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By using tornado.cash the cryptocurrency you feed it facilitates tornado.cash’s use by people who launder money. In effect, you are facilitating money launderin

By using tornado.cash the cryptocurrency you feed it facilitates tornado.cash’s use by people who launder money. In effect, you are facilitating money laundering. I dont agree with it at all but I absolutely see the writing on the wall for “unhosted wallets” and Monero. The USA even somehow managed to nearly eliminate IRL cash transactions during the last two years — in Houston, most businesses have signs saying “due to ongoing coin shortage we cannot take cash”.

CryptoPunk 4y ago
To the best of my understanding, AML law, as currently written, doesn't work like that. It governs those who administer financial services. When originally written it did not apply to cash and was not conceived of with decentralized financial applications in mind. If the law applied as you suggest, any one using cash could be deemed to be facilitating money laundering by enlarging the pool of anonymized money that criminals use.
vmception 4y ago
I don’t think the treasury can sanction a smart contract or force financial instructions to absolutely reject transactions from one Do that court challenge
- withinboredom 4y ago
  The can sanction the businesses using it, POS that touch it, and banks that it was withdrawn from.
  - CryptoPunk 4y ago
    That would be an extraordinary stretch of the sanctions law, comparable to sanctioning any business that uses cash, by virtue of its effect of expanding the anonymity set that uses cash and thereby assisting sanctioned entities in concealing their transactions.
    - nivertech 4y ago
      The comparison with cash is flawed for 2 reasons: 1. Unlike so called "cryptocurrencies" you can't easily do cross-border transactions with large amount of cash. 2. Not sure about US and its states and territories, but in many countries in the world cash transactions are limited to relatively low amounts. And these amounts are shrinking every year.
      - CryptoPunk 4y ago
        With respect to 1, the principle of increasing the anonymity set, and thereby facilitating criminal concealment of funds, is the same, when using cash, and it is on this principle that the parent comment suggested companies that use privacy smart contracts could be sanctioned. 2. is a different issue. Yes the War on Cash is real, and it is extremely dangerous.
        vmception 4y ago
        Adding to this, I would challenge a smart contract sanction on 1st (free expression, leveraging citizens united for money as speech), 4th (regarding privacy, and the equivalent privacy of other transaction methods), 5th and 14th amendment grounds (both forms of equal treatment in comparison to other transaction methods) Maybe an article or two as well
  - vmception 4y ago
    People have a right to transactional privacy (or more so, the government hasnt created any obligation against that), which most blockchains remove by default, restoring that baseline isn’t controversial. Onlookers and financial institutions cant see where you physical cash was, and they cant see your banking transactions. It requires voluntary disclosure or a subpoena. Financial institutions operate on assumptions that a customer’s money is clean/fungible, and rely on the customer’s own admissions, except when a public ledger is involved. Simply restoring the baseline makes them not have any obligation to auto flag your transactions. > POS that touch it Sorry you got scammed irrecoverably. Everyone should be unlinking their transactions for a baseline of privacy. Because of the US citizens involved, the treasury would have an issue with the sanction of an autonomous privacy vending machine, it would require Congress to pass a sanction similar to the online gambling funds ban. But here there would still likely be tricky legal issues for Congress to circumvent.

CryptoPunk 4y ago

To the best of my understanding, AML law, as currently written, doesn't work like that. It governs those who administer financial services. When originally written it did not apply to cash and was not conceived of with decentralized financial applications in mind. If the law applied as you suggest, any one using cash could be deemed to be facilitating money laundering by enlarging the pool of anonymized money that criminals use.

vmception 4y ago

I don’t think the treasury can sanction a smart contract or force financial instructions to absolutely reject transactions from one Do that court challenge

withinboredom 4y ago
The can sanction the businesses using it, POS that touch it, and banks that it was withdrawn from.
- CryptoPunk 4y ago
  That would be an extraordinary stretch of the sanctions law, comparable to sanctioning any business that uses cash, by virtue of its effect of expanding the anonymity set that uses cash and thereby assisting sanctioned entities in concealing their transactions.
  - nivertech 4y ago
    The comparison with cash is flawed for 2 reasons: 1. Unlike so called "cryptocurrencies" you can't easily do cross-border transactions with large amount of cash. 2. Not sure about US and its states and territories, but in many countries in the world cash transactions are limited to relatively low amounts. And these amounts are shrinking every year.
    - CryptoPunk 4y ago
      With respect to 1, the principle of increasing the anonymity set, and thereby facilitating criminal concealment of funds, is the same, when using cash, and it is on this principle that the parent comment suggested companies that use privacy smart contracts could be sanctioned. 2. is a different issue. Yes the War on Cash is real, and it is extremely dangerous.
      - vmception 4y ago
        Adding to this, I would challenge a smart contract sanction on 1st (free expression, leveraging citizens united for money as speech), 4th (regarding privacy, and the equivalent privacy of other transaction methods), 5th and 14th amendment grounds (both forms of equal treatment in comparison to other transaction methods) Maybe an article or two as well
- vmception 4y ago
  People have a right to transactional privacy (or more so, the government hasnt created any obligation against that), which most blockchains remove by default, restoring that baseline isn’t controversial. Onlookers and financial institutions cant see where you physical cash was, and they cant see your banking transactions. It requires voluntary disclosure or a subpoena. Financial institutions operate on assumptions that a customer’s money is clean/fungible, and rely on the customer’s own admissions, except when a public ledger is involved. Simply restoring the baseline makes them not have any obligation to auto flag your transactions. > POS that touch it Sorry you got scammed irrecoverably. Everyone should be unlinking their transactions for a baseline of privacy. Because of the US citizens involved, the treasury would have an issue with the sanction of an autonomous privacy vending machine, it would require Congress to pass a sanction similar to the online gambling funds ban. But here there would still likely be tricky legal issues for Congress to circumvent.