what's up how are you man i'm okay somber notes but yeah well i hope we don't keep it that way
no we're gonna send them we gotta send uh keone off with uh a hopeful future for uh things that
could arise and uh well hopefully we have to think positively to support him and his family and make
sure that uh we do everything we can we definitely need more people to sign the stain petition
yeah maybe we can keep them out of jail entirely i mean i think that would be really an injustice
bill and you only spent one night in jail that would be an injustice so uh we're gonna have a
live streamathon we're gonna bring in as many people as we can to show love and support for
them and have a bit of a send-off party kind of have as much uh you know good vibes as we can put
out yeah right i'm jamming to some big daddy notorious b1 here uh this is on earth from the
the diddy uh saga this came out like nine months before biggie put out this kind of this exact beat
and basically flow i think i guess it's kind of fitting right yeah criminals don't go to jail and
the good guys do things aren't always what they seem no so um let's we'll let people roll in
then we'll play the channel trailer for bitcoin matrix kind of set the stage and then we'll
introduce the show let's do it um i'm looking forward to seeing everybody you know um it's good
to see you likewise how was your weekend oh it was great you know great weather down here in florida
can't really beat that um how was your weekend it was nice had some uh christmas cheer
friends family yeah the christmas vibe is out happy holidays everybody hanukkah started christmas is
days away um keone and his family would be spending or celebrating christmas tomorrow
awesome well yeah i mean we're gonna lucky to be with his family right now but um you know it sucks
to celebrate it early for these reasons i think we have shannon coming on to play a little christmas
jingle yeah shannon fitzgerald former mtv showrunner uh she's been working really hard
behind the scenes there's been a lot of people pulling together uh trying to get the word out
um fraud interviewed uh keone today uh puncher 75 has been really you know getting the word out
jesse tevlov kind of brought me in and i think kind of kicked this whole thing off um angela
mccardle uh former president libertarian party working hard behind the scenes um so hopefully
those people come out larry pard kind of has gotten on board um of late so parker lewis um
Yeah. Tony Mittenberger. We'll say hi to everybody tonight, hopefully.
So what are your thoughts?
I mean, you know, it's obvious to me, right?
And I think probably everybody that the plea is not the real issue here, right?
What these guys had to plea to is not what they're going to jail for.
And so this is a war on privacy and it's a war on freedom.
It's a war on our rights as citizens of the United States.
And I don't know if enough Bitcoiners have really realized the magnitude of the situation.
Well, do you think this is just Bitcoiners?
No, it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be.
But I'm really bummed out that we don't have more people signing the petition.
This is not, you know, I like, I mean, we're all here, but there's a lot of Bitcoiners out there that aren't.
And we'd like, you know, we need to make sure that they realize what they own and they realize how important development in this space is, how important self-custody is, your privacy is.
And it's a slippery slope.
So we have to fight this fight as strong as we can.
Yeah.
I mean, I feel this personally and viscally.
I'm ashamed for this country that
Bill and Keone are fighting this for us
We're taking the heat
So let's roll the Bitcoin Matrix trailer
Set the stage and then we'll get the show going
Basically we're living through the matrix now
It's realistic enough that it feels real, but it's just not real.
Fiat keeps you on the hamster wheel forever and ever and ever.
Your average fiat paper, you put it under your mattress, it's lost half of its value.
Fiat is stressful, and not having enough money to pay the bills and maxing out your credit cards and paying 21% interest rates is super stressful.
The average fiat currency or total fiat currency supply increases at around 14% per year.
Well, 40% means you lose 50% in five years.
They've broken this natural order of life
where they just figured out that you don't have to work.
We have a solution to this.
The solution is very clear.
Thank God Bitcoin has been invented.
Think about the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
They have such an opportunity here
to recapitalize America's balance sheet.
The Bitcoin network and the software and the protocol
are extremely stable.
Once I put it in cyberspace, it's not just immortal, it's pure energy.
Bitcoin is the exact opposite, right?
It gives you a low time preference.
It actually not only preserves your purchasing power, but it appreciates your purchasing power over time.
What that means is prices continue to fall against Bitcoin forever.
It can return us to an economy of saving, an economy of something based on value.
I think that is literally like Bitcoin's time to shine, to show the world that it is a safe haven asset.
If there's a strategic Bitcoin reserve, we're going to see the price of Bitcoin go up and there could be a game theory phenomenon happening.
Bitcoin will never die as long as there's one person alive in this world that yearns for freedom.
Rather than waving flags in the street to protest things we don't believe in politically, we're going to use the power of cryptography to technologically defend human rights.
Bitcoiners are very optimistic and hopeful for the future.
And Bitcoiners understand what's broken and they understand that they have the solution.
And then all of the $900 trillion of capital is going to pursue it on some level.
My God, it's the best drug on earth. There's nothing like it.
I've done cocaine, Cedric. This is better than cocaine. It feels amazing.
Bitcoin is a chance to be part of something that will have more of a lasting impact on the world
than anything else you could possibly be involved in.
It's a more robust platform.
And this thing comes in peace.
It's not looking to destroy them.
It's not declaring war on them.
It's declaring peace on everyone.
It says, come if you want.
You have to believe that you are the kind of person who can participate in the Bitcoin story.
welcome back to bitcoin center so our live stream brought to you by byte federal
check out byte federal's bitcoin atms point of sale and bitcoin wallet then take self-custody
of bitcoin and go bank yourself my name is cedric youngelman and i'm joined by my co-host paul
tarantino dude that was uh i love our bitcoin family that intro just it gets me fired up every
time man you just like you're on there thanks yeah no seriously like the bitcoiners are the
best you guys are the best you guys uh speak the truth you speak from your heart and we love you
for that and we want to share that with kiyoni tonight so thank you for joining us yeah thank
you for joining us on this emergency broadcast of a live streamathon uh part to get the word out for
signing a petition and pardon samurai and it's a bit of a send-off party for our good friend
Keone Rodriguez and Bill who can't be with us tonight. So let's get right into it. Francis,
if you could roll the Bitcoin Center intro and we'll bring out Keone.
Let's be real, right? Praising Telegram for launching a Bitcoin wallet.
I've always felt like
Bitcoin, this digital
currency that's out there
that people say, oh, it might be the next big thing.
What do you think?
I think it's rat poison.
You never heard them a few weeks ago?
Now everybody's talking about them.
But is it a currency?
I don't know. Or is it more like a stock?
Or is it a tulip bowl?
Stupid. To me, it smells like Ponzi scheme
and the greater fool theory writing.
You do like five minutes
of freaking research.
Well, thanks for coming to my set talk.
Yes.
Don't buy shit.
Oh, man, I was getting that wrong.
All right.
Bitcoin's recent rally.
Do you agree?
Is crypto finally dead?
Go to the next one.
Matter of fact, they're kind of in the Ethernet.
What are they?
Some rumors that it's a Japanese guy, but they know that he's a fake name.
It was a pseudonym.
I mean, you're literally putting real money onto a system that we don't even know who created it.
It will come to a bad ending.
Is this the most exciting bull run ever?
Not for me.
No, it's not.
Welcome to Bitcoin Center, the fast-paced show where the debate is the story.
All right, well, I don't think we're doing much debating tonight.
No, no debates tonight.
Let's get into it.
Love and appreciation.
Yeah, let's go.
we have a lot of people in the waiting room so we'll try to cycle through as best we can
Keone thank you for joining us absolutely thank you guys you said somber notes at the beginning
no let's not do any more somber notes we're gonna have a good time tonight you know I'm very happy
that you invited me here and let's let's have a good time yeah awesome awesome wow you seem to be
in great spirits how how would you describe how you're holding up otherwise uh you know I'm tired
I've done so many interviews and recordings over the last week.
This is my last one.
And I wanted it to be, you know, I don't want people to be depressed or downtrodden.
I want them to be fired up, you know, and to say, hey, this is something that isn't right.
Let's do something about it.
Let's let's get this in front of the president.
Let's see if we can make something happen and not feel defeated.
