What if he knows Tornado is used by criminals (he does), but is not using it with the *intent* of helping them launder (he isn't), but just for his own totally non-nefarious purposes - eg to be able to send money to family w/o revealing the connection?
(Serious question)
Conversation
Good question. I don't know. That we are asking these questions and don't have clear answers is why I keep saying that mixing is not a good way to get privacy.
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How does that follow? It seems to work OK. How else are people supposed to get privacy? If you can get privacy and so can criminals - then as you argue you might be abetting them. If you can get privacy and criminals can't - then actually that means you can't either
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Wasn't implying that mixing doesn't work. What I meant is that it entails legal risks. Other privacy tech is safer.
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In a way isn't all privacy tech (at least that supports transactions) mixing though? Like, Zcash isn't technically mixing, but if you use it you're helping obscure the transactions of criminals (or could be).
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Is withdrawing $20 bills from the ATM and putting it in your pocket, “mixing”? Btw all current public evidence points to the same conclusion: Zcash is currently not used by criminals, but by freedom-loving, normal people.
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Replying to @masonic_tweets and @zooko
This is a normal practice in our family. And my friends throw me $ZEC for a beer after bar. And this is in Russia. So that the future is closer than it seems. It penetrates not from the incredible headlines of magazines, but imperceptibly through our ranks.
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I don't think banknotes or Zcash entail mixing. They're both natively private. (Btw I'm not criticizing privacy itself or Vitalik. I'm only trying to make a point about mixing as a way to get privacy.)
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holding is private, sure.
Transacting in cash in the real world does functionally resemble mixing.
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I’m really interested in this conversation, because I think the biggest problem in crypto privacy tech right now is that 99% of people think that “mixing” is the only possible kind of privacy, but I think “mixing” can never succeed at providing privacy.
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To me, “mixing” means trying to hide the patterns of your choices in among the patterns of other people’s choices. Computers can already see through that, and they’re getting better at seeing through it faster than we’re getting better at “mixing”. It’s never gonna work.
BUT…
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But, encryption works! Computers can’t see through encryption.
Here’s a short talk I gave about this:
At the risk of rambling on, Imma say more. The fundamental distinction has to do with things on the order of 2^32 possibilities vs things on the order of 2^128 possibilities. Let me explain …
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Suppose you are one of 4 billion (2^32) users, and you let an AI watch the actions of all 4 billion of you, and then you ask it to identify you uniquely among all of them based on your patterns of behavior. Will it be able to do so? …
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