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Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

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Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#531

Post by yuan43 »

The effect of all of this nonsense will to drive developers into pseudonymity. It won't solve the "problem" of developers building privacy tools. It won't stop experimentation with shitcoins. But it will eliminate the phenomenon of the Buterin-style project lead and "core developer".

The bullseye has been painted. And now those who have reaped the benefits of fame will come to know why Satoshi concluded that it was a trap to be avoided. The legal pressure that will be brought to bear on the Ethereum foundation to enact various changes will be enormous and never-ending.

It doesn't matter whether or not this case flies. That will take many years to sort out. In the meantime, rational actors will do the rational thing. Everyone else will receive summons and indictments.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#532

Post by flarex »

diogenes1 wrote: post #170
dannyw wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Decentralization really is starting to matter. It's a wake up call for a lot of developers in this space, that pragmatic shortcuts (e.g. centralized RPCs, centralized stablecoins like USDC) have disadvantages that may no longer outweigh the advantages.

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

Some ecosystems have made significant progress on in browser and mobile light clients. For example: https://github.com/paritytech/substrate-connect/

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#533

Post by notch656a »

JohnHaugeland wrote: post #281
balfirevic wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But this is a tool whose specific purpose it is to make it difficult to track illegal transactions. What's the difference between that and a tool whose specific purpose is to make it difficult to track transactions in general?

I don't see this as a meaningful split. I would react the same way to someone trying to get me to define the difference between an assault rifle and a hunting rifle. In the context of an AR-47, it's an irrelevant, time wasting question.

>difference between an assault rifle and a hunting rifle.

>In the context of an AR-47

LMAO, please tell me this is sarcasm. This is the actual fudd meme of someone mixing up AK-47 and AR.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#534

Post by MrPatan »

owens99 wrote: post #518
izzytcp wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I invested a lot of time on his identity, not for anything just because I was bored and curious. I highly suspect it’s Adam Back and he currently sits in a tax haven, Malta.

Very unlikely. Hal Finney is the more likely candidate. Adam is/was not a good programmer like Satoshi was. Satoshi was in favor of alt coins in Adam is notoriously against them. "Adam put enough effort into proclaiming that Bitcoin was based on the concept of HashCash that, if he was Satoshi, Satoshi would have given HashCash more credit." - Another HN User. Satoshi had a positive attitude and Adam is notoriously un…

I also think living somewhere he could have seen Dorian Nakamoto's name is a very, very strong pointer towards Finney.

It may seem like a dumb opsec mistake to pick a name from your town, but lets remember, at that point we're talking about launching a cool experiment about digital money worth $0, not about picking a pseudonym as the figurehead of a project worth a trillion dollars.

After reading an article about it, I do wonder about Len Sassaman, who apparently fits Satoshi's timezone and "accent" better. It could even have been both of them collaborating...

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#535

Post by Scoundreller »

zmgsabst wrote: post #516
arcticbull wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Of course not, because intent matters. The team at WhatsApp works super hard to keep people who shouldn't be using it off the platform, so that everyone else can derive use and enjoyment. If WhatsApp was built as a platform to facilitate terrorist communication you're damn r…

What if I don’t want my employer knowing I spent my BTC/ETH/etc on a porn website — so I want a way to disassociate the payment address they know from my spending account? …or guns, alcohol, abortions, etc. People have a need for privacy and disassociating spending from receiving for perfectly normal and legal reasons.

Or you don’t want your plumber knowing your payment came from your porn industry work.

Or someone knowing you book a lot of hotels and flights, so your home must be empty a lot.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#536

Post by vorpalhex »

diogenes1 wrote: post #464
jiggawatts wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or arresting Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, or Leonard Adleman for helping criminals hide their communications from law enforcement.

this right here, is the crux of the argument

If they were getting a cut from whenever illegal activities were done.. maybe.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#537

Post by louwrentius »

yokem55 wrote: post #242
louwrentius wrote: post #74

He wasn’t just developing software, he seems to also been involved with operating the Tornado mixer service, thus enabling / facilitating money laundering and evasion of sanctions.

The 'service' is a contract on the chain. It exists and operates because thousands of other people are running nodes that run that chain. It still works today if you access the static front end website via ipfs or have a local clone of it or manually build and submit the transactions via your own local node. So, once deployed, there really isn't anything to 'run' in order for it to continue.

> thousands of other people are running nodes that run that chain

Then thousands of people - including him - enable tax evasion and sanctions.

Thank you for providing a good example why all crypto should be banned. And yes you can ban cryptocurrencies by outlawing exchanges.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#538

Post by louwrentius »

dylkil wrote: post #450
louwrentius wrote: post #74

He wasn’t just developing software, he seems to also been involved with operating the Tornado mixer service, thus enabling / facilitating money laundering and evasion of sanctions.

tornado cash doesnt facilitate money laundering, it just obfuscates the source of eth, like converting debit into cash, those funds still need to enter the real system in some "legitimate" manner in order to be considered laundered.

Any kind of mixer is intended to anonymise transactions and that doesn't really have any legitimate, legal use case.

Que remarks about 'privacy' in 3,2,1...

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#539

Post by klntsky »

owens99 wrote: post #512
squeaky-clean wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His unsold hoard is currently worth about 20 billion dollars.

Selling this may ruin the story and crash the price. It would probably go against his values and mission. He could easily have other early wallets and have $B's. Most likely explanation though is that it was Hal Finney who passed shortly after Satoshi disappeared.

> It would probably go against his values and mission

He could have sent his BTC to zero address.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#540

Post by phpisthebest »

alsetmusic wrote: post #467
seanw444 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It's the same argument people make for banning guns in the US. To be fair, I think most are arguing to restrict guns rather than ban. I’m not saying you did this, but many people deliberately distort that into “they wanna take all your guns” in bad faith.

To be Fair, based on the History of " restrict guns " it is clear no amount of restrictions is enough to satisfy those that want to restrict guns, confiscation and total ban is the clear end goal

it is NOT "bad faith" to say that, when there is clear evidence that no matter how many times compromise is reached they return the very next day asking for more and more restrictions

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