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Anyone who has ever contributed to privacy or security technology should “have their life turned to shit” too under this logic. All the evil terorrist money lau

Anyone who has ever contributed to privacy or security technology should “have their life turned to shit” too under this logic. All the evil terorrist money launderers probably used VPNs or Tor too. Maybe they posted on HN, making you part of an internet terrorist club. Maybe they asked a question on StackOverflow that you answered. You’re waving around some acronym that the government made up 20 years ago to describe normal human activity (transacting without approval from a central authority) like it’s some deadly ancient sin.

Nursie 4y ago
Tornado is specifically run to obscure cash flows, something which is specifically illegal. This equivocation is as saddening as it is predictable.
- crunchatized 4y ago
  >to obscure cash flows, something which is specifically illegal. It's only illegal under 18 U.S. Code § 1956 to conduct transactions to obscure the source of "the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity." There's no law against obscuring the sources of cash flows in general. And on an otherwise completely public blockchain, there was a major use case for obfuscating flows for the sake of user privacy.
jcranmer 4y ago
The difference here is that a cryptocurrency mixer serves exactly one purpose: to be used to provide a financial service. You're not going to be able to plausibly argue that you didn't know what it was going to be financial service, and you're probably not going to be able to plausibly argue that you didn't know it was going to violate applicable financial regulations. When you're working on other privacy/security technologies, they have substantial enough other uses that you are plausibly able to argue that you were ignorant of its use in illegal steps.
- 3np 4y ago
  Even so, Tornado Cash is functionally and conceptually quite different from a mixer. It's non-custodial, for starters. There's a plausible argument that none of the sanctioned individuals were or are involved in running any kind of financial service. This is closer to sanctioning developers of cryptographic libraries than it is to operators of a coin mixer.

Nursie 4y ago

Tornado is specifically run to obscure cash flows, something which is specifically illegal. This equivocation is as saddening as it is predictable.

crunchatized 4y ago
>to obscure cash flows, something which is specifically illegal. It's only illegal under 18 U.S. Code § 1956 to conduct transactions to obscure the source of "the proceeds of some form of unlawful activity." There's no law against obscuring the sources of cash flows in general. And on an otherwise completely public blockchain, there was a major use case for obfuscating flows for the sake of user privacy.

jcranmer 4y ago

The difference here is that a cryptocurrency mixer serves exactly one purpose: to be used to provide a financial service. You're not going to be able to plausibly argue that you didn't know what it was going to be financial service, and you're probably not going to be able to plausibly argue that you didn't know it was going to violate applicable financial regulations. When you're working on other privacy/security technologies, they have substantial enough other uses that you are plausibly able to argue that you were ignorant of its use in illegal steps.

3np 4y ago
Even so, Tornado Cash is functionally and conceptually quite different from a mixer. It's non-custodial, for starters. There's a plausible argument that none of the sanctioned individuals were or are involved in running any kind of financial service. This is closer to sanctioning developers of cryptographic libraries than it is to operators of a coin mixer.