Share this article
Tornado Cash Dev Facing Dutch Charges to Question Chainalysis Data Alleging Criminal Links
Lawyers for the privacy protocol developer facing money laundering charges in the Netherlands have disputed the evidence purporting to prove links to criminal money.
Updated May 24, 2023, 2:44 p.m. Published May 24, 2023, 11:42 a.m.
‘S HERTOGENBOSCH, the Netherlands – Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev will be allowed to cross-question blockchain analytics company Chainalysis as he seeks to clear his name of money laundering charges, a Dutch court ruled on Wednesday.
Pertsev was arrested and detained on the orders of Dutch financial crime enforcers FIOD in August of last year, just days after the privacy protocol was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
OFAC has said Tornado Cash was used by North Korean hackers to process and obscure the source of funds for the regime, but Pertsev’s case has drawn protest from online rights activists who see it as a threat to open-source coding and online privacy.
Pertsev’s lawyer Keith Cheng told CoinDesk outside the courtroom that he was “happy” the court had allowed him to directly ask Chainalysis in writing about its methods.
“You're not going to have a hamburger analyzed at the laboratory… I say let's go to the meat factory,” Cheng said. “Just ask them what the ingredients are.”
FIOD explanations had proved technically unsatisfactory, such as its citing of the existence of “user agents” that don’t exist on the Ethereum blockchain, Cheng said.
Pertsev, who in April was freed to await trial from his home near Amsterdam, has denied charges of money laundering. But, with a further hearing set for September, his case now looks set to drag on into 2024.
On Saturday, Tornado Cash was the subject of an apparently malicious attack that allowed a hacker or group of hackers to seize control of the protocol, causing its TORN token to plunge.
Chainalysis did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Read more: ‘We Are All F****d’: The Developers of Tornado Cash and the Future of Crypto
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
CFTC Launches Digital Assets Pilot Allowing Bitcoin, Ether and USDC as Collateral
Acting Chair Caroline Pham has unveiled a first-of-its-kind U.S. program to permit tokenized collateral in derivatives markets, citing "clear guardrails" for firms.
What to know:
- The CFTC has launched a pilot program allowing BTC, ETH and USDC to be used as collateral in U.S. derivatives markets.
- The program is aimed at approved futures commission merchants and includes strict custody, reporting and oversight requirements.
- The agency also issued updated guidance for tokenized assets and withdrew outdated restrictions following the GENIUS Act.
Top Stories
