Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev has been found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to 64 months in prison! 😡 This travesty of justice in the Dutch courts shows that the crypto crackdown is indeed global. As a recap, Tornado Cash is a smart contract on Ethereum which provides much-needed privacy to users. After it was deployed, anyone could interact with it, and no one could prevent anyone from using it. Because a certain amount of known hacked or sanctioned funds used the protocol, its founders came under threat. Privacy is clearly under attack: 🕵️Samourai Wallet founders arrested 🕵️Wasabi Wallet leaves US, then shuts down 🕵️Coins with privacy functions delisted broadly 🕵️P2P exchanges shut down Should privacy builders be worried? 😟 Yes! But.... While it's a scary and uncertain time for self-sovereign crypto, something from the Dutch prosecutor highlights a more specific threat: "Tornado Cash is more than just smart contracts. It was run like a company." In almost every one of these situations where privacy tools got targeted, as well peer-to-peer exchanges and custodial or semi-custodial Lightning Network services, a single party: 👉Wrote the code 👉Ran the infrastructure (where applicable) 👉Ran the interface 👉Profited from usage 👉Had explicit knowledge of criminal activity (where applicable) Even though we're talking about decentralized, permissionless architecture here, prosecutors have made the case that a single party doing the above together makes them a de facto company, with similar liability. What should privacy builders do?! Obviously, I can't give legal advice, and honestly, no one really can at this point. But just from my observations covered these cases, I'd say it would be a good idea to: ⚡️Avoid doing more than one of the above roles ⚡️Stay anonymous ⚡️Stay outside of the US and Europe ⚡️Build in privacy by default That last one is, in my opinion, our way forward. Privacy is a human right. Privacy is normal. If we build privacy into the way we do everything, especially send money, if it's inexorably linked to the way we act, it can't easily be criminalized. So we need privacy for buying coffee. If we lump all of our privacy hopes into one crypto which is commonly associated with criminals (fair or not) and which is only known for its privacy function, and that crypto gets isolated off of regulated services and well-known use cases, its very use will be considered suspicious. So we need privacy on every blockchain. Uncertain times ahead, but I think we'll make it through. Mass adoption of decentralized, private, sovereign tech will happen. We just have to get through a rough patch first. In the meantime, salute our fallen heroes. Free Tornado Cash.