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Comment by axlee | Hacker News Reader

If 99% of BTC mixers' volume is helping laundering international drug trade money, arms or human trafficking, it's not exactly hard to demonize mixing itself. I have no data to base this on, but I assume that privacy absolutists are a tiny, tiny drop in the pool of blood and crime.

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do you feel the same way about Tor?

If 99% of Tor's volume is helping laundering international drug trade money, distributing CSAM, etc, should it be demonized as well?

I think most people do feel that way about Tor, both in terms of assuming that 99% of its users are criminals and that it should be demonized. It's interesting to me because I think most of those people don't feel the same way about encryption in general, which of course enables Tor and all sorts of criminal activity in other contexts. Everyone has something to hide from someone and wants to see the green lock symbol in their browser's address bar along with other assurances of some degree of privacy. I don't know how most people decide where to draw a line.

There are some things that are perfectly legal for me to Google search, that I don’t want my ISP or Google to know about. So Tor works well for that. Tor would also be useful if governments were to crack down on free speech.

You can apply basically the same argument to money. If I have $20m in Bitcoin I don’t want my name to be tied to my wallet address (because a KYC exchange saw where the money went to) because it makes me a target, for example. And in the case of censorship or something I want to be able to do with the money what I please.

Privacy is a fundamental human right, in my opinion. We have to use cumbersome technology to get any modicum of true digital privacy. Just because people use it for illegal things doesn’t mean that the desire for privacy or the technology itself is bad. One day things we find morally just may be illegal too

Intentional consealment of illegal internet traffic isn't a crime (the crime is just the crime).

Intentional consealment of illegal financial transactions is a crime in-and-of itself (the crime is money laundering, which is a seperate offence to the original criminal activity that the money came from).

The point was whether using a mixer is a crime in itself.

Well it is a crime to use it for obscuring illegal money, while it is not illegal to use Tor for obscuring illegal internet traffic

conspiracy to commit a crime is often an additional charge (IANAL)

That’s just when two or more people get together to plan a crime - obfuscation isn’t the offence, the offence is the joint planning and intention to commit a crime.

> If 99% of Tor's volume is helping laundering international drug trade money, distributing CSAM, etc, should it be demonized as well?

Easy answer: Yes! Although I think it would be hard to call it demonizing when something is already 99% demons.

Should any tech that conceals IP addresses be demonized? Or just Tor?

Depends if it is being overwhelmingly used for criminal activity.

Obviously you know that "demonized" is a loaded word here. What's your point in using it?

All I'm saying is that if there's something where "99% of [...] volume is helping laundering international drug trade money, distributing CSAM" that that is obviously terrible for the world and we should be asking some strong questions about who's supporting it and why. Is somebody gaining something that's more important than the lives forever ruined?

Mostly, yes. I sympathize with the goals in theory since I grew up on 90s internet dreams too but as a practical matter if you run a large website you’ll see mostly attacks from Tor, it shows up a lot in news about crime, and it’s noticeably helping people in actual repressive regimes because it’s still too easy to identify the network traffic when the stakes are high.

There's a difference between sending around uncensored information, and sending around uncensored money.

Funny thing is, you can barely launder any tangible amount of money with Bitcoin let alone crypto.

> Funny thing is, you can barely launder any tangible amount of money with Bitcoin let alone crypto.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/10/crypto-criminals-laundered-5...

Is $540M considered a tangible amount? I'll let you quibble over that but I'd think most criminals would be more than happy to be able to launder $540M.

That's mixing or "anonymizing" your crpyto proceeds. To make use of this crypto, you need to convert it to the relevant currency of the country you are in. If you are based in the USA, your only option is the few regulated exchanges which will ask "lots" of questions for this amount of money. It doesn't stop there, you'll have to answer lots of questions for the banks too as you'll withdraw this money eventually.

If you made it this far, then you start the laundering process.

You can't launder money with Bitcoin because Bitcoin is not well integrated with any country financial devices in any meaningful manner.

just buy homes from individuals. or rent luxury homes and and sub rent them. there are many individuals who will turn a blind eye on their real estate for a 30% premium.

Would privacy absolutists even use BTC? I was under the impression that every transaction was out in the open and permanent.

The answe is no but they can make a trade off using something like monero. BTC's only read advantage is the network effects. As far as the tech is concerned it is mediocre compared with other ledgers.

Privacy absolutists are free to deal in cash. Whatever amounts they send and receive, criminals and dictators do orders of magnitude more and people suffer as a result.

If it wasn't so sad it would be funny that the countries with highest levels of freedom and least corruption tend to be the ones with most vocal privacy absolutists...

>the countries with highest levels of freedom and least corruption tend to be the ones with most vocal privacy absolutists...

Correlation or causation?

Only irony. No one is taking cash away from those guys.

The most powerful states don't need to launder any money, since they can just pass a law legitimizing any action they do, with no need to hide the funds generated from any one else.

This is irrelevant. Anything putin gang does is legal in Russia obviously but being able to clean blood money is vital for them. That's the point of sanctions and why any way around it like crypto is a godsend to dictators.

You're missing my point. Your example doesn't contradict it.

My point is that the most powerful countries don't need to clean their dirty money to spend their money abroad, because they are the center of the world economy, and everything is available to them to buy. Russia is economically on the periphery and thus does need to clean it.

Making it looks like "powerful country can do shady stuff and poor country needs to clean money" is not how reality works. Try being a violent dictator and do crime at a scale acceptable in Russia but in the US and then tell me how it goes.

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