[zomglings]

What do you think the purpose of this code is?

There are people operating on blockchains in which transaction parameters are a matter of public record who: 1. May not want individual amounts and recipients to be publicly inspectable. 2. And are not criminals.

It may not be a right, but Tornado Cash is absolutely a tool to increase privacy. It is not solely for criminals to liquidate blockchain assets.

[km3r]

Even if there is people who want that, that doesn't justify it. Privacy has limits, and there is some really bad people using crypto to transfer assets. Banks are required to report suspicious transactions, so working around banking laws by using crypto is clearly breaking the spirit of those regulations. If an individual wants privacy, there is a more standing if they do it themselves, but when a third party gets involved, they must follow the same laws all businesses must follow. You can't code yourself out of legal responsibility.

Now if you don't think banks should be required to report suspicious transactions, get that law changed. But circumventing the law with crypto isn't the solution.

And taxes are kind of proof that the government has a right to see ones personal transactions. You can't have income taxes without verifiable income requirements and reporting.

[notch656a]

When I traded crypto I just self-reported on my taxes. It's not that hard. It's already illegal to "evade" taxes, so we don't need to make it "double illegaler" by banning crypto used to evade taxes.

>Now if you don't think banks should be required to report suspicious transactions, get that law changed. But circumventing the law with crypto isn't the solution.

The issue is due to FATCA as a US citizen I have no exit valve to simply leave and seek residence elsewhere because leaving the country still makes me a US person reportable to IRS by worldwide banks (and in fact also by legal self reporting requirements) and the US charges a oft prohibitive multi-thousand dollar exit tax renounce. If we're going to put these kind of imposition on people we should at least streamline renouncing and make the payment to leave the gang something almost as cheap as the walk to Mexico.

[zomglings]

You are assuming that people using Tornado Cash are only seeking privacy from governments.

You could want to use Tornado Cash for other forms of privacy, while still respecting your obligations to governments.

For example, suppose you are a company that pays salaries in tokens on the Ethereum blockchain but you want to do this without disclosing each employee's salary to the rest of their peers. You could fund a bunch of fresh accounts through Tornado Cash and distribute private keys to your employees off chain so they could access their funds.

Everyone involved could be completely respectful of taxes, etc. but they would still benefit from the privacy offered by Tornado Cash.