Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

fiod.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 827 posts

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#521

Post by MrPatan »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #156
Tepix wrote: 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…

> 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…

I hear criminals keep using cash to launder money, but the central banks keep printing cash! Outrageous! Unbelievable behaviour! To jail with the lot, straight away!

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#522

Post by MrPatan »

ribosometronome wrote: post #520
seanw444 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking some leads to all. It's not something that should be compromised on. Gun restrictions won't end until ownership is so legally complex and time consuming that nobody can reasonably do it anymore. Of course it won't be an outright ban. That would never succeed. The frog in boiling water analogy applies here perfectly.

>Taking some leads to all. Like how the Assault Weapons Ban in 94 in the US led to the complete and total restriction of guns in the US.

Like how the Assault Weapons Ban in 94 in the US is leading to the complete and total restriction of guns in the US.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#523

Post by chimeracoder »

wolongong942 wrote: post #133
PeterisP wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC you can't buy a house anonymously in Netherlands, no matter if you pay with cash or not, you'd be required to register the transfer of ownership in the cadastral system, and any real estate deals must be with a written contract that identifies both parties. And I believe the NL tax reporting for large gifts also requires you to identify the donor. In essence, the limitation is not on the method of payment but on…

I doubt you could buy a house anonymously anywhere in the west. Typically all large transactions get auto reported to the financial intelligence unit, with the tax man getting access to the data set as well. If paid via crypto they'd find out when the recipient cashes out, forcing him/her to do source of funds.

> I doubt you could buy a house anonymously anywhere in the west.

In New York, properties are commonly held by LLCs. Transferring ownership of the LLC can be done without any public or auditable record of the transaction.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#524

Post by MrPatan »

sph wrote: post #36
Tepix wrote: 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…

Satoshi has demonstrated inhuman levels of restraint. The only explanation is that he is dead. The others are that he is not human, or that it's a committee defying Hanlon's razor: i.e. not governed by stupidity like most human affairs, but malice. Both are equally improbable.

Yes! Plus Faketoshi most likely waited until the person/people he knew (or strongly suspected) were Satoshi were dead to launch his scams. Less chance of a forum post saying "I'm not Craig Wright".

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#525

Post by croes »

MrPatan wrote: post #522
ribosometronome wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Taking some leads to all. Like how the Assault Weapons Ban in 94 in the US led to the complete and total restriction of guns in the US.

Like how the Assault Weapons Ban in 94 in the US is leading to the complete and total restriction of guns in the US.

I see nothing of a ban

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#526

Post by teakettle42 »

ribosometronome wrote: post #519
teakettle42 wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m not saying you did this, but many people deliberately distort that into “they wanna take all your guns” in bad faith. Well, who is “they”? The majority of activist organizations arguing for restrictions absolutely have an end-goal of banning all guns. Claiming “we just want common sense gun laws” is a far larger bad-faith distortion of the truth than “they wanna take all your guns”. Gun laws proposed by these o…

Discussions on the internet are tons of fun and extremely useful when we just ascribe whatever secret end goal on to organizations that we want. May I try? Actually, the majority of activist organizations are fronts for gun manufacturers to create a fear of them being regulated away to help push a buy-now mentality. claiming otherwise is bad faith distortion of reality!

Nobody (other than you, with that intentionally ridiculous claim) is ascribing a secret end goal; their goals are quite plainly articulated.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#527

Post by ok123456 »

april_22 wrote: post #482
closewith wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law also applies to barter with equivalent Euro thresholds, so cryptocurrencies aren't excluded. Anyway, the point stands, financial privacy (from the State, at least) is not a feature of life in the Netherlands (or anywhere in the EU, with AML3/4/5/6).

But wasn't the whole point of cryptocurrencies to be anonymus? or am I missing something here?

Non-privacy coins are about as anonymous as an IP address. Use monero.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#528

Post by flarex »

nootropicat wrote: post #247
diogenes1 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

true. none of smart contract blockchains today are actually a practical tool till lightclients that run on smartphones are mainstream

I don't think they are going to ever be mainstream. Even a lightnode that only downloads headers is going to eat up battery fast. If a centralized service works for you, what's the point? What's necessary is to allow actually persecuted people to run nodes on their computers.

Modern light clients don't use that much battery and are optimised for mobile usage. They even have very short start times making use of snapshotting and back filling headers i.e. you ask all nodes on the network that latest snapshot header close to the head and start from there working back towards genesis. This can be even faster than using an RPC and is far more decentralised.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#529

Post by loceng »

babypuncher wrote: post #513
seanw444 wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking some leads to all. It's not something that should be compromised on. Gun restrictions won't end until ownership is so legally complex and time consuming that nobody can reasonably do it anymore. Of course it won't be an outright ban. That would never succeed. The frog in boiling water analogy applies here perfectly.

Would that really be a bad thing? Most other developed nations seem to get by fine with very strict rules on gun ownership, and coincidentally they have far lower rates for gun violence. When something has far more capacity for harm than practical utility, it makes sense to regulate the crap out of it. Most people buying AR-15s in the US are not buying them to keep pests off their farm.

Here's a comedic piece by Awaken with JP, where he points out many historical events where within ~2-10 years of a government taking the guns away from the population then genocide occurred: "Why Guns Must Be Banned Now!" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbkNIoJ-9jY

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#530

Post by jshen »

MrPatan wrote: post #521
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #156

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…

I hear criminals keep using cash to launder money, but the central banks keep printing cash! Outrageous! Unbelievable behaviour! To jail with the lot, straight away!

The vast majority of cash is used for legitimate purposes, the same is not true of tornado cash. They are not remotely in the same ball park.
Post reply on HN