# Joachim Schwerin & Judith De Boer | Web3Privacy Now @ ETHDam 2025

- Channel: [Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress](https://streameth.org/ethereum-cypherpunk-congress)
- Date: 2025-10-09
- Duration: 16:55
- Topics: privacy, right, legal, de boer, schwarim, european commission, advocate, cryptography, crypto, cypherpunk, web3, web3privacy now, tech, ethical tech, Education
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-xwgTfo39u4M
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwgTfo39u4M

## Description

From the Tornado Cash case to the importance of privacy as a human right — how can we build trust between tech and lawmakers? Can Europe lead a Digital Renaissance?

On these topics, we interviewed Joachim Schwerin, Principal Economist at the European Commission, and Judith de Boer, Partner at Hertoghs Advocaten, during ETHDam 2025 (https://www.cryptocanal.org/).

Digital Freedom Declaration: https://digitalfreedom.page/

Joachim Schwerin: https://www.digitalsme.eu/members/joachimschwerin/
Judith de Boer: https://chambers.com/lawyer/judith-de-boer-europe-7:26682452

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Filmed by Babypro: https://babypro.art
Edited by Babypro and BabyBit Production ( https://federicomarchi.com )

Web3Privacy Now : https://web3privacy.info

## Transcript

[Music] Very nice to be here. My name is Yarim Shvarin, principal economist in the unit in the European Commission that is responsible for, as we call it, responsible business conduct. I've been in the space for more than two decades now working on industrial policy, competition policy, finance, and now the whole trajectory from peer-to-peer platforms, fintech, blockchain, crypto tokenization, you name it. My responsibility is all sorts of blockchain policy for the real economy, but I'm also involved in the financial domain. I've contributed to the Mika regulation, to the proposal on the digital euro and other things. And what I'm doing now at the moment is mostly looking into the cooperative sector that includes uh Dows but also offline uh the self-organization of communities which of course to me is the essence of what we are having in web 3 and very happy to have the discussion here today. I am Judith Bour. I'm a lawyer and partner at Hertovata. I specialize in white collar crime. Uh mostly doing money laundering cases, corruption cases, uh and cyber [Music] crime is a unique one because I think it's the first case in which a developer is held responsible for a completely decentralized tool. uh and that is quite unique and this case is not just going on here it's also going on in the US of course but uh yeah in that respect to cash is a really unique case um and if you're asking about the struggles I think this case is about new technologies and innovation and we're trying to fit it in into legal concepts and you need to translate those legal or innovation ations into this legal concept and it always not always fits. Um so we have a lot of translating to do basically and giving explanations of what it is and what it does. To give you an example, uh the public prosecution service sees the tool itself more as a service. Uh and then that is completely different of how you see a decentralized smart contract that is immutable. So these are the discussions we are having uh in court uh about what it actually is. Uh so that are is an example of the struggles we are facing. [Music] Privacy is an absolute fundamental right in all aspects that we have in a society which is also why privacy is so important in our legislation. Look at the general data protection regulation where basically the starting point for example for the data economy is that all data belong to the individual and it is the individual's choice whether or not to release that data for purposes by others and that is just a reflection of the broader principles that have always existed in our society. So we at times have to recall the fundamental of what our society and our economies look like. We discuss privacy. We can also discuss self-organization and decentralization. People in Europe have self-organized themselves throughout our history because we are living in communities where in the past we could only build trust in local communities. Now we have the technology with blockchain where we can scale that safely until the global level and be at the same time transparent and secure but also protecting our data and information with privacy enhancing tools. And that is not something new that needs new rules. But it is just a progression of the fundamentals of our rules that have always been there. Which is also why in my opinion it is not for public entities or courts to completely reinvent the wheel by just saying now we have these tools so how should we deal with them but it is something that has grown in the past where we had never before a situation where you have a tool that is publicly available like with open-source court that then the liability for a misuse of the tool is not for the user of the tool But for that person that has created the tool that is unthinkable in the real economy where you have a car or a knife whatever is being built and then abused by someone. But in the digital domain, especially in finance, suddenly appears this new idea of holding the creator responsible, which is not completely misguided from a conceptual perspective, but it is also extremely negative for innovation and progress in our societies. It sets a very negative precedent. It has a chilling effect on people building stuff. But it is also absolutely in contradiction to everything that we are doing in the data economy. What I would like to add to this is that in this tornado cash case you see basically the clash between the importance of privacy but that it it is basically ignored uh because they think KYC and KYT is more important even when you're not reg regulated to do so. And that clash of the the the wanting to be to trace everything and privacy is really coming forward in this case. I think there are a number of ways to do that. The first is, and therefore I'm grateful for your question, actually the recognition that we do not have some obscure enemy out there that takes the form of an organization or a court or whatever, but these organizations consist themselves of people that have opinions, have experiences, have past knowledge. And what we need to do when we see these fastmoving technologies is that first of all we have to translate these developments into simple concepts and language that can be understood by everyone so that a dialogue is possible. I would personally take the opinion that no one that probably is involved in this tornado cash issue regardless on what side is a sort of negative individual that wants to do harm. I truly believe that these people are doing the best job according to their opinion that they can do to do the right thing. But we all starting from different experiences and directions and have to come together in a certain place. So the semantics, the language, the cooperation is very important. But also an understanding indeed that in a legal system as with an economic or technology system, there are certain developments that led to this point. And