Kevin O'Leary On Tornado Cash Creator: 'It's Okay To Arrest That Guy'

Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary believes that the arrest of Tornado Cash TORN/USD developer Alexey Pertsev was a “necessary sacrifice” for the development of the crypto industry.

What Happened: In an interview with Crypto Banter on Aug 13, O’Leary commented on Pertsev’s arrest by Dutch authorities for his role in creating the Ethereum ETH/USD coin mixer Tornado Cash.

Pertsev is accused of aiding in the concealment of illicit financial flows and the facilitation of money laundering via the protocol. "These included funds stolen through hacks by a group believed to be associated with North Korea," the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service stated.

“At the end of the day, it’s okay to arrest that guy. Why? He’s messing with the primal forces of regulation,” said O’Leary.

“Maybe he feels he's a crypto cowboy, but he just got a whole bunch of arrows in his back.”

The Tornado Cash creator’s arrest comes after the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on the privacy solution last week.

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“If we have to sacrifice him, that’s okay, because we want to have some stability in that institutional capital,” said O’Leary.

Following the news, an anonymous Tornado Cash user began sending small increments of ETH to the crypto wallets of famous personalities like Jimmy Fallon and Meta Platforms Inc META CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s sister Randi Zuckerberg. These transactions are now being referred to as “Tornado dusting” and were seemingly intended as a joke, but the sender is likely to face legal action from authorities, if identified.

Price Action: TORN has dropped 50% since news of the sanctions were first announced. At press time, TORN was trading at $13.20, down 8% over the last 24 hours.