He wasn’t just developing software, he seems to also been involved with operating the Tornado mixer service, thus enabling / facilitating money laundering and evasion of sanctions.
Keep in mind that a cryptocurrency private key is just a bunch of bytes, like this: `KwTHJw865SLeTAjK7otYb5bL5mwutBb2vDxxF7kGf5XvY7QttnvM`
"But money laundering!" so?
"But evading taxes!" so?
You can catch people in the act of attempting to commit these crimes if your agents aren't lazy shits. Forcing everyone's transactions to be public and traceable just so it's easy for the government to arrest people is not a good tradeoff.
I have a hard time pinpointing the time, or identifying the reasons, bit the current sentiment towards some of those topics is chilly.
My transactions are not public, but that's because I don't use blockchain. This is a problem created by blockchain technologies. Services like Tornado Cash are a poor solution that introduces new problems (like making laundering much easier).
Traceability is indeed required for large transactions in most jurisdictions. Where the line for this should be drawn is debatable. I think it would be hard for society where all transactions are fully anonymous to function. It's too easy for bad actors to free-ride or otherwise take advantage of the situation. I would prefer a little more freedom/privacy here but it's definitely a situation with trade-offs in both directions.
Also, keep in mind that increasing privacy for financial transactions would disproportionately benefit those with the most money.
How?
So, once deployed, there really isn't anything to 'run' in order for it to continue.
Then thousands of people - including him - enable tax evasion and sanctions.
Thank you for providing a good example why all crypto should be banned. And yes you can ban cryptocurrencies by outlawing exchanges.
Que remarks about 'privacy' in 3,2,1...