I'm not feeling defeated.
so you guys shouldn't either. Awesome. So Keone, maybe before we jump into Trump,
if, you know, from everything you've experienced in the last year and more,
people that want, you know, maybe there's other developers out there that want to pick up the
torch and go to the next level. What advice, what guidance would you give them to keep pushing
for freedom and privacy? Yeah, I mean, I think there's two types of advice, right? One is more
practical and one is more philosophical. On the philosophical side, use this experience that Bill
and I are going through as your fire, right? Like the whole point of this prosecution was to chill
privacy tech in the United States by an out-of-control Biden DOJ and Biden administration
who were upfront and clear that they were against crypto. They didn't like it. So the whole point
was to create this chilling effect. And as a builder, that should tell you, that's the exact
type of thing I should be building. If the government is saying, don't do it, we don't want
you to do it, that's what you should be focusing on. So have that fire in your belly and know that
this is so important. It's so important that the might of the federal government needed to be
brought down on Bill and myself to stop it. And then from a more practical point of view,
we now know explicitly that the law doesn't really matter. Even though we were well within
the law and what we were doing and we felt secure in doing what we were doing openly,
they don't play by the same rules that they expect us to play by.
So knowing that, take precautions, right?
Don't be more anonymous.
Be careful with what platforms you're on.
Telegram, for example, might not be super safe.
If Twitter or X, you know, unless you're taking real good care of your operational security,
it might not be the best place.
But that's not enough of a reason to not do it.
If you're able to get legal representation as soon as you can, have them write their opinion
down on paper and give it to you If you have the means put down a pretty large retainer at a good law firm who can represent you if things go south That something I wish we would have done
It made it really difficult when we were arrested and told we couldn't use Bitcoin
to obtain legal counsel when you don't have anything but Bitcoin. Had we done that before
arrest, it would have made things a lot less stressful. Ultimately, it all worked out. We
were able to find counsel. But just from a stress point of view, it would have been a lot easier had
we taken those steps before. But of course, we thought, hey, what we're doing is legal. We have
crypto-focused attorneys who have looked at this and said it's legal. Everyone in the industry
thought it was legal. Now we know that doesn't matter. If you make anything consequential and
get people to use it and the powers that be don't like it, they will come after you.
So be prepared for that.
And preparation is the name of the game.
So if you're prepared for it, you feel more comfortable doing it.
So I think that's the best advice I can give.
Don't stop.
Don't let them win.
Don't let the chilling effect happen.
Build the tools.
Yeah, well, we still have time and we're going to get the word out.
There's a lot of people who've been working behind the scenes, and there's a lot of people that have been making as much noise as possible, and they want to party with you, and they want to be with you.
So let's start bringing people in, and let's get this party started.
Paul, you're going to drink us some wine.
We're drinking some wine.
We'll pour it down our throats.
So, Jess, Jesse, you brought me on board and really instrumental in getting the word out to the entire Bitcoin community.
And I think this is bigger than just Bitcoin.
But just how did this come your way?
And what has this experience been like for you?
And can you show maybe some love and support for Keone?
Yeah, absolutely.
First of all, thank you, Cedric, for doing this.
Thanks for having me.
And thank you, Keone, for being who you are and for being such an incredible person.
I got brought into this.
I had heard about this, actually.
I had heard about the product over the years and I had heard that there were some rumblings of
something, you know, happening with it, with the product. I didn't really know too much about it.
And then I heard on Bitcoin Today with Bob Van Kirk and Puncher and the whole crew there.
And, you know, I often am on that on on that show and it struck me immediately. And I kind of put
the pieces together and said, wait, is this that thing I had been hearing about? And then hearing
Bob talk about it, it sounded very bad. And I got in touch immediately that day. That was Friday of
last week, right? Keone? Yeah. Got in touch with you immediately, said, hey, look, man,
I want to get on and do an interview and I want to post it immediately because I knew about the
deadline. That's what got me. I was like, this is crazy and we have to do something. And, you know,
I was talking to Puncher directly. Puncher is a good friend of mine at this point. I've been
hanging out with him a lot over the past year. And I knew that he was bothered by it. And he said,
look, can I jump on to the interview? I said, of course, that would be amazing. And both of us,
you know, I dropped everything for the day, said I need to focus on this. I think Puncher pretty
much was doing the same thing. And by Saturday, Keone, when we posted it, I mean, by the weekend,
I think it was 100,000 views and a lot of people knew about it. And then we went back on Bitcoin
today. And it's been tremendous. It's just, I, um, I guess what I would like to say,
cause I know there's a lot of people that want to get up here. There's a lot of people that are
helping and there's so many unsung heroes in this. And I want people to understand that this
is completely organic. It was organic with me and it's been organic with everybody. Cedric,
you included, right? I mean, you've been tremendous, you know, you've been on the
back channels with me putting in work and, you know, Keone's exhausted, you know, we're all
pretty exhausted. I'm not sleeping much. And I just want to say like Keone is incredible. He's
been incredible through this whole thing. And Keone, I think you are an example for, you know,
everything that we're fighting for. Everything, literally everything, not just Bitcoin, but
humanity, human rights, America, kindness, truth. I mean, you name it, anything good.
I truly believe that this guy, Keone Rodriguez
And his partner, Bill
Who I haven't talked to
But through the connection
I believe both of you are purely innocent
I don't see anything wrong here
All I see is corruption
And I'm just proud of everybody
I'm proud of the Bitcoin ecosystem
Keone, you just continue to amaze me
The way you just showed up at the beginning of this call
I know you're exhausted
And you're like, hey
There's another smile
I mean, he's just like
and this is how he is all the time guys because i'm talking to him every day now i talk to him
privately and we're just talking on the phone and we're talking chatting and you know he's just a
good guy an entrepreneur an american hero and here we are and we may get a part in i mean i'm still
hopeful man you know i'm just i think we're all sitting here hoping for like a christmas miracle
you know and um look if it doesn't happen all good we keep marching we keep marching but it's
been, you know, I think it's on the table. I think we have a chance here to, uh, to try to get you
to not have to spend any time behind bars. So I'll shut up. I'm, I'm very, very proud,
proud to be here. Proud to be here. Cheers. Look, I'm let's, let's, I'm going to drink every time
someone signs the petition, scan that QR code, pardon samurai. Let's free the boys, uh, before,
uh, Christmas, before they spend a night in jail. Uh, let's play the clip from Trump if we can,
Francis. So I'm three deep here. Mr. President, this week a man named Keone Rodriguez is going to federal prison for creating crypto privacy software. The case was started under the Biden administration, but your DOJ kept it going and secured the conviction. A lot of people in crypto are saying that this man should be pardoned. Are you familiar with the case at all or would you be interested? I've heard about it. I'll look at it. Why you think you should be pardoned? Sounds like it. Sounds like based on your question.
Many people in Rodriguez. We'll look at that, Pam. OK, let's take a look at it.
You'll have to tell me. I don't know anything about it, but we'll take a look.
That's, I mean, incredibly optimistic.
He sounded like he believes you're innocent. I believe you're innocent.
Yeah, I think it was optimistic for sure.
You know, I've seen a lot of Q&A with President Trump.
You know, he takes he takes press questions quite often and he has really no issue in not answering a question or blowing a question off if he's not interested in talking about it.
This clip was like 37 seconds or 35 seconds.
That's a lot of time for the president to spend on a question if he wasn't interested in in what it was about.
So, you know, I think it's on his radar now. And that's really the whole point of the last week and some of all the press, all the podcasts, all the recordings, everything was how do we get the president's attention?
because I said it yesterday on X, but I truly believe with the president's attention, we have a pretty good shot.
Right. The president has experienced lawfare. He has experienced a weaponized Department of Justice.
They have gone after him. So he knows it when he sees it.
And if he looks at our case, he will see it again, just like he saw it with himself.
So I think cautious optimism is warranted. This is a truly incredible development. And I'm very thankful to the reporter from Decrypt who asked the question to bring it to the president's mind and president delegating his attorney general to look into it.
Was that a complete surprise or was there any indication?
Wow. That had to be.
Total surprise.
completely and and this you know people have asked me like why are you spending so much time
doing all of these recordings and this press and these podcasts and i've told them i'm walking
through every single door that opens you know i'm not going to sit in a cell wondering did i do enough
right and so i early last week or even maybe the week before that someone a reporter from decrypt
asked me, hey, I'm writing a written article. Would you like to be interviewed for it? It's
not going to be only about you, but you could be featured in it. And I said, absolutely, let's talk.
