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Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

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Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#651

Post by Scoundreller »

mcast wrote: post #618
Scoundreller wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can he just pay off some kind of smart contract with it that ignores the provenance of the Bitcoin? Like, get a loan for $20b in a stablecoin with the payback being $21b in btc in a year?

If any of the BTC founder's blocks suddenly became active it would crash the price because most people would suspect someone found an exploit in the contract/hash or the keys were stolen.

That’s fine when you’ve already locked the price into something else that’s not-btc.

While you could sign a message with your key, you would still need something that accepts the proof but isn’t public, which might be possible with a properly structured/constructed smart contract, maybe?

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#652

Post by spyder »

seanw444 wrote: post #278
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?

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.

The closer analogy would be arresting the gunmakers because people used their product to commit crimes.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#653

Post by rurp »

WFHRenaissance wrote: post #548
croes wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see nothing of a ban

No ban, just increasingly restrictive laws on ownership and use that end up resulting in something tantamount to a ban. Look at gun ownership in most countries in Europe if you want an idea of what the future could look like. Then give some thought to what Europe was like in the early 20th century!

Laws so restrictive only a lucky 100 million americans have managed to purchase one legally!

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#654

Post by sidewndr46 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #285
sidewndr46 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property taxes are between the owner and the county where I live. They are paid in advance, so you can't sell a house without paying the property tax first. It'd be liened by the tax authority to prevent the sale.

But if the owner is anonymous, how does the country know who to ask for paying the taxes? How would the county even find out that the house changed ownership?

They don't need to know. If the property tax isn't paid a local judge just writes up a new deed to whomever pays off the delinquent property taxes. It is literally property in their jurisdiction. They can take possession any time.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#655

Post by colinmhayes »

MrPatan wrote: post #615
jshen wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most cash transactions are legitimate, but are you 100% confident that most cash volume is legitimate?

I’m not 100% sure if anything, but I’ll go with 99% sure that most cash transaction is not money laundering.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#656

Post by saghm »

saurik wrote: post #622
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 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 co…

> 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.

Not everyone believes that money is a form of speech, current US Court rulings on campaign finance notwithstanding.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#657

Post by matthewdgreen »

ehathaway wrote: post #403

This isn't just the arrest of a developer expressing his freedom. Its the arrest of a developer who was knowingly part of a group of people who had the intention of deploying code (via smart contracts). The deployment of the code facilitated activities that were claimed to be illegal. The issue isn't owning or writing viruses or malicious code, the issue is distribution and deployment of such code.

Is distribution of code substantially different from distribution of a book? Does something about uploading code become different when we call it "deployment"? I'm really asking here, because there are some pretty fine lines that need to be drawn.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#658

Post by spyder »

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.

Just because somebody doesn't want to share their transactions with the world it doesn't mean they want to hide them from the authorities too.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#659

Post by squeaky-clean »

Scoundreller wrote: post #651
mcast wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If any of the BTC founder's blocks suddenly became active it would crash the price because most people would suspect someone found an exploit in the contract/hash or the keys were stolen.

That’s fine when you’ve already locked the price into something else that’s not-btc. While you could sign a message with your key, you would still need something that accepts the proof but isn’t public, which might be possible with a properly structured/constructed smart contract, maybe?

The issue is finding someone willing to loan you $20B for your bitcoin without doing the research of how that would tank the price of bitcoin.

It would be a great deal for Satoshi, but no other party would accept.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#660

Post by labrador »

rklaehn wrote: post #559
labrador wrote: post #456

At least in the US, providing tools that you know will be used to commit a crime is a crime Alfred Anaya Put Secret Compartments in Cars. So the DEA Put Him in Prison https://www.wired.com/2013/03/alfred-anaya/

There are many non criminal use cases for private electronic transactions - just as there are for cash. So why is it a crime to build a thing that has both legal and illegal applications, like knifes, guns, dollar bills, gold coins, ... ? And don't get me started with "Most activity on tornado is illegal". It is a privacy service. So unless it is broken we don't know this. Are we going to take the word of the "Author…

I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me if he can be connected to a single instance of illegal activity on Tornado then he's toast
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