If I was a charity and got a suitcase full of dirty cash, I wouldn't necessarily be upset if I had to jump through hoops to make use of it.
I think in this case, FOSS would stand to gain more by not receiving money-laundered transactions which, as someone else pointed out in this discussion, would create a compliance nightmare.
To put it this way: would you accept 1,000 dollars from me if it would take you 100 hours of your life to receive?
> To put it this way: would you accept 1,000 dollars from me if it would take you 100 hours of your life to receive?
Does that really apply here? If this money can't be touched, then it's a minor time sink with zero benefit.
If there is a way to dump in 100 hours and extract the money, it's worth it because it's so much.
That analogy is more fitting to a 1 ETH donation.
Keep in mind that there is, as of right now, no evidence that this cash was "laundered" or in any way associated with any nefarious activity. It's merely anonymous.
This makes it sound like this happened in a vacuum, but those laws and regulations are in response to real world events and you have to consider that when talking about whether laws are unreasonable. For example, many people would have ethical objections to accepting a donation from an unknown source (what if the money was generated from some activity I object to?), don't want to deal with potential hassle if the source does something to trigger legal attention, or the risk of a non-zero chance of some unsavory sorts showing up and “suggesting” that you give them some fraction of it as clean cash, etc.
Allowing anonymous transactions means that the latter two kinds of events will happen on an somewhat regular basis, which is why most people accept laws requiring financial institutions to know their customers' identities as a necessary cost. If you say magic internet money is exempted from those requirements, well, there are going to be a whole bunch of surprisingly well-funded open source projects in Mexico paying salaries which make FAANG employees weep with envy.
What exactly makes an open source project so special that it should be exempt from the regulations that apply to everyone else?
And if that were the case, what would prevent an open source project from being just a smokescreen for something else? Obscure API implementations paying pseudonymous developers for PRs with anonymous donation money seems like a fine kind of laundering operation.
If that happens then you investigate, find out if it is a money laundering scheme, and bring a criminal prosecution if it is. You don't just assume they're guilty because the transaction was anonymous, or ban privacy tools and conduct mass surveillance on every transaction to make sure none of them are suspicious.
It's kinda wild how many people on HN suddenly become anti decentralization and pro mass surveillance whenever the topic of cryptocurrency comes up.
Fixed the amount for you. Yes, absolutely. I would spend 100 hours to receive the 350,000. That's 3500 per hour.
Assuming the money would be ethical and cleared by the government (two separate things), I too would absolutely take it. :P
Tornado Cash wasn't some haven for big money philanthropy pre-sanctions.
> Tornado Cash wasn't some haven for big money philanthropy pre-sanctions.
Vitalik used it to donate to Ukraine [0], and there are several other examples here [1] as well.
[0] https://forkast.news/vitalik-buterin-says-used-tornado-cash-...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-08/coinbase-...
Nobody was sending a half-million dollars to FOSS projects with it pre-sanctions.
[]
Philanthropists use fiat, de facto. Anything else is notable.
> Tornado Cash wasn't some haven for big money philanthropy pre-sanctions.
Citation needed.
Funny enough, even VB himself has 'Tainted' Eth in his wallet. He's used tornado cash on three different occassions.
No, the intent of the donation is to cause trouble to FOSS projects and waste their time. Not sure why you're appreciating this. It's like donating stolen property to the local orphanage.