And we had a great discussion. I told him about the case. He wrote his article. It was a good
article. It's on Decrypt if anyone wants to read it. And it just turns out that this reporter who
I never spoke to before and didn't know is also a White House correspondent for Decrypt.
And he's the one who asked the president that question. So, you know, you walk through every single door that opens. If I hadn't done the Bitcoin veteran space with Bob, I never would have met Jesse. And this whole this whole, you know, movement that has sprung up very organically, like Jesse said, is all because I did that one Twitter space, you know, and it's it's really it's important to walk through each door, every door that opens.
that I'm so glad that I have.
And it's really culminated to this moment
where we have so many people helping.
Like Jesse said, there's a whole team of people.
These are highly educated, highly trained,
very effective people.
Had I had to pay for their expertise,
I would be even more debt than I am right now.
But here that, you know, you're seeing them pop up now.
These people have donated their time and their energy
and their resources into this movement.
And I can't thank them enough.
Angela McArdle, thank you for hopping on.
Hey, you're so welcome.
Thanks for having me.
How did you kind of get linked to this cause and what inspired you to kind of get behind it?
Well, after Ross Ulbrich was freed, a lot of people came out of the woodwork to me asking me if I can help them.
It's a really surreal experience to have someone approach you or their wife or whoever and be like,
hey, can you help me get out of prison? It's like, I don't really fully know how to articulate it.
And so, you know, I've been trying so hard to get Ian Freeman, a presidential pardon. He's a
Bitcoiner who's locked in federal prison in New Hampshire. And then I met Tor Eklund, who's the
attorney for Roman Sterlingov, you know, and he's like, can you, you know, can you work for, with
with sterling law and i'm like yeah you know and i just like straight to the doj and and i'm like
literally on my on my way to visit the pardon attorney's office people like don't forget samurai
wallet now don't forget um roman storm and i'm like okay send me everything you know i just start
calling people's attorneys and i'm like are you guys talking to each other and it's like no you
know everybody's really siloed so it's like oh that's we gotta we gotta communicate like we gotta
to link arms. So it's just kind of like, it's just irresistible. When an innocent person is like,
can you help me get out of prison? What do you say? You don't say no. The answer is absolutely.
I really feel like God just kind of like pushed me into this role. Like a few years ago, I was
running for chair of the National Libertarian Party. I'm talking with Tom Woods and some other
libertarian thought leaders on it. And they're like, Angela, why are you, this seems kind of
like crazy. And like, you know, is this productive? And I was like, I don't really know how to
articulate it. I don't know that it's about the libertarian party, but I feel like God is putting
me here so I can do something important. And, and this is what, this is what that is.
Awesome. Awesome. That is awesome. Yeah. I just want, I just want to say that,
And, you know, I knew about Angela.
I knew what she had done for Ross.
I didn't think I had a chance in hell of even talking to Angela,
imagining how busy she must be.
And it was Angela who reached out to me and said,
let's work together.
I want to help you.
It was right after my sentencing.
It was probably one of the worst days of my life.
And Angela reached out to me and said, let's talk.
And she's just been absolutely instrumental, really, really smart woman, great brain for strategy and truly cares about the cause of freedom.
And that comes out through everything she's done.
And if she if she's done nothing other than get Ross pardoned, that's enough for me.
Like that's what a huge result that is. So, yeah, thank you. Thank you for all your help.
You're welcome. And, you know, praying, fingers crossed, all of the above that we can make something happen, you know, by Friday, if not at least before Christmas.
Yeah, for sure.
Larry, thank you for joining us. Would you like to say something?
Sure. Well, first of all, Keone, I hadn't met you before, but I have enormous respect for what you've done and the fight that you're in, because I feel like you're a warrior for freedom.
And that what we really all are Bitcoin is not about number go up Bitcoin is about fixing the world as my book talked about And you right there on the front line And so you know tons and tons of respect as really respect for everybody on this call
You know, Angela, Jesse, Puncher, F-Rat, you know, Charlie.
It's funny.
Charlie and I were on a stage together.
I believe that's Charlie.
Charlie, am I identifying you correctly?
Is that Charlie Schrem there in the final box?
uh no no oh my bad okay pretend it is yeah in any case uh my mistake look i i just think what's
happened here is a tragedy and um you know hopefully it can be set right um i think that the
um you know the obviously the reporter did you a real incredible solid and my sense is that trump's
not a stupid man and once he's briefed on this there really is no legal case here i mean if
if writing software were illegal, it's protected under the First Amendment, freedom of speech.
And that's really all you've done. You know, as I think, you know, and I, you and I talked,
I talked about, I think in chats with some people on, you know, what I think happened here is more
than anything else, you know, the rhetoric got you in trouble. It reminds me a lot of a case,
Bernard von Nauthaus did a similar thing back in the 2005, 2008 timeframe with something called
the Liberty dollar and he was very anti-dollar, anti-fiat currency.
And he created an alternative and they decided to make an example out of him.
And I think that's really what's happened here.
But there's no legal basis for what they're doing.
And so I've remained, I'm extremely confident that you will be vindicated.
I hope you don't have to spend one night in jail, but you might, it sounds like.
But I can't imagine you're going to spend a lot of time in jail based on once the facts
come out and if the groundswell here is overwhelming, we're going to be in a position where,
you know, Trump's just not going to be able to not pardon you. So, you know, my hat's off to
Puncher, who really took the lead on this, and Jesse, you know, and you as well, Angela,
took the lead on this and went out and, you know, got this whole thing going. I mean, it's,
you know, it's a credit to this community and we should try and continue to spread the word.
I know the minute Puncher came out with his epic rant.
And things like the fact that he was an F-16 pilot, served in the military.
I mean, that kind of stuff, that resonates with a Trump, right?
I mean, here we got legitimate, honest, hardworking Americans who are maggot to the core
and who can see that lawfare is being practiced against one of their friends.
I think a few of those, if he sees that video clip, you're out.
So we got to just hope he sees that video clip.
And, you know, I'm praying that you will be out soon.
But, you know, if you're not out, so be it.
That might be the path you have to walk through.
But, you know, some people criticize you for taking the plea deal.
I don't criticize you at all.
I think you had to take the plea deal.
I mean, you know, taking the risk of, you know, bigger fine and all the time had no sense whatsoever.
And, I mean, the absolute worst case if you had to serve out your sentence here,
I can't even imagine that you'd be behind bars for five years.
that would probably be commuted to something significantly less.
And let's pray that doesn't happen.
So, you know, nothing but respect for what you did
and for the way you fought this, you know, calmly and intelligently.
And I hope we have a good outcome.
That's all I can say.
I mean, let's not forget he's already under home arrest.
So he's already, time's already been served.
This is an unjust time's already been served.
I want to throw it to Kevin Kelly, really influential puncher
and just kind of promoting this and bringing this to a lot of people and putting some sort of
motivation behind it. Thank you for joining us. What are your thoughts on that? Thanks, Sid.
I just, you know, Jesse, credit to him. We heard about this and I just, I hate injustice,
particularly in my own country. And the more I heard about Keone's situation in Bill's,
I was just like, man, this can't stand. And I learned in the military that if I had a problem
that was a small problem that wasn't getting addressed, I just turned it into a big problem.
And then I turned it into everybody's problem. So just started screaming about it and going on my,
you know, Irish, crazy Irish rant about what happened. And the more I looked into it, what
I wanted to make sure was that if I asked, you know, Jeff and Larry and other folks who have
built, you know, reputation and a platform that's valuable, that for sure we vetted
uh keone's story out so we did that and like a soldier man he came up on bitcoin today
he answered every question um and the more i heard the more outrageous the situation became but
you know there was a lot of people like backbenchers on twitter and things were saying oh
you don't understand these guys are this and the other i would immediately say we're going to give
you head of the line privileges you can speak to keone on bitcoin today and to a person they all
kind of wimped out. Not one of them showed up, which told me we're on the right path. And then
I felt comfortable going out to the Bitcoin network, which is just amazing, by the way.
