Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 45 posts

Re: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

#31

Post by lambdaxyzw »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20
joemazerino wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Known criminal addresses" isn't an easy nut to crack. False positives prevail and the list is held by institutions readily hostile towards crypto. People who used Tornado Cash themselves, even non-criminals, are marked as criminals because of the way the lists are maintained. The article itself says "30% of the funds were from illicit activity", which leaves 70%. When is the last time a bank enabling criminals like…

> People who used Tornado Cash themselves, even non-criminals, are marked as criminals because of the way the lists are maintained Eh, they’re marked as suspicious. (Correctly.) But I don’t know if merely using Tornado would be enough to convict on in most competent jurisdictions.

Of course not, but merely using tornado cash would be enough to make many "regular" cryptocurrency exchanges refuse to work with you and/or ban you. Or even someone sending you transfer from tornado.cash, or receiving a transfer from someone that uses tornado cash. Tainting is unfortunately very inexact and heuristic based.

Re: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

#32

Post by lambdaxyzw »

cedws wrote: post #7

I don't agree with the ruling, but I wonder how many people out there are living the good life because of dodgy funds they laundered through Tornado Cash. Flying in private jets, driving lambos, drinking the finest whisky. While many of those that do honest work like teaching the next generation live in poverty.

Keep in mind that the crime occured earlier - when they got the dodgy funds somehow. If tornado cash didn't exist, they would just launder the money some other way (like people did for thousands of years before - and there's plenty of ways to launder money using cryptocurrencies).

Re: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

#33

Post by lambdaxyzw »

dpc_01234 wrote: post #26
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got half the time of that developer for laundering 1% as much money.

Oh. I see it now. > More shocking, and more important, the bank was sanctioned for failing to apply the proper anti-laundering strictures to the transfer of $378.4bn But they locked up one dude who did: > These 11 fictitious accounts alone were used by the criminal organization to wire transfer a total of $3.8 million to Mexico. Justice was served indeed.

Well, it's not even 1% then, but 0.01%. 3.8 million vs 378400 millions.

Re: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

#34

Post by jiveturkey »

not sure i agree with this.

> But Dutch prosecutors say the case was simpler than all that. It wasn’t about the right to privacy, or the liability of open source developers, they claim, but the choices of an individual. “[Pertsev] made choices writing the code, deploying the code, adding features to the ecosystem. Choice after choice, all the while he knew that criminal money was entering his system,” M. Boerlage, the lead prosecutor on the case, told WIRED ahead of the verdict. “So it’s not about code. It’s about human behavior.”

How is it different than, say, gun or ammo manufacturers? I suppose the quote here is highly simplified and almost all nuance removed, but still. How is this different than metasploit?

Re: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

#35

Post by PretzelPirate »

dpc_01234 wrote: post #23
ceejayoz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While Pertsev added functionality to the web interface that allowed legitimate users to separate their funds from those arriving from known criminal addresses, they characterized the effort as “too little and too late.” When you add a "don't mix my stuff with the known criminal accounts" toggle in the UI, it's hard to argue ignorance.

I don't think you understand what it means. The on chain contract like that can't possibly know which funds are "illicit" or "marked as suspicious". Only users entering the contract can possibly have some logic on the client side to bail out if they notice the would be joining funds with some best effort list of "illicit" addresses, and there's really nothing forcing them to use it. I bet generally here both the publ…

A contract can reference a list of addresses that have been marked as suspicious as long as someone stores that list on chain. It doesn't need to be client side.

Re: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

#36

Post by theturtletalks »

SamPatt wrote: post #30
ceejayoz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While Pertsev added functionality to the web interface that allowed legitimate users to separate their funds from those arriving from known criminal addresses, they characterized the effort as “too little and too late.” When you add a "don't mix my stuff with the known criminal accounts" toggle in the UI, it's hard to argue ignorance.

I'm not so sure. An idealist might build something to be totally agnostic, and only after adoption from criminals might then realize they need to do something about that, hence adding in a filter. Then that effort is seen as evidence against them? Lots of open source software activists are idealists. This is why I asked if there's evidence they were actually receiving illicit funds.

If he was not receiving funds, why even host it for these users? Make it easy for people to self host it on their AWS, PaaS, etc. and then you’re not directly involved in the use of that software. If software was really the issue, how could Kali Linux exist?

