421–430 of 544 posts
I think my crypto info is behind the times. Can someone explain to me why people don't just exchange crypto for monero and then back if they want to "wash" it?
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The intent in question is manifested in Tornado Cash's design, which doesn't pass the malfeasance smell test: you can't absolve yourself of illegality by automating the illegality. Given that it also has legitimate uses, I think that's a very difficult case to make. Also, with very limited exceptions, nearly all crimes in the US require intent and/or knowing participation. It's a fundamental tenet of our system. Ther…
For someone who isn't in the know of this case, can you share some legitimate uses for Tornado Cash?
I just want to say, I find it very Orwellian that HN shuts down immediately any conversation about theft of IP through these 'archive.ph' links, and even removes the 'reply' button to ensure so. Just watch how quickly this comment will disappear or get downvoted.
Could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
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And this is where it gets fun. Banks will absolutely not tell the customer that their transaction is flagged for one reason or another partly so that they do not lose their 'safe harbor' status under BSA. Any numbers you will see might be from the government, but FinCEN is relatively tight lipped about those for a variety of reasons. The discussion is taking place now, because it has become fairly onerous on an avera…
> not tell the customer that their transaction is flagged The teller is not allowed to disclose this to customer. > Any numbers you will see might be from the government In my experience, the board of directors of the bank get a monthly roll-up of the numbers.
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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.
Like how far am I allowed to go to describe how you might launder money on a blockchain before I get arrested?
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The part where Tornado Cash as an exchange couldn't shut down for a while. And the fact that those, well, "contracts" cannot be nullified like literally any other contract signed in any jurisdiction is troublesome in itself. Lucky for Elon that he didn't use one of those contracts to buy Twitter.
Don't get confused by the terminology and don't get into word-thinking. A "contract" on the blockchain is nothing like a "contract" in the legal sense. Even if I get your signature on a blockchain saying that you are transferring your assets to me, there won't be any court willing to uphold this. In the same vein, it's not because that people talk about TC as a smart contract that gives it legal backing or makes it s…
Just because it is virtual doesn't mean real world laws don't apply. What gave you that idea?
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VPNs are "data mixers" - by combining all your traffic with others, it becomes harder to determine who sent which packets. Honestly, why can't we just have the government know every single website we visit immediately? We all have nothing to hide
"Data laundering" is not against the law though; money laundering is
Obscuring the source of a transaction is not always money laundering.
My credit card would suck if everyone I did business with knew about all my present and future transactions too.
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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.
When we say he ran it, did he actually deploy resources that laundered money or just publish a spec that others used to do the laundering? Like how far am I allowed to go to describe how you might launder money on a blockchain before I get arrested?
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When you want to make legal arguments, you do it when you have good facts, and this is not that time. The facts about Tornado cash are terrible: pretty much everyone using it is either doing something provably illegal or trying to avoid being found, you have to go out of your way to use it (and pay an extra fee), and it's been part of a large number of bad news stories about crypto theft. A minimum of 10% of its thro…
25% of funds being illicit does not mean “pretty much everybody” is using it for illicit reasons. Your argument really falls apart here, but the sweeping generalizations don’t help. Monero and TC are equal parts useful for non-criminals who are seeking privacy.