Starting a money laundrymat and expecting not to get charged with a crime is a bit absurd. Pretending that it's totally fine because it's "privacy" not money laundering because crypto is special... is likewise absurd.
Example of a “legitimate” use case for tumbling: your employer pays you in Bitcoin and you don’t want them to know where you spend the money they give you.
A public ledger means anyone can read it, not just the government. And so anonymizing your transactions means hiding them from everyone, not just the government.
It’s fine if you believe the government and your bank should be able to read your transactions. But what about your crazy ex girlfriend or the guy you fired last week?
Tornado Cash wasn't free, there was a fee which as I understand it was sent back to various developers.
Money laundering doesn't get to be something else and totally fine just because it's covering for a weakness of cryptocurrencies.
> If you don't want your transactions to be public, don't use a public ledger.
That's exactly what people were attempting to do, with Tornado.
> You don't get to launder your money
There is no money laundering available with Tornado, it doesn't turn an illigitimate source of funds into a legitimate one. And it also has a compliance tool to allow proof of transfer between accounts.
> Tornado Cash wasn't free, there was a fee which as I understand it was sent back to various developers.
This wasn't sent to developers. It was a fee you would pay relayers to propagate transactions on the network and was optional. You could choose to fund withdrawals with a relayer or to use funds in your own wallet.
> Money laundering
This isn't money laundering.
Privacy is definitely a legitimate use for something like Tornado Cash, what are you talking about? Hell, if someone found out what my address is and it's not in my best interest that this person knew about it, I would definitely use it just to move my funds to another address.
If you sell me a screwdriver and then I go and kill someone with it, should you be prosecuted for it?
They really shouldn't.
Neither should any other security researcher who publishes exploits.
Neither should any other developer of cryptographic technology.
What about automobile manufacturers? They kill almost as many people as guns (in the US, quick google search)
Money laundering, especially running a money laundering business which does not follow certain rules, is illegal regardless if some of the usage is legitimate.
Tools to hide the source or destination of funds, i.e. to launder money, are not legal anywhere and explicitly illegal in various ways. Providing them as a service to others is explicitly illegal.
Building, selling, owning, and using a gun are all legal in general, only specific ways of doing those things are not.