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Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

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Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Taking some leads to all. Like how the Assault Weapons Ban in 94 in the US led to the complete and total restriction of guns in the US.

Like how the Assault Weapons Ban in 94 in the US is leading to the complete and total restriction of guns in the US.

Laughable. Nearly 30 years later someone shot up a school with an AR-15. Yep, that government gun grab is riiight around the corner

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#572
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!

As always, correlation doesn't imply causation. It's not clear that gun laws themselves even enabled the rise of fascism or that they had any negative impact on quality of life. With widespread gun ownership early 20th century Europe could have been even worse.

This argument is so tired it has it's own Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_gun_control_argument

> "The Jews of Germany constituted less than 1 percent of the country's population. It is preposterous to argue that the possession of firearms would have enabled them to mount resistance against a systematic program of persecution implemented by a modern bureaucracy, enforced by a well-armed police state, and either supported or tolerated by the majority of the German population. Mr. Carson's suggestion that ordinary Germans, had they had guns, would have risked their lives in armed resistance against the regime simply does not comport with the regrettable historical reality of a regime that was quite popular at home. Inside Germany, only the army possessed the physical force necessary for defying or overthrowing the Nazis, but the generals had thrown in their lot with Hitler early on."

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#573
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Satoshi has demonstrated inhuman levels of restraint. The only explanation is that he is dead. The others are that he is not human, or that it's a committee defying Hanlon's razor: i.e. not governed by stupidity like most human affairs, but malice. Both are equally improbable.

Some people have alleged that Paul Leroux, who is sitting in prison right now, is Satoshi. That would explain why Satoshi hasn't moved any coins or sought fame.

The Len Sassaman theory really does it for me. It's been a while since I read up on it, but the similarity of Bitcoin and his remailer tech was the main thing that I found pretty convincing. Plus of course the timeline of his death.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#574

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?

Most crimes have what's called a 'Mens Rea' element, which means you had to have criminal intent. So before they knew the Taliban uses it, not a crime. Now that they know? Well, kind of a grey area. I bet you could construct an argument that they commited a crime if any NEW feature/code commit somehow benefits the Taliban after they knew the Taliban uses it. It's legal for me to sell someone a car. It's no longer leg…

>Most crimes have what's called a 'Mens Rea' element, which means you had to have criminal intent.

That's what Ross Ulbricht was arguing; the creator and the operator of the biggest Dark Web drug marketplace called Silk Road but it didn't work out for him. Because you as an operator of a platform have liability of what your users do or in another words you need to take action in order to prevent illicit activities. Ross argued that he created neoliberal free for all marketplace but that the bad guys invaded it and ruined it. Ofc that was BS argument just like not regulating who is mixing funds and what kind of funds at your crypto mixer is also BS.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#575
post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you don't want your crypto currency to be traced back to you... because then the VPN you paid for with it can be traced back to you... and sometimes the entire point of a VPN is so that connections cannot be traced back to you. The funds used to pay for the VPN were not acquired illicitly, but having it traced by to you _could_ be dangerous for you.

The VPN has every IP address you connect to it via. I fail to see how laundering your coins before paying for one is going to add any opsec. You are dependent on trusting the VPN for any security or anonymity it provides you.

If you don't mix your coins I can see you have signed up. If you do mix your coins I cannot. When I say I, I literally mean I could check the chain and see you were a vpn user. After mixing I (me) can no longer see if you are paying for a vpn. Hope that clears it up lol.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were also asked to implement some basic money laundering preventions. They did nothing.

Didn’t they throw away the keys to the smart contract a long time ago?

If they did that probably doesn't matter.

"I built a bomb I can't disarm" is not a credible defense.

It'll be especially nasty if they profited from the service after throwing away the keys and "learning" of the money laundering going on there.

Walking away a year or two ago would argueably have helped them.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#577
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!

As is typical, you know nothing of what you are talking about. Most guys I know here in the Austria boonies have a hunting rifle.

You might want to actually look at gun ownership numbers before repeating tired and very wrong Right talking points

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discussions on the internet are tons of fun and extremely useful when we just ascribe whatever secret end goal on to organizations that we want. May I try? Actually, the majority of activist organizations are fronts for gun manufacturers to create a fear of them being regulated away to help push a buy-now mentality. claiming otherwise is bad faith distortion of reality!

Nobody (other than you, with that intentionally ridiculous claim) is ascribing a secret end goal; their goals are quite plainly articulated.

Links? I need to know who to send donations to.

Re: Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash

#580

A lot of the apologists for this are making arguments along the lines of "being decentralized doesn't make you exempt from the rules" or "imagine if a bank laundered this much money". The problem is it doesn't make sense to treat protocols like companies. And it definitely doesn't make sense to treat protocol devs as if they were the executives of those companies. The CEO of a bank and the lead dev of a protocol have…

Starting a money laundrymat and expecting not to get charged with a crime is a bit absurd. Pretending that it's totally fine because it's "privacy" not money laundering because crypto is special... is likewise absurd.

I agree, it's like saying the developer of ransomware shouldn't get in trouble for making it if they just made it public instead of using it themselves. The fact that ransomware could be used for legal purposes(pen testing maybe?) isn't really a defense when you make it easily accessible to criminals by making it public.
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