Interview│Fatemeh Fannizadeh - Swarm│ETHDam 2024

Transcript

seeing how that story evolved in Switzerland can teach us a lot about how our Tech is different from centralized Banking and why what happened to the banking sector in Switzerland shouldn't happen to the tech wear building join us at Eve Dam to hear from Fatima a crypto lawyer who Champions privacy what can the tech World learn from Swiss banking secrecy let's tune in my name is ftim f and uh I'm a crypto lawyer uh the main message I tried to convey was that there are um parallels to be drawn between the traditional banking sector and how they dealt with privacy especially in

Switzerland with uh what was called the or what is called the banking secrecy and uh the crypto privacy teag that we're uh seeing or using or building um especially within Defi and I think by drawing these parallels then we're able to think of uh crypto privacy Tech in very different ways so somebody said during my talk that uh the Swiss banking sector was the original um tornado cash and I like this uh thought because I believe that um the Swiss banking privacy uh when it was in full force was the closest that we would we ever had

within the Fiat sector at least in Europe to self custody um and I think that seeing how that story evolved in Switzerland can uh teach us a lot about um the way to deal with it but also teaches us a lot about how our Tech is different from centralized Banking and why what happen to the banking sector in Switzerland shouldn't happen to the tech we building um I think one point that we need to pay a lot of attention to is that um in the banking sector governments and other law law enforcement went after the banks and the bankers and what we're seeing with

tornado cash is that they're going after the developers but I don't think that these two systems are comparable and that the developers should be liable for the tools that they've worked on because these tools depend on the network effect of the user base while the bank ing sector does not depend on the user base because it is itself a black box um and because of that I think that the developers shouldn't be seen as liable what does privacy mean to me deep down um I think privacy generally is a very intuitive subject so people who really believe in privacy although we can

rationalize it and there are many reasonable and rational reasons to believe in it um it's also very emotional and intuitive because I think that we know deep down and that's how I feel that U privacy is absolutely necessary for humans to be Sovereign and to have the freedom that they deserve um and by not having privacy having less privacy we need to trust that our data will be used uh for good and um will not be used to harm uh some people they cannot meet the level of uh information that is requested by whatever um

Authority and unfortunately I think time has proven over and over again that we cannot really trust that policies are aligned with what we believe are good and what should reasonably uh be pursued do you have any last words to share any last words to share um I think the Privacy taxing is at a very pivotal moment right now and um it's a very difficult uh kind of almost identity crisis for the space because a lot of us come from a cipher Punk background and we would like to see privacy on chain because if crypto is money money should

be fungible and should be anonymous but it is not the case uh on on the blockchain and the blockchain offers uh this financial system that is global um unlike any other system that exists currently and I think that we should be very careful with uh what we compromise and on what base and I think it is very legitimate and we should pursue um fight against crimes and we should not want to associate with Bad actors all of these are very legitimate and this is something to be kept in mind no matter what we build but on the other hand and we should also try to build better mechanisms to fight against the crime because currently I don't think that the

sanction system that is in place mainly by the United States um government and also the kyc system that um has been stewarded by um a whole industry but also by the financial action task force um is NE is necessarily the solution to combat these crimes because uh it's just enough to look at the landscape and see that crime is still happening money laundering is still happening and Bad actors um terrorists still have access to resources so I don't think that whatever system exists right now has been uh dealing with this subject successfully and I think we can do

better and we should do better