And a lot of people stand up on stage at conferences and things and talk about Bitcoin,
but it's more than just number go up. It's a community. And, you know, we're going to be the
future judges and magistrates when this all happens. And I believe that.
But then to kind of stand in the sidelines when you have that stage, like,
if you're not going to step up and a lot of people didn't initially Larry to his credit
jumped in right away said and a lot of others um you know they they really just showed me that what
good honest decent people they are and some people stayed in the background a little bit and I get
that but some people refused to do anything and that was very disappointing so to those people
next time you get up on a stage just talk about number go up and don't don't feed us the rest of
that BS because when the time came to stand up you didn't do it to the women of Bitcoin Sharon
Shannon Angela Lynn I mean just like it's just the women in Bitcoin are amazing I know I'm leaving
somebody out Shannon Natalie Natalie for now I mean the women in Bitcoin the smaller number me
relative to the men were just amazing.
They just came right out.
No questions asked.
We're on board, and they're so talented.
I'm just extremely privileged to know them
and count them as friends, as everybody on this space.
Thanks, guys. Really appreciate it.
Amazing. Cheers.
Cheers. I drink, but I got a glass of water.
I'll drink a glass of water.
I'm at a lacrosse practice right now.
Me too. We got water.
Naomi Brockwell, too.
Seb Bunny.
Thanks for jumping on.
nice to see you yeah no honestly more than anything and I apologize if I cough I've picked
up a bit of a cold but more than anything like Keone I think there's I'm sure I speak for like
thousands if not tens of thousands of people that have never met you personally that have
never had these conversations that are in the shadows they're absolutely like behind your back
and I think that like the age of the internet the ability to be able to communicate and share a
is truly profound. And so I think it's incredible what it is that you've done. And I think that it
really is like a beacon of light in a world that at times can be quite dark. And I think ultimately
there's that saying in Bitcoin, like we are all Satoshi, like there is no central kind of planner
for Bitcoin. There is no marketing department. Bitcoin success falls on kind of the shoulders
of all of us as individuals. And I just think that it is, it takes a ton of courage to be able to
stand up, even when there is a lot of opposition and a world that could be kind of against us at
many times, and to be able to honor what it is that we believe in, because I think that that's
how we move towards a better world. And so I just, I think it is absolutely incredible what it is
you're doing, what you have done. And you've got the absolute backing for myself. And I'm sure I
speak to thousands of others when I say that you've got their backing as well. And I really just urge
anyone kind of listening to this, again, like Bitcoin success falls on us as individuals. So
It doesn't matter if you're a doctor or a man and bike instructor or a cafe worker.
You speak to a unique cohort of individuals and to share that voice.
Don't self-censor because of a world that kind of intimidates people.
Don't self-censor because that's how we move towards a world of prosperity.
I truly believe that.
Thank you very much.
Everyone, please scan the QR code, sign the petition if you haven't already done so.
Brandon Keys, thank you for joining us.
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
Unfortunately, it's, you know, I wish it was under better circumstances that we're meeting Keone.
But just to echo Seb Bunny's point, I mean, I think, you know, we're seeing the strength of the community now to really come out and, you know, get this in front of the president.
And I mean, I'm pretty optimistic.
I mean, it seems like it's a movement here.
And I think everybody rallying around is really encouraging to me.
And seeing you in high spirits as well, Keone.
I mean, just seeing the snowball effect from the community has been, you know, I think it just really says a lot about the Bitcoin community in general.
It's been really inspiring. And to see you in high spirits, honestly, is very encouraging.
But I think, you know, hopefully at this point we can get this message loud enough and get people, you know, rallied around the cause enough in order to have you not spend a single night in jail.
Because I think that would be a huge injustice to say the very least.
So, yeah, I mean, whatever we can all do to help at least spread the message and hopefully get it to the right ears, I think, you know, I'm here to do.
And yeah, I mean, Cedric and everybody else here on here and, you know, we listed off a lot of the women in Bitcoin already.
All you guys helping elevate this message.
Let's let's hope we can continue to do that and get it to the right people for sure.
Thank you very much.
Appreciate that.
Yeah, I just want to say to Seb and Larry, you kind of touched on something I think that's important.
Larry, you mentioned that my rhetoric.
Yeah, I haven't even made my point yet.
We got someone in the QR code.
That my rhetoric may have contributed to this.
I think that's true to an extent, right?
I mean, I was and am brash on Twitter and make my opinion known, even if it's popular or unpopular.
And I think that's a good thing.
Everything I said, I meant and it was authentic or I was making a joke, which there was plenty of those as well.
And I don't I don't regret any of that.
But it's also not the only reason.
Right. I think it just made their lives a little easier.
They could take a tweet that I said, welcoming Russian oligarchs, and really twist that out and squeeze out all the context.
And you get some droll prosecutor standing up and reading it in a dull voice with no inflection, and it sounds kind of bad.
But when you look at someone like Roman Storm, who created Tornado Cash, he didn't do any of that.
He didn't have any brash tweets.
He didn't have things like that to take out of context.
He was pretty clean cut.
And they still went after him.
So I think really what it comes down to is if you build something that works for one and gets a lot of use and you fall into their cross sites, they're coming for you.
They want to take you down.
They are going to take you down no matter what.
So the fact that I had those tweets just made it easier for them.
But it wasn't because of the tweets, I don't think.
Maybe it was.
I would agree with you, and I compliment you for those tweets.
I mean, if tweets can get you thrown in jail, I'm right on the edge, okay?
So I'll see you there.
I'll see you there if you don't get pardoned.
But I mean, you know, look, I mean, to call if people are evil liars, which basically a lot of the government is, these people are evil, criminal liars.
And we call them such and they take offense to it and decide to jail us.
Well, fuck them. I mean, you know, that's that's America.
Right. We've got the ability to call things that we see.
Now, they can disagree with us, but they can't use lawfare to throw us in jail over it.
And, you know, don't don't interpret my comments as in any way, meaning I think you should know, no rhetoric because I loved your rhetoric.
I'm just saying that I think they use that at the margin to say, oh, look at this.
We really got a guy.
We can nail him both ways here.
You know, he not only is doing something that makes our life more difficult, which, you know, your thing does, as does Roman's thing.
But he's also saying he's clearly on the other side of the fence.
So let's go get him.
We've seen this is what the president went through.
It's the same playbook.
Exactly.
That's exactly right.
And, you know, they took they made a big song and dance about the Russian oligarchs and this and that.
But they really made a big song and dance when I called members of Congress sickos, quote unquote sickos, for inventing the crime of money laundering in the late 70s.
And what I said was factually accurate.
They did invent a new crime.
That was not a crime prior to Congress saying it's a crime.
And then they invented a new crime called structuring
when they realized that people were getting around the new crime by transacting just under So they had to make that a crime And I called them sickos And boy did they make a song and dance about that in the courtroom
And even the judge had something to say about that.
But I stand by it.
You're inventing crimes.
You're a sicko.
There's no victim in this crime.
There's legislation right now that's, you know, we'll see if it passes or not,
you know, to ban congressional insider trading.
So, you know, it all just sounds, it's just so transparent and one-sided.
Yeah.
But they do take your tweets and they will twist and turn them and make your tweets criminal intent, which I guess is a cap in my feather.
I have criminal tweets.
Hey, Keone.
By the way, is that the correct way to pronounce your name, Keone?
It is.
Okay.
Because I heard people call you Keone.
i'm like man maybe i'm calling them the wrong thing um yeah i i kind of the first night we
talked i really wanted to highlight the fact that this was the sdny and i gotta imagine that the
president you know has some measure of revenge he wants to exact on these people who tried to
destroy his life and that's why i brought it up in that in my kind of my my rant there but um
dude i just want to say i'm gonna go i'm gonna go be a good dad now my son's out there trying out
for a lacrosse team but you know if you do have to go in for a little bit don't just know that we got
your back we'll we'll we'll find out where you are we'll make sure you're taken care of uh i'll pull
any strings that i could possibly pull not that i have that many but you know being loud and and
and making sure that you're taken care of we got you the one message we wanted to send
is that you we are not to be trifled with in the bitcoin community
I think we proved that we will exact some measure of political or other kind of price if you try to come after one of ours.
And, dude, I'm really impressed with you.
