Seth For Privacy: "We Need KYC To Prevent The CIA From Using Mixers"
In the movie Dark Night, Harvey Dent tells Batman, "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain." It's one of the best quotes, from one of the best films in cinema history. If one had to repurpose the quote to make sense of recent, troubling developments in the Bitcoin industry, it might go "You either die a cypherpunk or live long enough to see yourself become a comply guy." At least that's how many are feeling after Seth For Privacy, one of the industry's most respected privacy influencers, shocked his followers by saying Thursday that coinjoins and mixers might have to consider KYC in order to prevent the CIA and other U.S. government actors from using the services to launder money for Ukraine, Hamas, and drug cartels.
"It makes me want to puke to even type this," For Privacy began in his controversial Nostr post, "but maybe PODCONF is right. If the government won't comply with its own laws and rules, maybe its up to us to out-comply them. If we want the tools we created to shield our data from the state, we need to make sure they're not being used by state criminals. The only way to do this, that I'm aware of, is to enforce KYC/AML requirements so we can identify spooks and prevent them from using these services"
"Privacy is a human right. Coinjoins were created, in part, to protect that right. The problem with open source technologies like coinjoins is that governments can use them to break the law." For Privacy followed up with on Nostr. "We have seen this since technologies like cryptography, Bitcoin, coinjoins on Bitcoin, and even Monero were developed. They are immediately exploited by feds from the CIA, FBI, NSA, and the European versions of Feds to skirt compliance laws in order to facilitate human trafficking, drug and weapons smuggling, as well as money laundering for terrorists such as Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, ISIS, and Ukraine. The media and politicians indict Bitcoin as a tool used by money launderers and terrorists but they never tell voters who those criminals are. Because its them! Virtually all international criminal enterprise is state sanctioned."
His comments were made in the context of speculation on social media that undercover feds from deep state agencies were using Samourai's Whirlpool service to launder millions of dollars through Bitcoin and either got caught or needed to shut down the service in order to prevent adversaries like Russia and China from using the service themselves.
On another front, Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation has began leading the public campaign that states laundering money for government agents isn't illegal in a Democracy. Gladstein posted Wednesday night, "If a Democratic government launders money it is legal because that means the citizens of that country support it. That's how Democracies work. No action by a Democratic government can be considered illegal therefore no citizen facilitating a government action should be liable for a crime." Dennis Porter has not addressed the privacy issue or mentioned Samourai at all since the arrests were made, which has been heartbreaking for many of his followers. The Bugle included.
