Investors sue Treasury Department for blacklisting crypto platform Tornado Cash

Post by adastra22 » Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 3:56 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #164

dannyw wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting. As a Tornado Cash user, I have never associated this with an intentional money laundering service, but rather a bunch of developers advancing zk-SNARKs and other cryptographic primitives. As someone who was excited by the original Bitcoin whitepaper back in 2011, zk-SNARKS was what excited me about cryptocurrency again in 2021.

> have never associated this with an intentional money laundering service Most customers of a canonical money launderer, a laundromat, don’t realise it’s a front. That doesn’t matter if the owner is laundering money. Tornado laundered money for North Korea [1]. (It announced this months before the sanctions, a period in which the developers could have reacted but didn’t [EDIT: in any meaningful way].) That it was als…

Post by JumpCrisscross » Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 3:59 PM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #185

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> take down the entities doing the money laundering instead of attacking a tool This is what they’re doing. North Korea laundered money via Tornado Cash [1]. Authorities announced it and watched Tornado Cash do nothing. So it got sanctioned. Every other mixer is untouched. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/30/north-korea-likely-behind-10... .

No, Tornado Cash is code, not a service operated by any entity. North Korea also used HTTP for navigating websites which helped them hack targets and also launder more money. Banning Tornado Cash is like banning the HTTP specification/IETF for that, instead of going after the group in North Korea doing the money laundering/hacking.

Post by adastra22 » Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

salawat wrote: post #109

adastra22 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chief purpose of a mixer is financial privacy. It’s just that on a public blockchain privacy from snoops and privacy from law enforcement can’t be differentiated.

Most ledgers are not public, or based on any methodology requiring public view, because the only way to both transact, keeping intact a tightly coherent paper trail as required by law is, and ensure privacy is to not make the ledger available in all it's glory to everyone. Doing what Tornado.cash does, is by definition, laundering, and if you didn't want your financial matters known to the world, mayhaps you should n…

Post by TechBro8615 » Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 4:01 PM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #90

adastra22 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chief purpose of a mixer is financial privacy. It’s just that on a public blockchain privacy from snoops and privacy from law enforcement can’t be differentiated.

If the Treasury or Dutch authorities are to be believed, the chief purpose of this mixer was to facilitate money laundering. That is key to this entire discussion: they have reason to believe that Pertsev knowingly ran a money laundering service, rather than running a service that criminals can abuse to launder money.

Post by capableweb » Mon, Sep 12, 2022, 4:01 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #193

capableweb wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Tornado Cash is code, not a service operated by any entity. North Korea also used HTTP for navigating websites which helped them hack targets and also launder more money. Banning Tornado Cash is like banning the HTTP specification/IETF for that, instead of going after the group in North Korea doing the money laundering/hacking.

> Tornado Cash is code, not a service operated by any entity There was a team of developers earning compensation, hiring and firing. That’s more than just code.