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Comment by tekknik | Hacker News Reader

> on code the govt doesn’t really understand

But they do understand it, quite well. It launders money, there is no legal use for a money laundering machine.

Its use is offering a level of privacy that is at least as good as the one a credit card offers. On the Ethereum blockchain anybody you transact with can see your transaction history.

because your average citizen needs anonymity when buying everyday items? So much so that we need to allow money laundering?

No, this still isn’t a valid use.

Yes, for example a teenager with religious parents might not want them to know that they're buying contraceptives, or a buyer of illegal drugs might not want the government to know it. As long as there are anonymous payment methods such as cash, money laundering remains a possibility. Besides, getting ETH from Tornado Cash is not comparable to money laundering because whoever will be paid with those funds will have a strong suspicion that they were stolen or came from some other type of illicit activity.

They can use cash for these cases. So no, still not a valid use case to allow for blatant money laundering.

If they don't know a dealer for the drugs they want they might decide to buy them online with cryptocurrency, and that's where a service like Tornado Cash is useful. Cash can be laundered too.

So teens buying drugs there parents don’t want them using. This is your use case for TornadoCash?

Cash cannot be so easily laundered as literally sending coins to an address and waiting a few minutes. Laundering cash requires physical infrastructure which can be tracked and monitored.

People like you are why crypto is dying. Not everybody needs to anonymously buy drugs online. When non-crypto bros here things like this they mark you and your project as criminal.

Teenagers are not the only ones who might want to buy drugs online

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