When you're out, you know, whatever you're doing next, I want to be a part of that if that's an opportunity.
And I'm just super impressed by you, your demeanor, how you're handling this.
You're a soldier buddy, and I'd be in a foxhole with you anytime.
so thank you very much for everything you've done yeah guys i'll be listening in i'm sure there's
other people i think marty bent's waiting and stuff so thank you guys and i'm listening in but
thanks thank you thank you punch hey said um maybe that's the time for for should we sort of shuffle
and i can drop i know there's a lot of other people um or what did you want to do yeah let's
shuffle a few around just so that we can get some new blood in but um yeah thanks jesse yeah let me
just say one thing before I drop as well. Let me sing the praises of Puncher who just dropped. He,
I think, is an incredible person. To leave it at that, no context needed, just an incredible person.
Right. And I think there's so many incredible humans that are coming around this. And the
reason is that this is deeper than Bitcoin, deeper than Keone, deeper than me, deeper than any of us
on this stage and we all feel it. And it's really about our rights, our personal human rights. So
thank you everybody. Keone, love you, buddy. You and I are in touch and yeah, just proud of you.
So we'll talk soon. Thanks, man. Thank you for all your help.
I'd like to add one more quick little thing, which was, I can't imagine the situation you're
in right now. And I'm sure when you're in this situation, sometimes you can question yourself
and whether or not should I have shown up differently?
Should I have done something differently?
And I think that more than anything,
what this highlights is this has got nothing to do with you.
I think that you've been in the crosshairs
of a system that doesn't tolerate
people trying to promote privacy.
And I think that the way I write about
and the way that I view money
is money is a medium of expression.
It's how we express to the world what we value.
The system does not like money flowing
to where value is being created.
They want to be able to govern those trajectories.
And anytime someone opens up tools
for money to flow to where value is being created,
all of a sudden the antibodies come out.
And I think that you've just been caught in that crossfire.
And so I hope more than anything,
you're not taking too much, I don't know,
retrospective thought on your actions
and how you could have done things differently
because I think this has got nothing to do with you
and what you're doing for the community
is very much needed.
Thank you.
Yeah, I agree.
I thought a lot about this.
If I regret anything
or if I would have done something differently
and I've come to the conclusion that no,
I don't have a single regret.
I'm proud of what I've built. I'm proud of the legacy I'll leave.
And that, like you said, it's I could have been completely different.
The most meek and mild and anonymous person.
And had I built what I built, they would have still come after it.
Because you're absolutely right.
Freedom to freedom of speech. Sorry.
Transacting is one of the purest forms of speech as far as I can see it.
And they have spent decades slowly chipping away at the basic fundamental privacy that we have enjoyed throughout history when it comes to our finances.
They have now inserted themselves deep into our financial lives.
They want to know every transaction we're making, where we're spending it.
Are we paying tax on it?
What is it you're buying?
Why are you buying it?
Who are you donating to?
All of that.
And they have slowly been successful in inserting themselves into that part of our lives.
And all we did was create software that took back a little bit of that sovereignty that we once had.
And this was the reaction we got out of it.
So I think it's an apt analogy to the antibodies being activated.
the antibodies of the state being activated against the software that they really didn't like.
So, yeah, thank you for that comment. I think you're absolutely right.
Thanks, Locioni.
I'm going to jump out, too, to help with the changing of the guard.
I just want to reiterate, we all support you, and we're praying so hard that we can see something happen before Friday,
and that President Trump is so, he's so generous.
What he told me when I asked for Ross Ulbricht's freedom is he said,
I love freeing people.
So just keep that in your mind and don't give up hope.
And for the people out there, if you want to support, don't hesitate.
Never hesitate.
If you're thinking about helping someone out and you feel spiritually,
morally convicted, listen to that voice.
Jump in because you have an opportunity to change the world.
so um yeah everybody please sign the petitions pay attention to all the bitcoin prisoners
and you know whether you're praying on your knees or silently in your head you're not sure if god's
real whatever you know just ask ask ask the president ask the lord you know we got to ask
the community because you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take so good night everyone
thanks anzola thank you so much for joining us and getting out the word marty bent thank you for
joining us and actually thank you so much for being one of the first like big interviewers of
keone uh you guys seem i listened to the interview and it seemed like you know you had done so many
episodes before bringing him on to talk directly but you guys have done content before what does
this mean to you and what kind of love and support do you have for keone tonight uh number one thanks
Thanks for having me, Cedric.
I mean, it's hard to describe.
I mean, not only have I been a long-time user and supporter of Samurai Wallet,
Matt and I talked about it during RHR almost weekly
when you guys were building out the product over the course of six years
that we were doing the show before a couple of years ago.
But not only that, I mean, 1031, we were investors in Samurai Wallet.
And so we saw it as an incredible, useful tool in business that is necessary.
And that's one thing I think about with this case particularly is the sort of a chilling effect that it has for people who want to leverage the native technology that is Bitcoin, the protocol to build unique banking and payments infrastructure outside of the purview of the incumbent banking system.
and i think it's extremely disheartening that we're at this point but i am optimistic that uh
that this right this wrong will be righted no that's what i mean i think keone we've known each
other for quite a while now and i think you know but i want to express to everybody else that i
think uh and these were the true cypherpunks like i have the uh the wired uh the wired uh
magazine issue from the pgp wars back in the 90s and i think this is very analogous to what was
going on back then again i think it's safe to say that this privacy war that we're having with
bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies is is our version of the pgp wars and these cypherpunks
on the cover behind me were successful in their battle.
And I think we'll be successful too.
It's just going to come with a fight.
I can't imagine this standing and I'm optimistic,
but if this were to stand, Marty,
what kind of trajectory does this put Bitcoin in privacy on?
Not a great one.
If people, the chilling effect is successful.
And I was thinking about this.
I'm actually putting my interview.
I don't want to ask Keone a question.
Like I,
I I've been saying this and I,
I think there's a case to be made for exchanges to implement something like
Pajoid because it's just simply efficient transaction backing batching
technology that just so happens to make the ability to track UTXOs a bit
harder for people using common input heuristics.
Yeah.
I agree.
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
I don't want to go deep into a transaction analysis heuristic discussion.
That will bore the pants off of everyone.
But I agree, Marty.
I think that would be a pretty simple win for destroying the common input ownership heuristic,
which is one of the primary heuristics that chain analysis and chain surveillance firms still use to this day.
And it's not a very reliable heuristic.
and it certainly shouldn't be being used as evidence in court cases, which it is.
But the more we can undermine that heuristic, the better.
And that's what Samurai Wallet really was all about, undermining heuristics,
introducing doubt to a public ledger.
And that's what makes it even more ludicrous that the DOJ went this route
because that's what we're talking about here, right?
We're not talking about a company that took custody of anyone's funds and did things with it.
We're talking about a software product that used math to introduce doubt to the blockchain.
And that's what the DOJ has said is a financial service.
And that's what the DOJ said should have applied for a money transmitter's license,
even though the regulator in charge of money transmission said that's not necessary.
Bob, as you know, there's been some talk that that this might lead to money transmission being required from miners.
What are your thoughts on this? And I'd love to hear your thoughts for Keone.
Yeah. First, Keone, I don't think we've ever met Bob Burnett.
Hi, nice to meet you.
From Barefoot Mining, also on the board of directors at Ocean.
And, you know, it's first I thought for those who weren't at the very beginning, I was I was here when you first came on.
And I thought you gave some really good advice.
I'd encourage people to rewind where you talked about, you know, what people can do to protect themselves.
That said, I do want to say I think it's important as well that not that people go to prison or go through what you've gone through.
But I think it's important for some of the community to be out there.
Like some people have to be real.
I think there's something to be said for that.
And Larry was on earlier.
Larry's a real good friend of mine.
And I think one of the things that we can do as older members of the community, get into your 60s or so, your kids are grown.
You have a little less to lose, maybe.
And so I think it's maybe a little easier for some of us to be front and center to what's going on.
And to be honest, I've had this conversation with my wife.
as a miner, and I'm both a miner and a guy with tentacles into a pool, too.
And I look at it and go, well, if they can come after Keone,
there's really no reason they can't come after me.
