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Comment by aillia | Hacker News Reader

I hear your point and it's a valid one. Consider the recent case of Tornado Cash and the Open Source Is Not A Crime movement. Two individuals were arrested for developing open-source code on GitHub. Just last week, GoFundMe shut down the Tornado Cash legal defense crowdfunding. This suggests that the state is more interested in protecting itself from individuals rather than defending their rights. This could potentially set a precedent where inventors or developers of decentralized technologies could be targeted, even if they've done nothing inherently wrong. If interested you can learn more here: https://wewantjusticedao.org/

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Oh this is bullshit and you know it. Another example of "we didn't call it a security so it's not a security"

They weren't arrested for the code. They were arrested for actively participating and profiting off money laundering with North Korea being a customer.

Zero-knowledge proofs are different from public ledgers. That's where the issue comes in to play. The Treasury Department has already given guidance that cryptocurrency mixers fall under Know Your Customer laws and the Bank Secrecy Act, and are required to know who exactly is using their services and how.

It's not "Criminalizing Open Source". You live in a society with laws. Obfuscating classic financial products with tech jargon worked for the first half of the decade.

Y'all are just mad it doesn't work anymore and claim "You just don't understand the technology. You haven't issued guidance on specifics of crypto currency. You can't use hundred year old laws"

Yes, you can use 100 year old laws. At the end of the day, the financial shenanigans of most crypto, exchanges, and tokens are fundamentally the same things that have already been regulated. You just have new words.

You live in a society of variable laws that change at runtime get applied unevenly.

Class templates get applied at runtime based on the heap size/ legacy properties of the initializing task.

If we’re using software metaphors for things that aren’t software, I can pull that card too.

The first half of which decade?

Your pedantism perfectly illustrates my point

Tornado Cash was what, money laundering and circumvention of sanctions? Pretty illegal.

Tornado cash was doing something illegal.

GoFundMe is a business, which may do whatever it wants. Tornado Cash has no rights to obtain funds though GoFundMe.

Tornado Cash is a protocol which can be used by both good and bad actors. Saying TC was responsible for bad actors laundering their crypto through the protocol is like saying auto makers are responsible for car crashes or Bob Kahn is responsible for all the illegal activities on the internet.

Or like gun manufacturers are liable for crimes!

Oh they've been sued and lost [1]? Maybe not that one.

[1]: https://apnews.com/article/sandy-hook-school-shooting-reming...

Civil and criminal law are two separate things.

Even if used by "good actors", you're still facilitating money laundering. Which is always illegal. There is no "legal" way to launder money.

The technology behind Tornado Cash could also be used for instituting something like truly fully anonymous group surveys (such as those employee surveys big companies always ask you to take that they claim are "anonymous")

It doesn't have to be used for money laundering, and even if using it to move funds anonymously, that doesn't mean you're money laundering. There are good reasons to not want individuals and state actors whose jurisdiction you're not under to track your financial movements, even if you are reporting your income accurately with your own government.

> even if using it to move funds anonymously, that doesn't mean you're money laundering

The whole point of tornado cash is to "pool" funds to obfuscate who owns what. If your funds get "pooled" with funds from a criminal enterprise, then you become an accessory to that crime. Good luck using your hypothetical to convince a court otherwise.

"I didn't ask where the (other) money came from" is no defense.

What the technology could also be used for is irrelevant. What TC was actually used for was laundering money from North Korea.

So is encryption...

“ In August 2022, the U.S. Department of the Treasury blacklisted the service, making it illegal for US citizens, residents and companies to use.” [0]

Regardless of how you feel about it, you can’t deny that they were doing something illegal under US law, and a consequence of that is that the Feds can come down on you, even if the law seems ad hoc and unfair.

[0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tornado_Cash

Well either that or what they were doing is just obviously illegal and they should be at fault for it.

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