Episode 156 - Tornado Cash is the (scape) GOAT

Eureka Street Creative Podcast

Good morning! I woke up this morning to all types of news about Tornado Cash being criminalized in the United States. Tornado Cash is a tool people in crypto can use to mix their transactions with others to add a layer of privacy to their financial dealings. People should have every right to this privacy much like people in the 90's had every right to privacy on their computers when the government was trying to impose a clipper chip back door on everyone's PC's. Also, Tornado Cash is decentralized and open source. Open source code is free speech! The U.S. government decided to crack down on the privacy Tornado Cash offers as a tool. They have created a list of people who have used or use it to monitor them and penalize anyone who interacts with those on the list. Sounds a bit like like Big Red Mother Russia, right? Also, there are companies like Elliptic that can do chainalysis and uncover the trail of would-be hackers using Tornado Cash. So this isn't really about Tornado Cash, is it? Tornado Cash as a tool for money laundering is just the reason (excuse) to chew away further our dwindling rights to privacy.

In this video I follow a stream of consciousness about this topic.

Sources:

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/08/crypto-mixing-service-tornado-cash-blacklisted-by-treasury-department-.html

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6949799581501030400/

https://decrypt.co/107030/crypto-leaders-decry-tyranny-of-tornado-cash-ban

https://hub.elliptic.co/analysis/the-100-million-horizon-hack-following-the-trail-through-tornado-cash-to-north-korea/