Jon Wu Profile picture
Sep 13, 2022 14 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Are you going to jail for interacting with Tornado Cash?

Well, today we find out!

I read US Treasury's OFAC office Tornado Cash FAQ's so you don't have to:

(Note: I'm not a lawyer 🤠)
On getting money out of Tornado Cash:

You can do it!

...if you apply for an individual withdrawal license which includes furnishing provenance for your funds:

home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/… Image
On getting "dusted" by Tornado Cash-tarnished funds:

Technically you are still liable! And you still have to report all blocked funds to OFAC.

...but they won't delay processing your report of blocked property. Image
On using Tornado Cash at all:

No, absolutely not, nein, nyet, non. Image
On the mere mention of (whispers) *Tornado Cash* being a punishable thought crime:

It's not a thought crime!

You can:
- copy the code
- discuss it
- show it to others
- include it in written text Image
And...that's it.

What of course OFAC fails to address here is the sanctity of deployed Ethereum code as speech.
In other words, if I deploy credibly neutral technology that ends up being used by adversaries of the United States, OFAC is saying by omission that they can still levy sanctions.
Before you get mega upset, it's worth noting that the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has a very specific purpose and mission:

To serve America's national security and foreign policy interests.

It's an intelligence agency, not a regulator.
In other words, OFAC doesn't know or need to know about Ethereum, consumer privacy, immutable contracts.

That's not its mandate.

It knows:

North Korea bad.

Tornado Cash seem help North Korea.

Tornado Cash bad.

Me do sanction.
It's sort of like the CIA seeing that North Korea used Tornado Cash, except instead of sending SEAL Team 6 to execute an extralegal assassination of the devs, it used its mandate to freeze assets in place.
So don't get it twisted:

OFAC is only here a regulator in the Warren G sense of the word--by depriving foreign adversaries of access to U.S. (and U.S. citizens') assets.

The history of OFAC as an intelligence agency is actually fascinating, but that's for another thread.
For the full list of Tornado Cash FAQ's see here:

home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/…
Follow me for more news to help relax your pucker and take you from 😖 to 😌

@jonwu_
this thread is for sure getting suppressed, he said to no one in particular

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More from @jonwu_

Oct 7
it's 7am, i'm in a farmhouse in tuscany, wife and baby are sleeping

here are 10 things you can do to tweet better:
no links or @ in top tweet

everyone knows this but the reason isn't exactly that the "algo depresses you"

it's that the algo wants engagement and if you send people elsewhere almost by definition their probability of engaging with your content goes down
(remind me to do a whole thread on algo myths)
Read 15 tweets
Sep 28
I've gotten 300+ DMs in the last 48 hours.

Some are amazing! Some are...bad.

Here's how to write great cold outbound:
Let's start with what not to do. Do not write:
- gm / hi / yo
- let's connect
- dm-ing you (this one puzzles me the most)

With no further context.
This might seem obvious but this is 95% of DMs that I get. If this is you, sorry I'm not sorry--you have to do better.

Because how is someone supposed to help you if you tell them nothing about yourself or what you're looking for?
Read 9 tweets
Aug 21
I am once again begging you not to squander your startup's announcements.

You only come out of stealth once.
You only launch a product once.
You only raise a Series A once.

Here's how not to fuck it up:
First, you better get your vision and positioning correct.

As Doug Leone says, "If the vision is wrong, we're all going home."

If you don't have rock-solid positioning and you're poor, ChatGPT "help me build my brand pyramid" and follow the prompts.

Otherwise call @ettinger.
Next, announcements are mostly a coordination and context problem.

Get your whole team in one room and sort them by most competent to least. Who is the best project manager on your team?

Doesn't matter what their role is. They need to be competent, detail oriented, timely.
Read 14 tweets
Jan 17
A new protocol called InfinityPools just launched on Base, with:

1) Unlimited leverage
2) No liquidations
3) Yield while you trade with Ethena and Lido

And the way it works is very clever:

Image
First off spot swaps and LPing are live today in the launch pools at :

wstETH/sUSDe --> Lido rewards
sUSDe/USDC --> $ENA rewardsinfinitypools.finance
The typical way to get spot leverage is through a margin trade:

I put up some collateral, earn the right to borrow funds from a counterparty, and buy more of the underlying asset than I otherwise could.
Read 13 tweets
Dec 3, 2024
Despite being used by Balaji, Vitalik, and Jesse, @anoncast_ is probably the most under-appreciated project in all of crypto right now.

Anon is lighting the path for @base szn, @farcaster_xyz supremacy, and on-chain privacy with @NoirLang--launched with @clankeronbase.

A guide to Anon, its lore, and how on-chain privacy is now reality:Image
There's @anoncast_ and there's $ANON:

$ANON is a coin itself launched anonymously with Clanker, serving as the canonical coin of @anoncast_, a private messaging project similar to @coinfessions.

Coinfessions is run (presumably manually) by a trusted editor, through a trusted interface (Google surveys).Image
Anoncast, on the other hand, is totally trustless.

Built by @Slokh in a weekend with @aztecnetwork's open-source ZK language @NoirLang--Anoncast is arguably the first mainstream on-chain private social application. Image
Read 12 tweets
Aug 5, 2024
It seems unintuitive that a small 25 basis point interest rate hike in Japan would spike all risk assets, including tonight's -20% $ETH candle.

But you need to understand the way the carry trade works:

It's a leveraged unwinding.
The quick explanation of the carry trade is borrow at 0 rate and invest in something with higher than 0 expected returns:

1. borrow Yen for nothing
2. buy an asset outside Japan that yields more than nothing
3. ???
4. profit
The same behavior happened during the ZIRP era.

Take a margin loan out against your equities at a 2% variable rate and buy an AirBnB with it that yields 7%.

7% - 2% = 5% of free money, right?! ...right? Image
Read 18 tweets

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