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Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

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Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#621

Post by Akronymus »

JeremyNT wrote: post #611
carlosdp wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Cryptocurrency mixers exist solely to launder money. This is literally all they are useful for. WhatsApp has legitimate, non-criminal use cases.

I disagree with that, as there are things you may wanna buy without making public you bought, that is still legal. For example, some specialist hobby you'd rather not want others to know about.

Still mostly money laundering though.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#622

Post by saurik »

JeremyNT wrote: post #611
carlosdp wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Cryptocurrency mixers exist solely to launder money. This is literally all they are useful for. WhatsApp has legitimate, non-criminal use cases.

I feel like this can only be true because you must have defined "launder money" to be any private usage of money (which isn't a sufficient definition of money laundering, to be clear). If you claim otherwise, then you need to be more specific with your reasoning.

To start: why would anyone need privacy--of communication or of shared resources (payment)--but for something illegal? If you have an answer for that for communication (which you claim to and of course should), then it also is the same answer for money.

Do you believe someone should be able to keep secret that they have some medical condition, and that that knowledge should only exist between them and their doctor? Well, fat lot of good that does when the doctor specializes in some specific issue and there is a record of you paying them.

Think it is sufficient to trust the bank, because you think their security and privacy are awesome? Well, that's the same argument for WhatsApp vs. something like Facebook Messenger: no need for end-to-end communication if you are willing to trust people.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#623

Post by tzs »

seanw444 wrote: post #303
dannyw wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does contributing to an encrypted messaging app, like Signal or Matrix, also mean you're enabling / facilitating child pornography and terrorism? Keep in mind that a cryptocurrency private key is just a bunch of bytes, like this: `KwTHJw865SLeTAjK7otYb5bL5mwutBb2vDxxF7kGf5XvY7QttnvM`

The popular consensus on HN seems to be that the government having absolute monopolistic control and power over personal finance is inarguably good. "But money laundering!" so? "But evading taxes!" so? You can catch people in the act of attempting to commit these crimes if your agents aren't lazy shits. Forcing everyone's transactions to be public and traceable just so it's easy for the government to arrest people is…

> You can catch people in the act of attempting to commit these crimes if your agents aren't lazy shits

How?

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#624

Post by phpisthebest »

MaysonL wrote: post #554
phpisthebest wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

To be fair, banning guns seems to also ban mass shootings.

Banning gun Free Zones, and allowing armed citizens will do the same thing

See Indiana Mall Shooting

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#625

Post by acdha »

beambot wrote: post #597
acdha wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a better argument for using a system which is correctly designed. A public ledger is a bad fit for currency and layering kludges on top isn’t as good as a better design, especially when that exposes you to being an accessory to criminal activity.

That's some seriously circular reasoning: It only exposes you as an accessory to criminal activity because they've labeled it a criminal activity despite legitimate uses...

No, it makes you an accessory because you are mixing your traffic with criminals’ to help hide all of your activity. Everyone trying to hide criminal activity needs to use a mixer but only a small percentage of other users are going to pay for an optional service so the odds are worse that you’re more likely to attract attention to your transactions, too, just like you would if you were known to take home large quantities of cash from a mob-owned casino, too. Maybe you’re just a really good poker player but it’s more likely to make law enforcement curious than if you don’t.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#626

Post by dlubarov »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #64
koolba wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the latter case. How is privacy not a legitimate use case? > According the to article, 14% of money moved through the mixer was of criminal origin. I’m pretty sure the majority of duffel bags sold in cartel controlled areas of Mexico are used to transport drugs or drug money, that doesn’t mean selling them should be a crime.

>I’m pretty sure the majority I'm pretty sure that's not true. 1-1 we tied :) And again , not equivalent. If local duffel bag makers knew duffel bags were used significantly for crime, and added features to facilitate crime, and ignored laws requiring tracking criminals (which is what money processors have to follow), then the duffel bag maker would be criminally liable. In the cast at hand, the company processes the…

What could "features to facilitate crime" be in this particular case? Tornado is a simple contract with a singular purpose, to provide financial privacy for its users. It simply doesn't have any features that facilitate a more specific use case, be it money laundering, personal safety, or anything else.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#627

Post by cantSpellSober »

carlosdp wrote: post #595
cantSpellSober wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mens rea isn't some radical idea. If hitting specific sales targets on Bushmaster AR-style hammers is tied to your bonus you might end up settling for $73 million when you get caught pushing them too hard and they're used in a bunch of massacres.

The developers of Tornado Cash don't directly profit from its use (the article claims that erroneously), it's a fully permissionless immutable smart contract without a fee component. So this argument, while potentially valid, doesn't apply here.

Whether or not the developers acted with criminal intent is of great importance, if not philosophically at least legally

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#628

Post by notch656a »

croes wrote: post #525
MrPatan wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There is expansion of the ban every time they add new types of "felons." The government has focused the past ~60 years years on greatly expanding who is a felon, and then enshrining that they do not have the same civil rights as others after serving their sentence.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#629

Post by enlyth »

unboxingelf wrote: post #619
JeremyNT wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrency mixers exist solely to launder money. This is literally all they are useful for. WhatsApp has legitimate, non-criminal use cases.

False. Here is the definition of money laundering: 1. The act of engaging in transactions designed to obscure the origin of money that has been obtained illegally. 2. concealing the source of illegally gotten money Anyone can use a cryptocurrency mixer with legally obtained cryptocurrency. Tornado Cash has legitimate, non-criminal use cases.

Anyone can, but realistically, it has probably been used almost exclusively for either laundering money or concealing the source of money used to purchase illegal goods. I can think of pretty much no cases where you would _need_ to convert your money to cryptocurrency, then conceal where it came from using a mixer, and then use it for something legal.

I'm not advocating for the developer to be prosecuted, I'm just saying in the eyes of the law, they probably won't see it in the way you are describing.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#630

Post by unboxingelf »

iszomer wrote: post #620
JeremyNT wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cryptocurrency mixers exist solely to launder money. This is literally all they are useful for. WhatsApp has legitimate, non-criminal use cases.

I wonder how contrarians would argue against this.. "Oh, because this blockchain isn't anonymous enough I must use a mixer!"

Imagine for a moment that you wanted to buy an NFT with legally purchased Ethereum from an exchange like Kraken or Coinbase, but you don’t want your friends to know you spent $2,000 on a jpeg. So instead of buying the NFT with your Coinbase wallet that is linked to your [ENS] name, you create a brand new, single-use wallet and use it to buy the jpeg. And instead of funding the single-use wallet from your recognizable wallet, you obfuscate the source with a mixing service.
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