a difference they want to solve problems do not come after them for building tools we heard this a lot tornado cash is a tool just like a habit manufacturer a knife manufacturer a hammer or knife can be used in very different situation just like tornado caches but you don't want

to decide when and how it can be used you want to make sure that anybody at any time can access that Financial privacy the next speaker that's going to be standing on the stage is going to talk about Iran is very important for places that need that Financial privacy I take it for granted sometimes I live in the Netherlands I live in a place where Fiat is well it's not as bad as in other places but there's many cases when privacy is is fundamental for the receiver for the for the person sending it as well on both cases it's actually something that the Fiat

system has going on okay not in Switzerland anymore we gave up on the Privacy banking sector but we have transparent systems in cryptocurrency and that's beautiful but we also need to cater for privacy those things can go hand in hand and we need to build that that future together and enable those tools for everyone a few weird disclaimers can't even say that can't even believe that this narrative has to be You Know spoken at least is not an FSB agent how dare they try to spin those weird Narrative of a mean Russian person terrible no Criminal Intent he stood on stages he was public

he never hid they implemented a compliance tool allowing anybody that needed to justify when they took funds out of tornado cash that they were they weren't part of a certain set of transaction the Bitcoin mixer thing is a kind of a weird thing where there's jurisprudence against certain Bitcoin mixers which the prosecution is using but it's very different and I know that in these processes it's really difficult we're asking the non-crypto world to understand us and say hey that thing was very different we know that in your mind it's the same same it's just another tumbler for cryptocurrencies but one is centralized one has a very specific team and all their marketing was super weird

and like catering for criminals basically the other one is using smart contract fully automated non-custodial very different and when we're trying when we're talking to regular people to normal institutionals to the judge to the lawyers and we're educating them it's it's really hard but basically we're trying to say the jurisprudence that you have is wrong forking is freedom I love forking I think forking is awesome this is why code works this is why we have this beautiful open source software environment was one of the first of that magnitude

of that size of that impact but it's going to live on well one it lives on on itself right now okay it had some little issues recently it did you know but that's another story but there's other things that are being built today other privacy tools that are going to enable others to have this financial privacy just to name a few privacy protocols I mean mentioned it at ethnam about self-sovereign anonymity there's another team chain way that's building proof of innocence and other privacy protocol that are working on this and making sure that the uses of Tomorrow can enjoy what the users of yesterday had and it's not easy to build these things

I want to talk about the trial because all of this noise these 260 days everything that happened it's just the beginning and that's I think that was the most chilling effect is that there's still uncertainty we still don't know the outcome it's still in the making it seems that the case in the Netherlands is going to focus on three things interfaces ancillary contracts and the relay your system so as you can see it's gonna surround more technical aspects of tornado cash they're not going to focus on the smart contracts we'll have to live it and for now this

is still a developing case it just leaves more uncertainty until then lxc can stay at home stay in the Netherlands but he's not allowed to to leave the country all of you here all of you Builders software developers marketeers I can't really see you but I know that you're you're here everybody listening at home is well on the live stream this is our job we need to counter this chilling effect just like in the States they're they're fighting it through lawsuits questioning what of fact did treasuring the the treasury Department we need more education we need more

awareness people need to understand what we're building and these wonderful walls this is something that we need to share that we need to spread I know that I stand in for I'm kind of preaching to the choir here right but I want to encourage all of you to expend even your your networks wherever you live wherever you are it's never too late to start a meet up it's never too late to just gather people around you and bring more attention to this and to what we're building it really matters I think if there was more awareness of our space more understanding of what we're building uh maybe Alexi would not have spent 260 days in jail it's it's not easy as well I I get that

but if you have any questions just just ask me we're here because we want to build privacy and transparency and censorship resistance for all we want to make sure that transactions can go through that people can speak that people can exchange money is expressing yourself and we have it now we have it now but we need to keep working on it we need to keep building and it's going to take an army and part of it is here in East Prague but others around the world are working on this as well this is why we are we need to build resiliency and make sure that nothing can happen to the code that's why the moments GitHub took down

the channel to cash code a professor of John Hopkins I believe re-uploaded it again this is why we need to build resilience within the products Alexi has become a martyr you know one no one wants to become a martyr no one decides to do that no one wants to be that but in a way he's now representing the sort of this Cornerstone that we're going through in crypto where we have to be very careful we always I think we always wanted to believe that we'd just be like left alone and that it'd be all fine you know first they ignored us we were all crazy anyways we were too small then they laughed at us you know it's

all that crazy gambling whatever they're just weirdos and I think it's it's safe to say that we're now in the attack phase it's not it's not funny anymore and everything we've built for the last 12 years is worth it it's worth all of you here are building something so we need to win we need to win and we need to keep fighting QR code to support the case you can use tornado cash before or after I believe that using cryptocurrencies is a political statement thank you Ethan for having me and Eve Prague for having me thank you

I've been told that I can take questions from the audience or from the live stream does anybody have a question yes sorry I spoiled it yeah has he been charged yes yes he has been charged um in the Netherlands the court proceedings don't have to be public so it's always been sort of a mixed match of us as audience participants to sort of try to recollect as much as what has been going on I've been told by his lawyer that the at his last hearing so the one where he was

being where we got the conditions for his release at 9 00 am we had the court hearing and at 7 pm the night before the prosecution emailed the charges you know giving him his lawyer plenty of time to you know prepare so yes the charges have been made to him public to his lawyer not to us it's up to his lawyer to Alexi to decide uh what type of communication they want to give and share for the rest of us another question what do what do Dutch what do Dutch

lawyers think about the space or the case yeah it's weird um from what I've heard it was difficult to hire Dutch lawyers even privacy Advocates who did not want to touch the case I think the problem here is that if you just take the headlines and you put those three words that the media has been just repeating over and over which is you know Russian crypto North Korea no one really wants to be associated with that and that has been you know for that that has been sort of this this all these unwanted environment and and aspects of the case that have sort of played

against him but I've heard other legal experts say well it's normal because in the Netherlands we have one of the most encompassing money laundering laws it's very much like oh if you've barely were aware or barely even facilitated or no you don't even have to do it you can be prosecuted for it I feel like it's a stretch here what they're what they're pulling off but we'll have to see thank you for the question all right thank you so so much everyone

enjoy the rest of Youth Prague I'll be around [Applause] [Music]