Arrest Of Alleged Tornado Cash Developer Worth The Sacrifice, Says Kevin O'Leary

Canadian businessman Kevin O'Leary has said that the arrest of an alleged developer of cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash by Dutch authorities was worth the "sacrifice" to introduce a more regulated crypto space.

In a panel discussion on the crypto-related YouTube channel Crypto Banter last week, O'Leary said Tornado Cash and cryptocurrency mixers are part of a "crypto cowboy" culture, which serves as a potential threat to the growth of the industry.

O'Leary added that if investors want more institutional and "big money" to flow into crypto, more rules and regulations need to be introduced while removing risky service providers like Tornado Cash.

A crypto mixer is a platform that mixes cryptocurrencies from different sources so that it is not possible to determine from where those tokens originated. These mixers, mostly Tornado Cash, have been used by hackers and money launderers to launder their money.

After the U.S. imposed sanctions on the virtual currency mixer last week, Alexey Pertsev, a software developer who was allegedly involved with Tornado Cash, was arrested by the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) according to TheBlock.

"At the end of the day, it's okay to arrest that guy. Why? He's messing with the primal forces of regulation. Maybe he feels he's a crypto cowboy, but he just got a whole bunch of arrows in his back. If we have to sacrifice him, that's okay, because we want to have some stability in that institutional capital. That's what we've been saying," O'Leary said.

O'Leary further said that he is "tired of this crypto cowboy crap" and wants to "get involved in a regulated place where we can bring billions of dollars to work."

"Now when you go to Bitcoin 2022 and certainly 2023, the first day they had to open up... just for institutional interest even though none of them owned any Bitcoin. They had 1,500 institutions at the keynote there. I mean it was unbelievable the interest, but they're not going to touch it while the crypto cowboys are riding the fence. We got to get rid of this crap," said O'Leary.

The well-known Shark Tank-famed billionaire was not always a supporter of crypto, calling it "a giant nothing-burger" in 2021. But it seems that he now wants a regulated crypto industry to invest in.