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Immutable smart contracts on blockchains are available to anyone with the few dollars worth of ether or other base chain currency necessary to execute the contr

Immutable smart contracts on blockchains are available to anyone with the few dollars worth of ether or other base chain currency necessary to execute the contract on-chain. They do not cost anything to operate after being deployed. In that sense, Tornado Cash is a protocol, that has more in common with HTTPS than with a business operation. Smart contracts can be thought of as software-defined protocols. Given that HTTPS and other forms of encryption are used on the regular, for both good and nefarious purposes, I see no reasonable argument against mixers. There has to be a path for on-chain privacy. It is a human right. It's also a U.S. constitutionally protected 4th amendment human right.

deleted 4y ago
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altairprime 4y ago
Whatever their benefits, mixers also enable and support the laundering of illegally-obtained currency and the circumvention of government sanctions. These points are both reasonable arguments against mixers. It remains to be seen whether society as a whole will accept your argument that mixers are an innate human right, protected under the constitution. However, I observe with these sanctions that both the US judiciary and those of many others countries has decided cryptocoin laundering is not a protected human right, due to the balance of harm caused to societies outweighing the rights of the individual. It’s your right here in the US to declare that they’re wrong, but I do not see in your reply any new evidence or arguments presented that would change the course of the US government.
- d4rti 4y ago
  I think David Gerard summarises nicely here [1]: > If the ether is proceeds from a crime, then this is literally just money laundering. > There’s also this weird delusion that if you put some dirty money in a box with clean money and shake it, then it all comes out as clean — and not that it all comes out as dirty. > The bad takes were all variations of the fundamental fallacy of cryptocurrency: that you can code your way around the rules of society. 1: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2022/08/09/us-sanctions-tornado-cash-and-crypto-shrieks-in-horror/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2022/08/09/us-sanctions...
  - ohgodplsno 4y ago
    > There’s also this weird delusion that if you put some dirty money in a box with clean money and shake it, then it all comes out as clean — and not that it all comes out as dirty. That's the exact take that brought to closure of tornado.cash. If you start with two distinct piles and at the end you only get one some-of-these-might-be-dirty pile, the solution to this is to destroy the mixer, not to sift through bank notes. The reason why we don't consider everything that has touched dirty money to be tainted is explicitly to protect people who may have been inadvertently brought into it.
ohgodplsno 4y ago
Taking down a more public side to it (tornado.cash) has the effect of restraining the type of users that will now use it. Instead of privacy zealots (10%), money launderers (20%) and random users (70%) (numbers mostly pulled out of my ass for demonstration purposes), by making it only accessible to a much more select audience, you'll basically lose most of the random users. And believe me, if the US Treasury sanctioned it because 20% of the money going through was laundering (and the other 80% making it much harder to trace), when 66% of your traffic becomes money laundering, not only will they sanction harder, but they will also start going after actual people. Touching the tornado cash contract is a poison pill right now.

deleted 4y ago

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altairprime 4y ago

Whatever their benefits, mixers also enable and support the laundering of illegally-obtained currency and the circumvention of government sanctions. These points are both reasonable arguments against mixers. It remains to be seen whether society as a whole will accept your argument that mixers are an innate human right, protected under the constitution. However, I observe with these sanctions that both the US judiciary and those of many others countries has decided cryptocoin laundering is not a protected human right, due to the balance of harm caused to societies outweighing the rights of the individual. It’s your right here in the US to declare that they’re wrong, but I do not see in your reply any new evidence or arguments presented that would change the course of the US government.

d4rti 4y ago
I think David Gerard summarises nicely here [1]: > If the ether is proceeds from a crime, then this is literally just money laundering. > There’s also this weird delusion that if you put some dirty money in a box with clean money and shake it, then it all comes out as clean — and not that it all comes out as dirty. > The bad takes were all variations of the fundamental fallacy of cryptocurrency: that you can code your way around the rules of society. 1: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2022/08/09/us-sanctions-tornado-cash-and-crypto-shrieks-in-horror/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2022/08/09/us-sanctions...
- ohgodplsno 4y ago
  > There’s also this weird delusion that if you put some dirty money in a box with clean money and shake it, then it all comes out as clean — and not that it all comes out as dirty. That's the exact take that brought to closure of tornado.cash. If you start with two distinct piles and at the end you only get one some-of-these-might-be-dirty pile, the solution to this is to destroy the mixer, not to sift through bank notes. The reason why we don't consider everything that has touched dirty money to be tainted is explicitly to protect people who may have been inadvertently brought into it.

ohgodplsno 4y ago

Taking down a more public side to it (tornado.cash) has the effect of restraining the type of users that will now use it. Instead of privacy zealots (10%), money launderers (20%) and random users (70%) (numbers mostly pulled out of my ass for demonstration purposes), by making it only accessible to a much more select audience, you'll basically lose most of the random users. And believe me, if the US Treasury sanctioned it because 20% of the money going through was laundering (and the other 80% making it much harder to trace), when 66% of your traffic becomes money laundering, not only will they sanction harder, but they will also start going after actual people. Touching the tornado cash contract is a poison pill right now.