>As such, the implicit assumption in a reasonable person's mind is: this money you got is absolutely from someone else who was trying to hide their money. The law also states that aiding and abetting them is illegal in of itself.
Is hiding money inherently a crime, though? I think it only might be if you're trying to violate a specific law regarding transparency. Naturally, if you're using a mixer, you must be trying to hide your money or how you're using the money, so if that much is illegal then you can skip all the arguments about the source of the other funds in the mixer. But if it isn't illegal, then I think you might need to tie it to belief that a specific crime likely occurred.
I'm definitely not a lawyer and could be totally wrong. But that's the defense I'd give, at least. Unless mixers are explicitly declared illegal, or unless there are explicit reporting requirements which you're evading (e.g. they have reason to believe that you used the mixer to evade taxes), the accusation just seems too weak and vague.
>Well, the issue with "faster moving" mixers is that it more closely connects the dirty money with the source. "Slow moving" mixers with larger pools are more entangled, harder to know where the money came from.
That's true. The better the mixer, the harder it might be to prove you aren't guilty if you're not guilty. But, at the same time, the harder it might be to prove you are guilty if you actually are guilty. (Assuming the crime in question is what the mixing was allegedly abetting, like a cryptocurrency exchange heist or something.)
>I dunno. The RAII has been mildly successful in court over IP addresses used in Bittorrent peers, right? That seems to be roughly the same level of involvement as we're seeing here. I'm not necessarily saying you're going to get jailtime, but you probably will be roped into the court case if someone in your pool was doing something sketchy.
That seems very different to me. The inherent act of downloading or uploading the content is illegal. So if an IP registered to your name and home address is downloading the content, then it's just a matter of trying to prove that you likely initiated that activity. The IP's "guilt" is already a given.
I think it'd only be analogous if mere use of a mixer is also itself illegal; even assuming a scenario where no one is using it to help with any other crimes. But if it is, then it's just begging the question, since using it would be illegal because it's illegal to use. And then it'd just be a matter of proving you had access to and were using that cryptocurrency address at that time, since the address's "guilt" is already established.
Structuring/smurfing is done to evade specific bank deposit reporting requirements, though. Unless there's a specific requirement you're trying to evade (e.g. an exchange must, by law, report deposits or balances over a certain size), I don't know if the general notion of "hiding" can be considered illicit.
Is hiding money inherently a crime, though? I think it only might be if you're trying to violate a specific law regarding transparency. Naturally, if you're using a mixer, you must be trying to hide your money or how you're using the money, so if that much is illegal then you can skip all the arguments about the source of the other funds in the mixer. But if it isn't illegal, then I think you might need to tie it to belief that a specific crime likely occurred.
I'm definitely not a lawyer and could be totally wrong. But that's the defense I'd give, at least. Unless mixers are explicitly declared illegal, or unless there are explicit reporting requirements which you're evading (e.g. they have reason to believe that you used the mixer to evade taxes), the accusation just seems too weak and vague.
>Well, the issue with "faster moving" mixers is that it more closely connects the dirty money with the source. "Slow moving" mixers with larger pools are more entangled, harder to know where the money came from.
That's true. The better the mixer, the harder it might be to prove you aren't guilty if you're not guilty. But, at the same time, the harder it might be to prove you are guilty if you actually are guilty. (Assuming the crime in question is what the mixing was allegedly abetting, like a cryptocurrency exchange heist or something.)
>I dunno. The RAII has been mildly successful in court over IP addresses used in Bittorrent peers, right? That seems to be roughly the same level of involvement as we're seeing here. I'm not necessarily saying you're going to get jailtime, but you probably will be roped into the court case if someone in your pool was doing something sketchy.
That seems very different to me. The inherent act of downloading or uploading the content is illegal. So if an IP registered to your name and home address is downloading the content, then it's just a matter of trying to prove that you likely initiated that activity. The IP's "guilt" is already a given.
I think it'd only be analogous if mere use of a mixer is also itself illegal; even assuming a scenario where no one is using it to help with any other crimes. But if it is, then it's just begging the question, since using it would be illegal because it's illegal to use. And then it'd just be a matter of proving you had access to and were using that cryptocurrency address at that time, since the address's "guilt" is already established.