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Comment by ChrisLomont | Hacker News Reader

>Should knife makers be held responsible if someone stabs someone?

Not a valid comparison.

Courts and law have long held the completely reasonable position that if the main intent of a product is not to commit crime, that those using it for a crime are held responsible, not the producer.

Conversely, if a product is designed to facilitate crime, or is used significantly more for crime than not, then the liability starts to shift to the producer (as well as the users).

This is the latter case. If the courts show that the producers knew the product was used for crime and added features to assist that on purpose, then they should be held liable.

According the to article, 14% of money moved through the mixer was of criminal origin. If any bank did that, they'd rightfully get hammered by the law (and they do, for vastly smaller ratios of criminal activity).

There are laws about facilitating criminal money laundering.

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> This is the latter case.

How is privacy not a legitimate use case?

> According the to article, 14% of money moved through the mixer was of criminal origin.

I’m pretty sure the majority of duffel bags sold in cartel controlled areas of Mexico are used to transport drugs or drug money, that doesn’t mean selling them should be a crime.

>I’m pretty sure the majority

I'm pretty sure that's not true. 1-1 we tied :)

And again , not equivalent. If local duffel bag makers knew duffel bags were used significantly for crime, and added features to facilitate crime, and ignored laws requiring tracking criminals (which is what money processors have to follow), then the duffel bag maker would be criminally liable.

In the cast at hand, the company processes the transactions for criminals. That is vastly different than selling a duffel bag. And it runs afoul of criminal money laundering laws that all processors have to follow, and for good reason.

This is why the courts are the place to hash such stuff out - internet opinions are vastly inferior to people performing investigations using evidence.

Source - ChrisLemont

get off your high horse, use of tornado cash is quite common among crypto natives, otherwise it's like broadcasting your pepsi purchases on instagram

Tornado cash could have (for example) implemented AML or KYC policies to achieve the same without coming under the suspicion of assisting criminals.

Given the high data protection requirements warranted by operating a financial service, users could be reasonable sure that their Pepsi purchase remains private.

Of course such measures would run counter the intended use of Tornado cash, including money laundering, but that is their problem and no one's else.

What could "features to facilitate crime" be in this particular case? Tornado is a simple contract with a singular purpose, to provide financial privacy for its users. It simply doesn't have any features that facilitate a more specific use case, be it money laundering, personal safety, or anything else.

Phantom Secure might be the closest example?

But there's definitely legitimate uses for Tornado Cash. The same way there's legitimate uses for cash.

14% of funds, yeah, not 14% of users... Big difference.

>14% of funds, yeah, not 14% of users... Big difference.

Yep, it shows an incredible quantity of money laundering through the service.

> I’m pretty sure the majority of duffel bags sold in cartel controlled areas of Mexico are used to transport drugs or drug money

I'm sure that isn't true. Most people anywhere in Mexico are civilians not involved in the drug trade.

I think you're missing the intent part of crime. Someone selling a duffle bag or producing one for production is likely not selling it for the purpose of facilitating crime, they just are selling a bag. The question with guns/knives/Tornado Cash is "what is the motivation behind the producers/service provider once put under scrutiny?"

A textile mill producer who gets an order for 5000 duffle bags likely has no vision in mind for the use of the bag beyond "sell to N stores at X price for profit". The storeowner who buys the duffle bag likely also has no criminal motive and instead just wants to sell inventory at profit.

Tornado Cash devs will be scrutinized to understand their main goals, and their communications/advertising strategies, likely as well as any correspondences will be considered for this determination.

> This is the latter case.

You're stating this as if it's fact when it's really not. Tornado Cash was certainly not designed with the intent of criminal activity, but for privacy - and as for "significantly more for crime than not", I've not seen any actual evidence for this, only evidence to the contrary. People claim it's mostly used for crime, but those are purely conjecture, at least the ones I've seen are.

>Tornado Cash was certainly not designed with the intent of criminal activity, but for privacy

Again, claims of privacy is not enough magic to make them free from legal requirements for money laundering laws. Privacy claims do not make banks immune from money laundering. Privacy claims do not make anyone free from meeting legal requirements.

>those are purely conjecture

The above states ~1/7 of all money flowing through can be tied to criminal behavior. If true, that's an astounding ratio that would rightfully put a bank out of business and key players in prison.

> and added features to assist that on purpose

Unless the service was redeployed (unlikely) or operating behind a proxy contract, it wouldn't have been possible to add new features.

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