Re: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

#37

Post by brookst »

SamPatt wrote: post #30
ceejayoz wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While Pertsev added functionality to the web interface that allowed legitimate users to separate their funds from those arriving from known criminal addresses, they characterized the effort as “too little and too late.” When you add a "don't mix my stuff with the known criminal accounts" toggle in the UI, it's hard to argue ignorance.

I'm not so sure. An idealist might build something to be totally agnostic, and only after adoption from criminals might then realize they need to do something about that, hence adding in a filter. Then that effort is seen as evidence against them? Lots of open source software activists are idealists. This is why I asked if there's evidence they were actually receiving illicit funds.

> An idealist might build something to be totally agnostic, and only after adoption from criminals might then realize they need to do something about that, hence adding in a filter. Then that effort is seen as evidence against them

So, if he had an epiphany that criminals were using the system and the feature requests he was getting an naively implementing were benefiting criminals, why not block those accounts rather than implementing a "keep my stuff separate from the criminals the system knows about" switch?

The whole point of a trial is to establish guilt, and part of guilt is mens rea. Well, at least I assume that's true in the Netherlands, please correct if I'm wrong.

An idealist who just happens to believe that firing guns into the air is the most noble expression of freedom is still going to be liable for bad outcomes. You can argue murder versus negligence, but there is no "maybe he just wanted to see a bunch of lead in the air" argument for actual innocence.

Re: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

#38

Post by brookst »

joemazerino wrote: post #19
brookst wrote: post #9

Key quote: > While Pertsev added functionality to the web interface that allowed legitimate users to separate their funds from those arriving from known criminal addresses, they characterized the effort as “too little and too late.” I admit it sounds pretty damning to have a UI affordance for “keep my funds separate from the known criminals this service knowingly serves”. I have little sympathy for those who intentio…

"Known criminal addresses" isn't an easy nut to crack. False positives prevail and the list is held by institutions readily hostile towards crypto. People who used Tornado Cash themselves, even non-criminals, are marked as criminals because of the way the lists are maintained. The article itself says "30% of the funds were from illicit activity", which leaves 70%. When is the last time a bank enabling criminals like…

> "Known criminal addresses" isn't an easy nut to crack.

True. But good faith efforts go a long way. In no world is "separate my funds from those the operators of Tornado believe are illicit" good faith.

> When is the last time a bank enabling criminals like HSBC had it's directors arrested and thrown in jail?

Whaddaboutism is not a defense. I fully support jailing the entire executive staff of HSBC. The fact that has not happened does not change the facts or merits of this case, any more than I can get out of a speeding ticket by noting that I read about someone going much faster.

Re: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

#39

Post by EduardoBautista »

theturtletalks wrote: post #36
SamPatt wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. An idealist might build something to be totally agnostic, and only after adoption from criminals might then realize they need to do something about that, hence adding in a filter. Then that effort is seen as evidence against them? Lots of open source software activists are idealists. This is why I asked if there's evidence they were actually receiving illicit funds.

If he was not receiving funds, why even host it for these users? Make it easy for people to self host it on their AWS, PaaS, etc. and then you’re not directly involved in the use of that software. If software was really the issue, how could Kali Linux exist?

In order for it to work, you need as many people tumbling the same exact amount of crypto. If it’s self hosted, it wouldn’t be difficult to figure out that if two or three transactions went in, you only need to track the two or three transactions that come out.

Re: Tornado Cash Developer Found Guilty of Laundering $1.2B of Crypto

#40

Post by seventyone »

brookst wrote: post #38
joemazerino wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Known criminal addresses" isn't an easy nut to crack. False positives prevail and the list is held by institutions readily hostile towards crypto. People who used Tornado Cash themselves, even non-criminals, are marked as criminals because of the way the lists are maintained. The article itself says "30% of the funds were from illicit activity", which leaves 70%. When is the last time a bank enabling criminals like…

> "Known criminal addresses" isn't an easy nut to crack. True. But good faith efforts go a long way. In no world is "separate my funds from those the operators of Tornado believe are illicit" good faith. > When is the last time a bank enabling criminals like HSBC had it's directors arrested and thrown in jail? Whaddaboutism is not a defense. I fully support jailing the entire executive staff of HSBC. The fact that ha…

> In no world is "separate my funds from those the operators of Tornado believe are illicit" good faith.

I'm quite certain Tornadocash didn't believe the addresses were illicit; they got the list from the government like everyone else does. If you have proof Tornadocash kept made their own list of criminals please share your source

Post reply on HN