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Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

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Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#271
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about someone with inhuman self-control, and GP is talking about someone that just can't keep his mouth shut and loves being in the spotlight. If the genesis block did contain the image of a trollface (or any other 2008-era meme) instead of "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on Brink of Second Bailout for Banks", I could entertain this theory.

It's easy to retain self control when you already want for literally nothing.

Well, not for Elon Musk.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#272
post #29

Wow, just wow. Am i alone in thinking this is not going to fly if all he did was write some software that helps with your financial anonymity? There must be more. Perhaps he also deployed it? That would be a different story. The article is quite murky in that regard. Perhaps they don't know yet. In there is an interesting paragraph explaining what Tornado Cash is: … The ( criminal ) origin of the cryptocurrencies is…

Everyone keeps mentioning how "it's why criminals use cash, so there's no point in banning this, as they'll just resort to using cash." But they must fail to notice that various governments of the world are trying to implement a trackable digital currency to replace cash. They don't even like cash either.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#273

A lot of the apologists for this are making arguments along the lines of "being decentralized doesn't make you exempt from the rules" or "imagine if a bank laundered this much money". The problem is it doesn't make sense to treat protocols like companies. And it definitely doesn't make sense to treat protocol devs as if they were the executives of those companies. The CEO of a bank and the lead dev of a protocol have…

My understanding is that the developers get a cut of the money that's laundered through tornado.cash

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#274

A lot of the apologists for this are making arguments along the lines of "being decentralized doesn't make you exempt from the rules" or "imagine if a bank laundered this much money". The problem is it doesn't make sense to treat protocols like companies. And it definitely doesn't make sense to treat protocol devs as if they were the executives of those companies. The CEO of a bank and the lead dev of a protocol have…

Isn't this kind of like the dev of SMTP getting arrested because two people committed a crime by communicating through email?

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually when there’s an ongoing investigation the default is for police to not release too much information to avoid jeopardising the investigation, then release all the info when the investigation is complete. It’s frustrating and often a principle that’s applied too broadly, but I do understand the reasoning behind it.

I agree they usually withhold details of the case. But I don't think they would flat-out lie about the charges being brought.

> But I don't think they would flat-out lie about the charges being brought.

I dunno, there's a pretty big trend going on right now of producing tv shows / prodcasts about how ineffective (with a strong hint of incompentence) cops can be.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it is always under the guise of anti-money laundering, anti-terrorism or whatever other reason they can find to excuse their inexcusable actions. Take mass government surveillance for example.

HN in its current avatar would probably cheer on if the Patriot Act was enacted today. Been on this site for a decade. Never seen it this filled with Big Gov and Big Tech apologists.

So we're all suppose to become techno-anarchists? HN has a great balance of both, it's just mostly the crypto-obsessed that decry government encroachment because they're still struggling to find a useful purpose for the technology before they get regulated.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#277
post #166

There’s a big legal distinction whether the developers are collecting fees from operation of the service, since that’s very different from merely developing open source software. I’m curious how this develops > It is suspected that persons behind this organisation have made large-scale profits from these transactions.

There is no fee paid to the developer when it comes to Tornado Cash, although there is the TORN token, which is a "governance" token.

Are holders of the "governance" token liable in any way?

Like I know the scam of governance tokens is kinda "you control / own part it it, sorta" even though a lot of them don't do anything.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am i alone in thinking this is not going to fly if all he did was write some software that helps with your financial anonymity? Probably. That said, he is arrested under Dutch law. We have no evidence this is tied to U.S. sanctions. As others mention, Dutch law restricts cash transactions in ways U.S. law does not. Also, in June—when the link says they began the investigation—it was publicly known Tornado was being…

> Also, in June—when the link says they began the investigation—it was publicly known Tornado was being used to launder money. If the developer kept working on it, they knew what they were doing. People keep saying this in this thread. Is everyone at WhatsApp also guilty of a crime for continuing to work on WhatsApp even though they know the Taliban uses it for communication?

As usual, it's an argument for harming people that produce legitimately useful things that criminals pervert. It's the same argument people make for banning guns in the US.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been a series of previous stories about North Korean state hackers using it to launder proceeds from known hacks. This didn’t happen with no lead up or context

Why are we not targeting the hackers instead of privacy advocates? Should we arrest the Tor developers because North Koreans use Tor?

Quite hard to target hackers inside a hostile country like NK.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#280
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Helping criminals launder money is not a human right.

I would challenge you to prove that they actively advertised their service as such. Stop spreading misinformation.

If our legal system was as dense as this statement, the world would be ran by criminals.
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