that is the same thing here. People are not building privacy-enhancing technologies because they are from the outset inherently criminal but because they actually take seriously what we as the public sector have been saying namely that privacy is the key for liberal uh conduct in a society that we want to have data protection that we think that when on the one hand side in a blockchain you have the transparency and immutability of the data that you need to set something against that by not only having these effects but still protecting your personal sphere including transactions that are considered as reasonable. I'll come to that and therefore this is not a negative thing in itself but actually a positive thing that takes seriously of what we're saying and if you take this approach which I can understand that there are certain risks that you would like to prevent please orient yourself at the precedents that you have which exist and I take here cash as an example if we accept that cash uh for moneyaundering purposes is treated differently for transaction actions higher and lower than €10,000 where we know that cash is the number one transaction mechanism for money laundering. When it goes to the crypto space, there is no argument whatsoever that you bring forward suddenly to go even to the smallest amount and just criminalize it because it has run through a mixer. That is something that is out of balance with every principle that we stand for in the public sector. And therefore we would have to harmonize the rules that are across the economy because at the end of the day in the digital economy you have a convergence of all types of sectors and it cannot be that people now suddenly see the opportunity of hey we have this case in the digital economy and now we fundamentally change the rules that we have applied all the time in the past. That's the wrong approach. Well, the importance of understanding each other is that if you take the time to explain things and explain things in a nuanced way and that you make it understandable for people, you kind of realized that you actually do understand each other. You're not far from each other uh in any way. Uh but sometimes you have to bridge that gap. Uh and that takes time. Uh and and hopefully the tech people uh have the patience with with us uh as lawyers to to to explain it and over maybe over and over again, but that we really get it and then I do think we find our common ground. [Music] The digital freedom declaration is a manifesto uh that brings together like-minded people from the private and the public sectors basically from throughout our society that want to re-emphasize the importance of privacy. as a fundamental value. But it should not only be seen in an activist way of saying that hey this is privacy this is important but the declaration explains why privacy has merits for society far beyond blockchain and indeed far beyond any technology. So privacy is something that not only citizens want to protect their current life situation and their data. Business is needed for example to protect business secrets or to ensure that competitors are not in the full knowledge of uh information for example when they are engaging with new partners in certain pilot projects etc that are not there for the market which is actually why a lot of traditional companies like also governments are using obfuscation technologies like mixers in a very legitimate and positive way because it is on privacy but most fundamentally of all that these uh rights especially privacy are absolutely essential to give a safe space for developers of digital technologies to be innovative to create new solutions and to scale their businesses. We talked the whole day in Europe about competitiveness, about improving the context for our businesses to have more legal certainty to grow, to be really addressing the demands of our societies. And then at the same time we create a massive uncertainty in fact threatening with jail for people that are developing tools that actually protect the same rights that in our Sunday speeches we call as fundamentally important for our society and there's a disbalance here. So this has nothing to do with crypto. This is nothing to do with blockchain. It is the same problem in AI and every sort of technology. basically means that when you are active to develop something which is a tool and then you give it away, you should get praise because you add more choice, you add some value. And it is still perfectly possible for everyone who thinks that these tools can be misused to develop a legal framework for this. But the rules have to be clear from the outset not to really endanger not only the professional career but actually destroying the lives of the concrete people that are in a good faith. actually doing what people want them to do, namely innovate. And I think that's why the the declaration also really supportive in this case because legal certainty is one of the basic principles of criminal law. You need to know what the law is before you can be held responsible for it. And with privacy enhancing technology, there is no regulation. Uh there are no KYC or or KYT rules at this moment in time. and then to find in a judgment saying that a court well you have not implemented the these rules and nobody said that they should be implemented. So, it's taking a step back and just saying, "Okay, maybe it should be regulated. That's not up to me." But at least for criminal law purposes, be clear in your law and regulation. [Music] I would completely agree to this uh because one very strong point that you imply when you mean Europe is that every piece of our rules is a compromise between 27 countries where there has been all sorts of dialogues before and every argument has been considered in all the various directions before. So I'm not saying that every piece of output is the ideal one as every one of us could see individually, but it is the result of a democratic process and certainly not something that has just passed through because there is a short-term window of opportunity for a certain government that wants to do something and does it without considering the repercussions. Our perception in Europe is that nearly everyone I talk to whether it's citizens or enterprises they want to have clear roots. People are very focused to be risk averse and know what are the legal opportunities and what is prohibited. So we're certainly not saying this is anarchy, but we're saying you need to take your own process seriously by giving people enough asurances and guidance by understanding what are actually the rules in place. The worst situation is that you tell people that hey in our nice speeches we want you to do something but when you do something we are not sure whether it's legal or not and we will find someone randomly who might sort this out whether it's actually a criminal act or not. This is the moment where the whole system would collapse and we would do precisely the opposite of what we want to do. I'm not sure if I have anything to add to that from a criminal perspective. Thank you very much. I'm deeply grateful. We will make the best out of this 10 minutes together. Thank you so much. No, thank you. [Music]