> This post is solely intended to establish a common-sense argument (and ideally, general intuition) for statutory action by the U.S. Treasury.

Every time I hear "common-sense argument" I am expecting to be greeted by partisan nonsense.

> No, probably not. The error is apparent: the bullet only traveled because something made it travel. The something that made it travel is the gun, and guns do not make bullets travel unless someone or something pulls their triggers4. For this particular bullet and gun, that someone is the defendant.

I don't like this analogy because the area of self-defense law is extremely murky. (a) incontrovertible evidence that someone shot someone else simply proves that, and does not prove or disprove self-defense. Moreover there have been more than enough cases of accidental failure that make this analogy extremely leaky.

> For example: Imagine if the defendant were to have forced the victim to put their head in a noose and their feet on a stool, with the stool tied by a rope to the leg of a horse. It would be absurd for the defendant to claim that he were innocent of murder because he “merely” spurred the horse into pulling the rope5; we can recognize that the victim’s death by hanging follows necessarily and foreseeably from the defendant’s action. Basically, that one scene with Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

This example should've been the leading example. There's no ambiguity here.

> Tornado Cash (as a smart contract) is the clear instrument of action. As designed by its programmers, it necessarily launders money: there is no way to make it not launder money, because it cannot distinguish money laundering from “legitimate” tumbling.

This is a hot take with VERY dangerous implications. Using the treasuries own definition [1]

> Money laundering involves disguising financial assets so they can be used without detection of the illegal activity that produced them.

Laundering is only with illegal money. If I take my legal dollars, convert them to gold, then convert them back to dollars this is "laundering" under the definition of the author. If I deposit money, and then take it out as cash this is also laundering under the definition.

> For parsimony: Tornado Cash exists, effectively, to hack around the public and immutable nature of the distributed ledgers it runs on. In other words: it solves a self-inflicted problem, one that regulatory agencies are correct to identify as unnecessary (and can evidence this by pointing to the billions of people who accomplish their financial goals without it).

If I have cash that I let sufficiently "age" under my bed and I convert it to gold, is the gold seller responsible if I then use that gold to commit a crime? Billions of people are completely happy using fiat to accomplish their goals. This is dangerous Nanny State level implication. The underlying implication of OPs post is that because something is designed on its principles to evade the tracking system of the "greater" system, then it must be used in crimes.

> And if you don’t think sanctions are valid at all, well, fine. This post probably isn’t for you

It sounds like my assumption was correct. Yet another "common sense" take that is actually partisan nonsense.

While I don't know the entire case of Tornado Cash, or if it's used to launder money any more than a regular cryptocurrency or any other number of ways you can launder money, the idea of punishing an entire idea (tumblers in general it seems) for being used this way is insanely heavy handed. Carefully chosen definitions, and a misunderstanding that so, so many instruments that are not tornado cash can be used for it's purpose weaken the author's arguments for sanctions. It is indeed a hot take, and the only thing common sense here is relying on the readers lack of knowledge of financial systems and the assumption that evading a tracking system implies laundering rather than the other way around.

[1] https://www.fincen.gov/what-money-laundering