The chief selling point of Tornado Cash is that it's distributed open-source software, with no man in the middle, no single point of failure.
That's right: Government sanctioned open-source SOFTWARE. Are you sure you want this precedent set?
That's right: Government sanctioned open-source SOFTWARE. Are you sure you want this precedent set?
You should take a step back: "open source" does not rinse away the underlying properties of a service. I can't write and deploy a web application that contracts hitmen and use the MIT license as a defense; the latter simply isn't being litigated.
Tornado Cash in itself does is not launderying money because you still have to prove to the IRS how you got the money or the asset(i.e bills, invoice etc) and you still have to obey KYC rules. You can't just say the money is from Tornado Cash and be done with it.
Is the U.S Mint a money launderying service because it provides an untraceable method (cash) to conduct transactions?
Both the Treasury and Dutch authorities have reason to believe that Tornado Cash was operated with the intent of facilitating money laundering. It's up to a court to determine the veracity of that accusation.
In the mean time, yes: the government is allowed to halt activities that it believes are part of an active criminal scheme. Every country with a functioning legal system proscribes this, and establishes a broad swath of controls to ensure that the government can't indefinitely tie up resources.
It is my understanding, that $10,000 at the time this law was set, was about ¼ the price of a small home.
You don't get to shift regulatory burden to the consumer.
Really good question.
I'd say "if your privacy feature allows you to trade above the trigger limit (usually 10K USD/EUR/GBP) without having to state the source of your funds, then it's actually a money laundering feature"
I've worked in the finance industry, and I've worked with people who've seen bad guys turn up with suitcases full of other people's money. I'm totally happy that these regulations are in place.
You are wrong.
FINCEN "Money laundering involves disguising financial assets so they can be used without detection of the illegal activity that produced them."
WIKIPEDIA "Money laundering is the process of concealing the origin of money obtained from illicit activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, embezzlement or gambling, by converting it into a legitimate source."
That's easier said than done. It's drastically easier to catch crime by it's results (money) than in the act. Famously that's how Capone was caught. And what would be the advantage of that, to anyone? I doubt that erroneously flagged transactions are a real problem. Do you have any numbers on the matter?
It may have not happened to you, but I do not think it is as uncommon as you think. Parent is right. We are doing this backwards.
The teller is not allowed to disclose this to customer.
> Any numbers you will see might be from the government
In my experience, the board of directors of the bank get a monthly roll-up of the numbers.
There is an open question about whether publishing non custodial contract code on Ethereum counts as providing a service. If you post 10 lines of immutable code onto Ethereum, and some years later a user chooses to run this code on their machines for criminal behavior, should you be prosecuted?
The treasury ban is on the contract itself, not TC-based services that people might run.
for laundering money. You can't remove the key feature from metaproperties of the software and call the latter the "chief selling point."
You’re describing due process. That’s a feature. An AK-47 being metallic may be self evident. That doesn’t make it relevant to a murder investigation.
There are thousands of them in the U.S. and owned by innocents. It would be unreasonable to come after all AK-47 owners because one was used in a crime. Rather, it would be up to the cops to find other facts about the weapon, perhaps how much more metallic it looked than your standard AK, and in which spots. Wear marks can be just as revealing as serial numbers.
Every mixer isn’t sanctioned. Just the one used to launder money by Pyongyang. None of this is novel.