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Comment by unboxingelf | Hacker News Reader

False. Here is the definition of money laundering:

  1. The act of engaging in transactions designed to obscure the origin of money that has been obtained illegally.
  2. concealing the source of illegally gotten money

Anyone can use a cryptocurrency mixer with legally obtained cryptocurrency.

Tornado Cash has legitimate, non-criminal use cases.

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Anyone can, but realistically, it has probably been used almost exclusively for either laundering money or concealing the source of money used to purchase illegal goods. I can think of pretty much no cases where you would _need_ to convert your money to cryptocurrency, then conceal where it came from using a mixer, and then use it for something legal.

I'm not advocating for the developer to be prosecuted, I'm just saying in the eyes of the law, they probably won't see it in the way you are describing.

  I can think of pretty much no cases where you would _need_ to convert your money to cryptocurrency, then conceal where it came from using a mixer, and then use it for something legal.

See my other comment for a concrete, legal use case: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32443842

Why would you need a mixer? If you want to hide it from your friends just send it to a new address and then buy with that address. Who can prove that new address is yours?

Also if your friends then regularly snoop and trace every single one of your transactions so they can laugh at you for your purchases, I wouldn't consider those to be your friends.

I mean fair enough, you have contrived a legal example. Yes, I admit it does have valid use cases, I just don't think they're very common at all.

  Why would you need a mixer? If you want to hide it from your friends just send it to a new address and then buy with that address.

Let’s continue the example. Imagine you use your shiny new NFT as your twitter avatar. Now anyone can see the wallet holding that NFT received funds from wallet x. Wallet x is your main wallet.

Privacy is not bad.

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