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A comment on Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash. Parent comment

Re:Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash by dannyw on Friday August 12, 2022 @09:39AM (#32438465)
There's a distinction, you can't transfer a dollar in a bank account by sending text messages. You could instruct your bank to transfer; but the actual irreversible _movement_ happens out of band.

You _can_ transfer a cryptocurrency by sending its private key on an encrypted messaging app.

What happens if someone makes a mixer that operates over Signal messages? This is not a bad-faith argument: The entire CoinJoin protocol used to operate over IRC; before they developed their own communications system for increased efficiency.

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Re:Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash by JumpCrisscross on Friday August 12, 2022 @09:44AM (#32438536)
> What happens if someone makes a mixer that operates over Signal messages?

Honestly, if someone just develops a mixer and publishes the code they’re probably fine. That’s speech. GitHub or a journal, it is protected.

Tornado’s developers didn’t do that. They made a token that with monetary value that they get paid; they hired people and had a website promoting the service; et cetera. If this were just a GitHub repo, yes, the comparison to speech would be apt. It’s not. And I’m none too thrilled about folks throwing actual free speech and privacy under the bus to defend crypto.

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