Especially as a guy who creates his own templates and makes transaction selections,
I'm not asking for this, but I would say I'm doing something
that's probably
closer to the line than anything
that you ever did. And I think it's just
an absolute travesty
that you're
taking this. I would, I'm not wishing it upon myself, but I wish they would have come after me
or somebody like me instead of you. Because I think they would have tested it better, but it's
just such bullshit. But I do think we have to be prepared. Thank God Trump won. Because I could see
where the Biden administration was rearing up. Like they were absolutely rearing up to come after
the mining community. In fact, I remember I was in a room in Texas about two years ago,
and we had a little meeting with mining CEOs. And Ted Cruz came into the room to meet with us.
There was maybe like seven, eight of us. And as he walked in the room, he's taken off his sport coat.
And before he even sits down, he says, hey, before I say anything, guys, I just want you to know
that all the people in the US,
the Biden administration hates you guys more than anybody.
It was like, wow, okay.
Not surprised, but very, very telling.
They were open about it.
They were very open about it.
Yeah, absolutely.
At one point, they wanted to get a sort of minute list
of the energy source, who you were buying it from,
how much you're spending on it, what the cost was.
And I mean, they wanted to KYC your energy at that point.
I think they wanted to send that to block templates.
Yeah, those surveys went out.
And I think it was Warren and Granholm,
who were Secretary Granholm from the Department of Energy.
And they were just in such obvious cahoots
trying to make that whole thing happen.
It was just ridiculous.
Marty, I'd love to ask you.
Actually, people, please scan the QR code, sign a petition.
Marty, does this case kind of affect you maybe as a father or like thinking about your kids?
I mean, my son's 13 years old.
He loves to code.
I'm trying to explain this case to him.
It brings in politics.
It brings in computer science.
But for me, I think about sort of their freedom and sort of that.
Does this affect you as a father thinking about your kids?
Totally.
Yeah, I mean, my kids are a bit younger.
my oldest he's he's almost sick so he's getting to the point where he can read and do math and
understands things and is curious and is exploring his curiosity and i look at him and the other two
boys and think what what world are you going to live in and i mean the the oldest too he does
chores for bitcoin and he has an e-cash wallet which uses blinded signatures and his private
digital cash. I guess he'll be looked at as a criminal, as a five-year-old
getting 5,000 stats every time he cleans his room.
I don't think it is. Crazy to think that
something, an app that my five-year-old uses
and gets a lot of value out and is learning a lot about Bitcoin
using it could be viewed as
a criminal app or criminal activity in the eyes of the law
It's just objectively insane.
But it's funny.
I think you have to highlight these examples.
And Bitcoin is just simply a technology.
Be leveraged by anyone.
I think we're at a point in time where we really need to get over the hill of this sort of negative connotation of using Bitcoin.
and particularly using it in a specific way
or certain wallets like Samurai
or an e-cash wallet that give you privacy
and being looked at as a criminal.
It's just objectively insane, like I was saying earlier.
We have the primitives to build out
a new banking and payment system
that is completely separate from the incumbent system,
which is archaic.
And that's an incredible potential.
We have two paths we can go down.
we can cuck the world and try to corral Bitcoin into this hyper centralized surveilled system,
or we literally have the ability to build a sci-fi banking system from scratch. And when I look at
my boys, it's like, I hope they're able to live in the latter reality and they're able to help
contribute to that. Yeah, for sure. Now, one of the things I think becomes very apparent, hopefully,
hopefully to all those Bitcoiners out there, is that I think the classic mantra for Bitcoiners is
we're taking control of the money printer, right? We're shutting off the money printer.
But that actually may well be secondary to the use of the monetary system as a means of
control and as a weapon. And because that's actually probably the more powerful thing,
in my opinion. And so when we threaten that, I think it's why Keone is where he is today,
because that is being threatened. And that is the ultimate scare, especially to the deep state,
to the bureaucrats, to the inherent meat of the system. And by the way, we're just talking about
it's happening in the U S you know,
as we look at the ECB and some of those other organizations,
I think there's going to be very similar retaliatory defensive actions on
their part as they're threatened.
Yeah. It might be, it might even be worse. Yeah.
And it's, it's rules for the, not for me all over the place.
These people really bringing the hammer down are some of the,
the most egregious offenders of these things that they deem to be bad.
And it's, it's,
it's one of the things that is so disgusting about this case to me is that
they used such violent force to make a point with you.
And, you know, in, in the face of that,
how is your family handling this or how,
how are you and your wife and how is that all going?
Is it something that you can talk about or want to share?
Yeah, sure.
I mean, it was traumatic, right?
Like it was five in the morning on April 24th, had no idea this was coming.
And suddenly you're being swarmed by 50 highly armed FBI agents.
You're looking at your wife who has laser sights pointed at her chest.
and we're talking about a white collar crime that I'm not even guilty of but you know it's a white
collar crime there's no victim there's no history of violence I've never been arrested before I've
never had any interaction with law enforcement there's no they had been surveilling me for weeks
they knew there was no risk of violence they knew that all they had to do was call my lawyer who is
public and known and say hey we think your client is breaking the law let's talk or have him surrender
himself or something along those lines. And that would have been fine. You know, there would have
been no issue. But they weren't interested in that. They were interested in creating theater
and creating a spectacle, right? Because they wanted to put out the press release. They wanted
to put it, you know, make a show out of it to dissuade people from doing what we did. And,
you know, Bob said it perfectly. We were attacking the fundamental source of their power,
right as long as as that's how they saw it and the only way you can respond to that is with
overwhelming force you have to take them out uh them being us uh so that's what they did uh so how
how we're doing we're fine you know it was it was stressful and traumatic on the day uh but we're
we're okay we're i think my dog has you know had the worst reaction to it i think he has a severe
case of PTSD now because he never used to bark at cars driving by and now he only barks at cars
driving by. So besides that, we're fine. It took a little while, but we feel secure in our home and
you know, we just get, we're just getting on with it.
I mean, the theater of violence is just absolutely disgusting. And it really proves the point that
they're trying to make you look guilty when there's not a real crime.
Absolutely.
Right.
And I'm wondering, I'm hoping that most of the world is seeing through that.
And certainly I think Donald Trump will see through that.
Well, they raided him.
They did not need to raid the former president of the United States.
They did not need to send an FBI SWAT team to Mar-a-Lago.
He has been through this.
And that's what I think our best bet is that the president has gone through this by the same DOJ, the Biden DOJ, and he's even dealt with this district.
So, you know, it's completely unnecessary.
It was unnecessary what they did to us.
It was unnecessary what they did to him.
There's so many parallels that I think, like I was saying earlier, the biggest obstacle was getting this in front of the president.
once it's in front of the president, I think our chances are much better because he can see right
through it. You can see the parallels in his own case, and he knows what a weaponized DOJ looks like.
So scan that petition, you guys. Make sure that this gets pushed to the president.
Marty, would you have ever imagined, well, I like to think that the Bitcoin community has really
sort of risen to the occasion and can make some noise. What do you think is sort of the ability
the Bitcoin community to sort of corral energy
and bring attention to our issues?
I think it's one of our greatest strengths, I think.
I mean, it's talked about quite a bit,
like the meme warfare that we're engaged in
in the digital age.
Bitcoiners are pretty good at the information war.
And I think we saw this with Ross.
Granted, that took many years to get him out of prison,
but the community was relentless.
And when President Trump was inaugurated the second time,
he got his full pardon.
And I think we learned a lot of lessons from that.
I think Ross getting pardoned was a big,
oh, shit, we can do this if we really put the effort in.
I think this time around with Keone and Bill,
I think we sort of took the lessons learned from the success we had.
And with Ross's part in and began to apply that playbook more aggressively, I would argue, over the last two weeks, I'm astonished at the sort of speed and veracity with which this campaign for you, Keone and Bill, has really taken hold over the last couple of weeks.
And it's highly encouraging, particularly considering the state of discourse in the Bitcoin space over the last two years, which has been heavily focused on number go up and Bitcoin treasury companies.
There were a lot of people, myself included, who were worried that there wasn't enough care or people were beginning to care less about the sort of cypherpunk distributed sovereign nature of Bitcoin.
And I think the last two weeks for me personally, really been encouraging to know that people actually do care that the properties that made this protocol work in the first place are worth defending.
