[arcticbull]

But there's no reason to do that unless you're trying to hide a crime.

I'm sympathetic to the free speech argument, but also, if I put up plans for the Kitty Murdulator 9000 whose principally designed to kill kitties, then yeah I'd call that bad. Like sure you could do something else with it I guess, maybe, but it's clearly designed for one thing, and one thing only.

Don't want your transactions to be public? Use a bank like a normal person.

[marcell]

I don't need a reason to do it or not, it is legal under the law.

Tornado Cash has legal uses under the law (like the one I described above), because it can be used to conceal the origins of legally obtained money.

See the legal definition of money laundering here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1956 , it specifically calls out "unlawful activity".

[nl]

There was plenty of unlawful activity done using Tornado cash.

For example the money stolen in the Axie Infinity hack was lauded through Tornado Cash.

[dannyw]

There are heaps of reasons to do that, you could want to use crypto but also want your transactions to not be public.

An obvious example would be a software engineer working in web3 that gets a portion of their pay check in a crypto asset.

[arcticbull]

That's great and all, but that doesn't change the responsibilities incumbent on a service that transfers value under the law. And that is to ensure their compliance with AML and KYC rules - and best effort verification that sanctioned individuals aren't using it. None of which this particular service did. RIP.

I think something like 1/4 of all the transactions on Tornado were laundering lol. Imagine any other business that operated like that. For instance, a bank where 1/4 of tellers are stealing the deposits of customers. At some point, the banking that happens is incidental to the actual business.

So like, if you have a legitimate use for the service, and you know that by participating you're facilitating money laundering, you're complicit IMO. And if you don't want to be complicit, go find a different service.

This privacy-absolutism is silly though.

[notch656a]

Something like 1/4 of worldwide all employment is 'informal' (i.e. typically quasi-illegal or outright illegal).

[arcticbull]

First, I'd love a citation.

Second, if true, is that a good thing? Or are you saying that if one person is getting away with something then everyone should just be able to do it.

This has big 'but mom, Jeffrey Dahmer got to kill and eat people' energy. Nobody gets to kill an eat people. Just because Jeffrey Dahmer did it doesn't mean you do. And it doesn't mean we should be building tooling that allows people to more efficiently kill and eat each other just because one guy found a way to use it as a hat pin.

[notch656a]

https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dco...

Estimated ~60+% of worldwide employment (and 15+% of GDP) is "informal" thus no verifiable source of legal funds would be found if those persons put it into Tornado Cash. I'm not sure how you define the 1/4 cited figured in Tornado Cash, but the point is I'm not sure that it indicates anything unusual about the proportion of transactions, especially considering informal workers tend to have less access to the formal banking system.

Whether that is a good thing? I don't know, I guess it would be better if those people starve to death so they could make sure they had a traceable source of tax-paying employment? This kind of thing probably covers the vast majority of people in places like Argentina where the tax on corporations is 107% of profit [see publication 'doing business argentina'], that is there is basically no legal way to run a business fully above board. I definitely don't see these people trying to survive on otherwise honest employment as Jeffrey Dahmer, but I agree it would be better if they had a way to work that allowed them better access to the banking system.

To put it simply using your analogy, if 1/4 (or more) of the wold is 'Jeffrey Dahhmer' it doesn't look like your service favors Jeffrey Dahmer if only 1/4 of the service is servicing Jeffrey Dahmers.

[mistrial9]

> there's no reason to do that unless

the owner of the money decides to do that; private transactions are a thing