Excuse the maybe stupid question, but what does "laundering cryptocurrency" mean? Isn't half the point of the whole crypto thing that it doesn't need this circus to be untraceable?
Men charged by U.S. with laundering more than $1B in cryptocurrency
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Re: Men charged by U.S. with laundering more than $1B in cryptocurrency
#42How dare they. Only the CIA is allowed to launder money for their own ends. /s
Re: Men charged by U.S. with laundering more than $1B in cryptocurrency
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ignoring that I think you're grossly understating their involvement, if you want to focus on only their development efforts, this is FAR closer to the people that made diesel tuners to facilitate removing emissions equipment. There's no legitimate reason for those to exist. Or this.
Do you mean there is no legitimate reason to have a financial privacy? like in general it should not exist, or just this particular example?
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Re: Men charged by U.S. with laundering more than $1B in cryptocurrency
#44I smell a swap. Roman Storm for Evan Gershkovich and Snowden?
No, they definitely don't want to be in Russia because Tornado cash was used to make donations to Ukranian army (because the donators don't want to go to jail, since it's illegal). So Russia would be happy to jail the developers of that service.
Does Roman get a choice in the matter?
Re: Men charged by U.S. with laundering more than $1B in cryptocurrency
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
What does compliant mixer mean here?
Maybe only legit people would be allowed to use it. Clean money in, anonymous clean money out.
Clean money in, less anonymous clean money out. They would have to charge for the service.
The number of people who would pay to have their money anonymized for purely legal reasons isn't zero, but it seems less likely to be a going concern.
Re: Men charged by U.S. with laundering more than $1B in cryptocurrency
#46Excuse the maybe stupid question, but what does "laundering cryptocurrency" mean? Isn't half the point of the whole crypto thing that it doesn't need this circus to be untraceable?
>Isn't half...untraceable?
No, crypto is pseudonymous, not anonymous. The whole point of cryptos that aren't monero is that every transaction ever is visible to everyone all the time. That's the point. Not one central person keeping the ledger of transactions, but everyone so everyone can verify. So no, explicitly the entire system relies on absolute traceability for every dollar in the system, from provenance as a mining reward to its current owner.
There are ways to maintain anonymity in this environment, zero knowledge maths, mixers like tornado cash, but as far as basic systems, the absolute opposite is true.
Re: Men charged by U.S. with laundering more than $1B in cryptocurrency
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Curious, what do you think about breaking the laws of authoritarian countries to save people's lives? Do you think people should be allowed to do that or not?
I think you're both ignoring one key factor here: intent. If this was simple service for moving/spending money privately. Sure, probably nothing wrong then. But the indictment specifically states that they knew the service was being using by sanctioned entities and didn't try to prevent it. That's makes a big difference.
They knew that because it's a public information and they didn't prevent it because it's already deployed smart contract. They have no ability to prevent a specific party from using it, it's already deployed to the network and note that it's still impossible to change it even now.
As an example, since now it's under US agencies control and they know that sanctioned entities are using it, why they still don't try to prevent it? Are they supporting NK?
Re: Men charged by U.S. with laundering more than $1B in cryptocurrency
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, they definitely don't want to be in Russia because Tornado cash was used to make donations to Ukranian army (because the donators don't want to go to jail, since it's illegal). So Russia would be happy to jail the developers of that service.
Does Roman get a choice in the matter?
Do you suggest that Russia can make a list of people they would like to kill and US would be happy to provide them to Russia?
Re: Men charged by U.S. with laundering more than $1B in cryptocurrency
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does Roman get a choice in the matter?
Do you suggest that Russia can make a list of people they would like to kill and US would be happy to provide them to Russia?
Apologies. I assumed he was a Russian citizen but he is not. No swap or extradition is possible then.
Re: Men charged by U.S. with laundering more than $1B in cryptocurrency
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you suggest that Russia can make a list of people they would like to kill and US would be happy to provide them to Russia?
Apologies. I assumed he was a Russian citizen but he is not. No swap or extradition is possible then.
The citizenship doesn't really matter, b/c Russia may want to kill own citizens too (ex., if they don't support Putin).