Yeah, it has been encouraging to see that. Absolutely. It's something that, you know, I kind of thought as well that was dying out in this space.
kind of normal. More retail comes in. Bitcoin is a huge industry now. It's a lot of new people.
So you're going to have some dilution of values and a little concerning because to me,
number will go up, but the value proposition is censorship resistance and peer-to-peer cash.
To me, that's where the value lies. And if you're not highlighting that or focusing on that,
then you're really not sharing the right thing. You're sharing number going up.
But not why it's going on. And I was, you know, I just didn't know about this, this community in this way. Right. I was with you, Mark. I thought, you know, they don't care, but clearly they do care. Right. We're seeing so many people come out and support Samurai.
Many of them had never even heard of Samurai.
We didn't cross their radar, but they heard the story.
They heard what went down.
And people have an innate ability to know when something isn't right, when something isn't just, when something isn't fair.
And they picked up on that, and they recognized that.
And I think it's very, very encouraging.
I know we have a new person here, but I just wanted to respond to something Bob said a little while ago.
So thank you, Bob, for coming. It's nice to meet you.
You said that we need people to go on the front lines and push the line.
You're absolutely right. That's how we advance as society and as an industry.
We need people to push. So if I did that, then I think that's successful.
And I think you doing that as well in the mining community and with Ocean And then the second thing you mentioned is something I think we discussed on Marty podcast about Bitcoin miners
And you nailed it.
You got that absolutely right.
If what Samurai Wallet was doing is considered money transmission, according to the Southern District of New York, then it's impossible to really understand how miners aren't money transmitters.
If we're using their theory, right?
You're literally selecting transactions to be put in the block, which is broadcast to the network.
The transactions that Samurai Wallet built, they didn't exist yet until a miner put them into the block.
They were mere proposals.
They were mere suggestions.
So using the theory, which is wrong, by the way, but using the theory that the DOJ has come up with in this case, everyone's a money transmitter.
Miners are a money transmitter.
Lightning nodes are money transmitters.
Decash mints are money transmitters.
Marty, you said your son might be interacting with an unlawful application.
Using this rationale that the DOJ has come up with, they are.
They are absolutely using an unlawful application.
The DOJ said that every single Bitcoin that went through our software was unlawful.
every single doesn't matter what the source was or whether it was illicit they
use the term unlawful and the reason they said that every single Satoshi that
went through Sam right while it was unlawful is their theory stated that we
were a money transmitter and as a money transmitter we had obligations KYC and
AML because if you're if you're a money transmitter you do have those legal
obligations and because we didn't do it KYC or AML because you know frankly no
one thought that a non custodial piece of software had to but because we didn't
do that every single Satoshi that went through our software was unlawful. So unless if your child
has not been KYC and gone through the AML process to receive his 5000 sats, that's unlawful. And
this is the theory that we're working with as per SDNY. And it's very clear to anyone who's listening,
I hope that it's absurd. It's an absurd situation that they put us into.
and you mentioned it earlier um about the insanity of the money money laundering laws
the crimes that they created in the 70s and extended in the 90s and cedric to your question
about the strength of the community i think honestly that's this is something i've been
talking about for years and i think um when you and bill are ultimately part in this it's going to
be a long haul and it's not going to be easy and we're going to be thought of as crazy in the
beginning but we really need to push to repeal the bank secrecy act all this stems from that's
that terrible act that was passed in 1970 i think and it's completely antiquated it does not
it is not is the digital age and it doesn't work in the digital age it was
written in an era of in the industrial age and it was very analog and it's not evolving with the
times and like you said earlier it's just creating crimes compliance cost and a bunch of data
aggregation that actually does more net harm than good at the end of the day puts way more people
in harm's way by creating these data honeypots that are notoriously very notoriously have very
weak security are often hacked. The information's taken, sold on the deep web. You have people
getting their identities stolen, getting credit cards taken out, their name, getting bank accounts
strained, all because all these services need to collect this data and they don't know how to secure
it. And it does not stop the crimes they're claiming that it should be stopping. I think the
status going around I think like five or six years ago I think um uh KYC AML compliance
has stopped something like 0.1 percent of global money laundering since um since they've been
implemented and so it's completely ineffective and completely harmful to end consumers at the
end of the day it is a net negative and we need to just own it like this doesn't work and we
shouldn't have to live this way i think that should be one of the things that we go after as
a community it's going to be again it's going to be a long haul it's not going to be easy we're
going to be thought of as crazy but we should repeal the bank secrecy act yeah so me saying
that opinion and being anti-kyc aml was also used um heavily in the courtroom to prove my intent uh
to commit crimes uh so the opinion you just uh just espoused there marty could be dangerous but
You're absolutely right. The AML and KYC regime brought about by the Bank Secrecy Act, extended in the 90s, extended yet again in the Patriot Act, is not fit for purpose.
It doesn't do what they hope it would do. It stops almost no crime.
The people who are committing the crimes know how to get around the system, know how to get through the AML and the KYC checks and continue to commit those crimes.
What AML and KYC is very successful at is keeping people out of the financial system, keeping law abiding citizens who can't pass these checks, who don't have the right documents, who are under documented or whatever the case may be from access to the financial system.
And that's what was so powerful about Bitcoin.
They didn't need to do that.
they could have into a financial system that was quicker, better, more superior, safer than the fiat system or the existing system.
And the whole point of Samurai Wallet was to put the stop or put the brakes on turning Bitcoin into just another tentacle of the existing financial system.
And luckily, it hasn't become that yet, but it can.
I think I talked about it on your podcast, Marty. It's not a divine gift from God that came out perfectly formed. That's not what Bitcoin is. Bitcoin is software and it requires software developers. It requires economists. It requires smart people to work on it and protect it from becoming a surveillance panopticon.
make it a beacon of human freedom.
So absolutely.
And let's definitely repeal the BSA.
I think a lot of people could get on board with that.
Yeah, definitely time.
And, you know, I'm going to have to bounce, Keone.
But I do want to say that I mind block 927604 a couple days ago.
It's there for everybody to see.
I've done dozens more over the past year.
And, you know, if Keone is going to prison, then come get me too.
Because, you know, I'm doing something way worse than he is if that's the way it belongs.
Did you say before that you wish it was you and not him?
Well, I don't wish it upon anybody.
Well, did you say that you wished it was yourself that they came after?
Yeah, I'd be the more obvious target, frankly.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm a lot closer to the line than he is.
And so, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I hope you're never in this situation, Bob.
It's a pleasure meeting you.
But if you are in this situation, if you find yourself in this situation,
I know you would be a worthy fighter, a worthy opponent.
do well well thank you god bless you keone uh we're we're rooting for you i'll do i'll do all
i can uh sending a note to uh representative donald's right now who represents my area
to try to help and uh we'll uh we'll see what we can do but god bless you and merry christmas
yeah you too thank you thanks bob see you bob brandon gentile mr hockey fellow bitcoin
podcast how are you great how are you guys keone good to see you we haven't met but uh
uh just appreciate the fight and um just awesome awesome talk here and you know run run a pod as
well um i've seen you doing the circuit um so you know we're streaming on a bunch of my channels
here as well just doing everything we can and um i think you guys you guys you guys nailed it i mean
it's this this country and here in america at least and you know all over the world obviously
but also bitcoiners are getting a wake-up call right that politics politics is a mirror of
culture and and for too long too many have been silent and an evil exists because good people
stand idly by and do nothing and we just need to know you know that's why i think things like this
are so important because not that bad things aren't going to happen in life but uh look at you know
bitcoiners turn out and things happen when we know what's going on uh and you see the ramifications
or the importance of it. And you see so many people that say, Bitcoin won't work because
government's going to shut it down or this and that and the other thing. And you see the mentality
that most people have that we've been brainwashed for so long to just tamed like sheep. And
politics is downstream from culture. So it's dependent on a few people. Revolutionary War
was a few percent of people that grabbed the musket. Here, we're proverbially doing it. But
they they said yeah no f off we're not doing this anymore and so it's it's the irate minority can
make a massive impact so I think this is just another great example it sucks we have to keep
doing stuff like this you know it's Ross or or this or whatever but at some point the the tide
shifts so just you want to say thank you again the community what you guys are doing for privacy and
freedom um and uh and like what Marty said too it's I have four little ones you think about the
world they're going to grow up in all of our kids our children and you're you're just kind of beside
yourself. You see the things happening in the world and you're just like, wow, these incentives
are so broken, so backwards. Again, it's not going to be some utopia because of Bitcoin, but
we are just, we're wildly off the tracks. And the people here are the ones fighting to bring it back
on the track somehow. So again, just my hats off to you and what you're doing, brother. It's amazing.
