Is Tornado Cash illegal?

I'm literally hovering my mouse over the deposit button right now, completely frozen.

So here's my exact dilemma. I've got a modest stash of ETH sitting on a heavily exposed public address—everyone from my landlord to random Discord trolls can trace it. I just want to shift those funds to a fresh wallet without broadcasting my financial diary to the entire planet. Naturally, my brain went straight to the most infamous privacy tool out there.

But then I slammed into a massive mental roadblock—is Tornado Cash illegal?

I know. It sounds like a rookie question for anyone who survived the August 2022 OFAC crackdown.

Back then, the Treasury Department essentially banned the actual smart contract addresses, asserting that state-sponsored hackers washed roughly $455 million through it. Terrifying stuff. I'm just a regular guy trying to maintain a sliver of privacy without doxxing my savings account, right?

Where My Logic Breaks Down

I spent the last three hours reading conflicting Twitter threads and wildly confusing legal opinions. Here's my current mental framework, and I desperately need you veterans to tell me if I'm totally off base here.

If the protocol is simply autonomous math running on Ethereum, how does signing a single transaction turn me into a federal target overnight? Is the mere act of interacting with it an absolute violation for a U.S. resident, or does your intent actually carry weight?

Please drop your current privacy strategies below (or bluntly tell me to walk away) because I genuinely don't want my centralized exchange accounts permanently locked tomorrow.