Sacrificing Tornado Cash Is Worth It, Kevin O’Leary Says

Sacrificing Tornado Cash is worth it according to Kevin O’Leary, who said that more regulation is needed and “crypto cowboys” like Alexey Pertsev, the developer of Tornado Cash, should be sacrificed to provide stability to institutional inflows.

Shark Tank presenter and wealthy venture investor Kevin O’Leary said that Tornado Cash and similar services are blocking genuine institutional money from entering the industry, therefore cracking down on crypto apps that mess with the primordial forces of regulation is required.

Sacrificing Tornado Cash Is Worth It

O’Leary, also known as Mr. Wonderful, made the claim that tools like the Ethereum-based cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash are examples of a “crypto cowboy” attitude that has no place in the sector during a debate on Crypto Banter on Saturday.

Instead, Kevin O’Leary believes that the crypto industry needs a “rules-based environment” so that it can draw in real institutional capital. A big part of that regulation has to be target protocols like Tornado Cash, which allow users to conduct anonymous transactions and are usually used for illegal activity.

O’Leary maintained his position throughout the conversation on the detention of Alexey Pertsev, the man who created Tornado Cash, saying:

“At the end of the day, it’s okay to arrest that guy. Why? He’s messing with the primal forces of regulation […] If we have to sacrifice him, that’s okay, because we want to have some stability in that institutional capital.”

“I think we’re getting to that stage now. Maybe we’re in the third or fourth inning towards that, but I’m tired of this crypto cowboy crap. I want to get involved in a regulated place where we can bring billions of dollars to work. I don’t need to be a crypto cowboy, and I don’t want to be one because I work in the regulated world.”

Others Disagree

But O’Leary’s viewpoint is not shared by all. Many prominent crypto personalities who support the necessity for fundamental privacy rights on decentralized networks were outraged by the sanctions imposed on Tornado Cash by the US government and they did not stand idly by. Many of them jumped at the chance to defend the need for basic privacy rights on decentralized networks.

Stefan George, a Gnosis co-founder, was one of those speaking in favor of pro-Tornado Cash arguments. He said that the protocol gives Ethereum “much-needed anonymity” and that creating open-source software should to be viewed as “an expression of free speech.”

2/ The investigation of Zimmermann was closed after several years without filing criminal charges against him.

Meanwhile Zimmermann "decentralized" the knowledge by publishing the entire source code of PGP in a mass-printed book circumventing regulations.

— Stefan George (@StefanDGeorge) August 12, 2022

The removal of Tornado Cash’s GitHub account, according to Chainlink Lead Developer Advocate Patrick Collins, is far worse than penalizing a website since code is speech, and by doing this, the U.S. Treasury is infringing on the first amendment.