IMO the same is true of Tornado Cash and digital currency in general, even though it is often overused by criminals. I have heard strong arguments for each of the following being used primarily or only by criminals:

* Tor & encrypted messengers: the whole "going dark" paranoia from mid-2010s

* Knives, guns, explosives: mass shootings and domestic terrorists; "nobody needs military style weapons"

* recreational drugs: see the War on Drugs which is really a war on poor non-White people

* cash: see the death of the €500 note

* masks: see the anti-mask laws intended to target the KKK

Note that I'm not claiming that society should never be able to regulate tools. Certainly I don't want the disturbed guy down the street making Ricin in his garage. We should keep in mind though that the tools themselves are value-neutral; it is the people who use them that give them a value.

>* Tor & encrypted messengers: the whole "going dark" paranoia from mid-2010s

It's not paranoia if they really were out to get you (and largely succeeded, it seems)

Just to reiterate, the primary reason for those items to exist is not criminality, even if they are useful to criminals.

This is not true of something like Tornado which exists primarily to launder dirty money, even if it has fringe legitimate use cases.

How does TC launder money? It's a privacy tool that hides the origin of cash, but when you cash out through an exchange you still need to prove the origin of cash. It's good to avoid others snoop through my wallet though.

I’m not overly familiar so I don’t want to assume something that’s not accurate, but I’m assuming cashing out at an exchange is entirely optional.

Most of people who used Tornado Cash are not criminals. How can you say it exists "primarily to aid criminals"? A fleeing criminal breaks into your house and hides while you are on vacation, apparently it was intended as a hideout for criminals all along...

What are you basing “most” on? It’s kind of hard to tell, after all. Do you think that “most” is roughly the same by volume?

I’d bet that there’s a chance a majority of users aren’t breaking local laws, at least if you exclude small scale tax evasion, but it takes an awful lot of people who care enough about privacy to pay extra for it to balance out the $450M USD-equivalent which just one North Korean group is alleged to have laundered. People who care about privacy will use it some of the time if they remember but someone with a lot of stolen money is going to use it every time and that will start to dominate the transaction volume, especially any time gas fees go up and people who don’t need to decide they don’t care that much.

I don't think you have any evidence of that. I don't either, but my hunch is that most tornadoCash users were criminals.

Neither do mixers. They're a privacy tool, just like Tor and end-to-end encryption (both of which also do aid criminals; privacy makes law enforcement harder by its very nature).

It seems like if you want privacy, the first step is to not use a public ledger.

Looking forward to your rigorous defense of Z-Cash/Monero/a future fully private Ethereum then.

Transmitting money and speech are very different things. Both have existing laws and norms. Tornado Cash was built to circumvent existing laws (AML, KYC & taxes)

> Neither do mixers.

Let's be honest with ourselves. Mixers are used primarily for crypto transaction laundering.

Leaving aside the legality for the moment, because it's complex, jurisdiction-dependent, and constantly in flux, "crypto transaction laundering" is not in and of itself unethical. It depends on what you are intending to conceal. The parallels to encrypted messaging are really quite strong IMO.

If you are trying to hide a purchase (with your own money) from your wife because you think she wouldn't approve, that's totally ethical (if a bit of a silly relationship tactic). Similar if you're trying to hide a donation to an unpopular politician or charity from your employer. If you're trying to hide a donation to a militant organization, it's much more ethically complex and depends on the goals and actions of the organization. If you're trying to hide the source of ill-gotten money, it's likely unethical.

Separately, while the tool might be "primarily" used for unethical things, that does not make the tool unethical itself. Again it is the actions of the users that determine this. Even if hypothetically 95% of Tor users are pedophiles and ransomware crackers, that does not invalidate the "legitimate" ethical use of the tool by the remaining 5%.

It's unethical if the tool doesn't take reasonable steps to prevent unethical usage.

For example implementing KYC and AML processes.

By your logic the road crew who build the interstate are unethical because they happily build roads knowing money launderers will use them, without taking the slightest precaution to stop them.

> Let's be honest with ourselves. Mixers are used primarily for crypto transaction laundering.

About as true a statement as Tor being primarily used for CSAM, and no-one actually caring about e2e encryption who isn't trying to hide from the law.

>no-one actually caring about e2e encryption who isn't trying to hide from the law.

Pity the undesirable, lest one day ye be counted amongst them.