tornado cash owner got hit for directly receiving revenue for facilitating payments of specific criminal sourced funds knowingly via his service he used in participation of moving value
using code that anyone can use and you not know who how or why they do... is totally different to knowing a criminal wants to move criminally sourced funding and agreeing to help them and then get paid for the help
We can all agree that bad people doing bad things should be punished, franky1. However, I'm concerned about the precedent set by the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control when it placed "Tornado Cash" (code) on its "Specially Designated Nationals" sanctions list. This is unprecedented (code is not a 'National'!) and has serious implications for free speech and academic freedom. This action effectively prohibits anyone in the United States from "dealing" with Tornado Cash (code). What really gets my attention is how these actions could potentially affect freedom of speech. Government must not make choices that impact the sharing of code, academic progress, and scientific research. And then there are the legal eagles at CoinCenter and CoinBase, raising some big questions through their lawsuits about OFAC's authority and the constitutional side of this. These cases could really shape our future.
Plus, there's this overarching theme of (financial) privacy that keeps popping up in various ways. By the way, I know we've got some old-school veterans on this forum who probably remember the cryptography wars—when code was printed in books and on T-shirts as a form of protest and activism. It's a testament to how cyclical history can be. If it turns out I'm just being alarmist, I'll be the happiest to admit it. 😅