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Most ledgers are not public, or based on any methodology requiring public view, because the only way to both transact, keeping intact a tightly coherent paper t

Most ledgers are not public, or based on any methodology requiring public view, because the only way to both transact, keeping intact a tightly coherent paper trail as required by law is, and ensure privacy is to not make the ledger available in all it's glory to everyone. Doing what Tornado.cash does, is by definition, laundering, and if you didn't want your financial matters known to the world, mayhaps you should not have used a technology based on public ledger?

adastra22 4y ago
Tornado cash does something different from money laundering. If you use TC you can actually provably undo the mixing and reveal your financial history to a third party. If the government came and asked “what’s the source of these funds?” You could open the commitment and show which input is yours. It just breaks the last model law enforcement is used to where they just siphon up all private financial data for their own uses.
- salawat 4y ago
  In the U.S. this is a no go for criminal investigation, as there is no way law enforcement to compel you to offer up that proof that isn't able to fall under 5th Amendment protections, whereas Third Party Doctrine actually gave them a way to get at the tramsaction chain through the service provider. Now, unless you want to run into some creative reinterpretation of the 4th and 5th amendments a la the definitional butchering that is generally applied to the 2nd you can't push that question onto someone who is the subject of credible allegations of money laundering Believe it or not, there is such a thing as a pointedly not implenented feature. This has been one of them, because it is the difference between essentially making financial crime tractable to investigate vs. not. I'm not taking a side, just trying to make more obvious some of the more subtle nuance most people won't articulate for you, as it tends to be part of "the quiet part". You must employ 2nd and higher order thinking to the U.S. and international regulatory state.

adastra22 4y ago

Tornado cash does something different from money laundering. If you use TC you can actually provably undo the mixing and reveal your financial history to a third party. If the government came and asked “what’s the source of these funds?” You could open the commitment and show which input is yours. It just breaks the last model law enforcement is used to where they just siphon up all private financial data for their own uses.

salawat 4y ago
In the U.S. this is a no go for criminal investigation, as there is no way law enforcement to compel you to offer up that proof that isn't able to fall under 5th Amendment protections, whereas Third Party Doctrine actually gave them a way to get at the tramsaction chain through the service provider. Now, unless you want to run into some creative reinterpretation of the 4th and 5th amendments a la the definitional butchering that is generally applied to the 2nd you can't push that question onto someone who is the subject of credible allegations of money laundering Believe it or not, there is such a thing as a pointedly not implenented feature. This has been one of them, because it is the difference between essentially making financial crime tractable to investigate vs. not. I'm not taking a side, just trying to make more obvious some of the more subtle nuance most people won't articulate for you, as it tends to be part of "the quiet part". You must employ 2nd and higher order thinking to the U.S. and international regulatory state.