Yeah. Thank you very much. And it's nice to meet you. And if you sent me a message asking me to do
your podcast and I didn't respond, I'm sorry. I had so many coming in. I may not have seen it.
No, I never actually did. I've been posting a lot. There were so many every day I was seeing.
I mean, Marty did it. Cedric did it. I mean, I just want everyone that was doing it. So I was
like, hey, I'm going to do some other things, some other ways to try. That's good with me.
Yeah, I was worried. I was thinking, oh man, did I ghost this guy or leave him on red?
no no no i knew you were just i've had so many come in i've tried to respond to them all but i
may have missed a couple so i didn't respond uh to anyone i'm sorry uh but uh i've been doing my
best to get on these i did i think nine hours of pure recordings straight last week on a single day
which is a lot which is a lot to do uh but yeah no i i appreciate i appreciate that greatly man
thank you very much um you know we didn't do this to be martyrs we didn't do this to to go to jail
we did this because we wanted to build software that we thought bitcoin deserved and that we
wanted to use ourselves um it just so happens you know we uh caught the attention of the wrong type
of people uh doj and um they came down on us and you know it's a beautiful thing now that
so many people in the community are seeing what's going on right I spent over a year not being able
to speak and not being able to tell people my side of the story right they only had one side
of the story I had to listen to you know 50 different prosecutors tell their side of the
story about my life and it's tough to not be able to say anything about it now I can you know
sentencing is done. I can speak and I've been speaking and I think that's really what people
needed. They needed to hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak. And they need to, you know,
because they heard it again, one side and the government side is, I've called an indictment
government fan fiction because that's really what it is. You know, they come up with these theories
and then try to stretch everything, the truth, the truth to fit their purposes. But people needed
to hear my side and decide for themselves.
Do they think I'm telling the truth or not?
It's the court of public opinion now.
That's where we're at.
And I think that's a battle
that we're largely being successful at.
So I appreciate your words.
Thank you very much.
And if I can hop in here,
I think it's important to highlight too,
that you really valued your privacy
and outside of your Twitter account
weren't really in the public limelight.
So it's actually been shocking to see you
on so many shows.
over the last week. And so you've had something stripped from you, which is you're, you try to
stay out of the public limelight for, as you were building out Samurai. Now you've sort of been
forced into it and that's been, part of you has been corrupted in a way. It's a good point.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I, I, I tried to keep my identity as Keone separate from Samurai
wallet when i when we built it we wanted samurai wallet to stand on its own reputation not use my reputation or bill reputation right we both were in the wallet space for a long time already We both had somewhat of a reputation in Bitcoin but we felt Samurai Wallet should develop and build its own image
So yeah, I did so many interviews over the 10 years of operating Samurai Wallet,
not one on camera, not one using my name as Keone.
And to be on all of these podcasts now is certainly strange.
but the government took it all away, right?
They published who I am, my name.
They made my address publicly available,
which I wasn't very appreciative of, but they did.
And so, you know, you're just living with that now.
And it's okay.
You know, I can swallow that and say,
okay, now I am the public face of Samurai, right?
Now the identities are connected.
I'm going to get out there.
I'm going to tell the story.
And I think, again, I think it's been largely successful in getting that story out there and having people connect to it.
And, you know, I think I don't want to sound arrogant saying this, but I think people connect to the story because it's the truth and people can identify the truth.
Right. If I'm sitting on here doing eight hours a day of podcasts, speaking lies to them, they're going to figure it out pretty quickly.
but because it's the truth that I am speaking quite honestly they they pick up on that and
they're drawn to it and they realize that this is a serious thing that what they had maybe what
they had heard before from the government side of things really isn't adding up right like oh he
created this criminal empire to launder funds but it took like five years of development to actually
produce the piece of software that was the main element of the criminal activity. Like why? Why,
if I was a criminal, would I spend five years building out a non-custodial coin joint? Why
wouldn't I just make a custodial mixer like everyone else did? Right? Like, so these little
things that just don't add up in the government's accounting of events, which can be explained by,
oh, wait, maybe he wasn't doing it to facilitate crime. Maybe he actually cares about privacy
and cares about self-custody.
And, you know, so I think that's the reason
why people are hearing the message
and it's resonating with them.
Yeah.
Before we get to maybe some new blood,
Shannon's here and some mystery person or robot.
Marty, do you feel a sense of responsibility?
Do you feel like a freedom fighter as a podcaster
and the ability to kind of surface voices like this
at your level?
and a sort of sense of responsibility?
Or are we in the proverbial salon here of a revolution
and this is where the ideas are being sort of hashed out
and causes are being supported?
I try not to think about it.
Really, I mean, the podcast and the newsletter
for the last eight years, it's really just been,
hey, here's what I'm interested in Bitcoin.
Here's what I think are the right tools
of years to use here's what i value and um if you like that i'm going to write about it and talk
about it and i think it's attracted a lot of like-minded individuals and converted people who
maybe didn't think that way in the past and um responsibility yeah i guess now that the audience
is bigger i do but i don't think much has changed i think it's the the same the same goal and the
same mentality I bring to it day in and day out.
Again,
I truly think that we have the ability to rebuild the monetary system,
the banking system,
the payment system on top of Bitcoin.
I think that's an incredible opportunity.
I think we should go after it full bore because it is incredibly liberating
for humanity at a time when we're losing our civil liberties left and right.
so it's a fighting chance to
preserve
our inalienable rights as we
continue to transition into the
digital age so I guess
to your question I feel responsible
I don't think about it a lot but I guess
now that you're forcing me to think about it
I do think it's
responsible to advocate
for this stuff particularly
the responsibility I have is for
my wife and my children really at the end
of the day be a good example
for them and hopefully it resonates with people and people recognize that this is a liberating
technology and we should be leaning into it it's not a bad thing it's actually an incredibly
beautiful um and fabulous thing that bitcoin exists um i guess my responsibility is how people
realize that is this shannon fitzgerald it is hello um something that struck me as really
important to surface um you know a knock on wood keone and bill spend little to no time behind bars
but in the event that they do um it's really important that we keep the story alive it's
incumbent upon all of us to be active on social media. My background is social content strategy,
digital media strategy. You do not have to have a huge following to make a difference. Just be
consistent. Spend 10 or 15 minutes a day. Get it. Find pockets of conversation that's happening in
the culture. It could be a reporter who you see, oh, they're talking about something that could be
related, that this could be a point of interest for them. Get in the comments. Start trying to
create a two-way conversation. Commenting is content. You don't have to post videos or graphics
or, right, just get in there and be active. Start siphoning out, you know, social equity in the
conversations that are happening organically. Keep the story alive. You know, use Pardon Samurai
hashtag just to keep things consistent. There's a lot you can do even if you have 15 followers
because the quality of those followers are probably people you know. They trust you.
share your thoughts, your quotes that you like that Keone has said. Retweet articles.
Make your own graphics. AI has a wide variety of tools that make this so easy. But keep the story
alive. It's up to us to keep this going. This is the hard part now is going to be sustaining it
because right now there's a ticking clock, a sense of urgency because Keone reports to jail Friday,
Bill follows in January.
But we may have to really keep this alive.
So everybody can do something.
You have more power than you think.
So go at it.
And also, Brandon, I'm a fellow hockey player.
So if you ever want to game a shinny and you're in LA, let me know.
Canadian Bitcoin Conference.
You got to come.
USA versus Canada.
I was there.
Yeah, Cedric was there.
Skating circles around people.
We got Parker A. Lewis here in Maryland.
HODL.
Parker, what's up?
thank you for joining us hey guys um keone we have never met but i uh our company co-signed the
letter that you um as part of samurai and 1031 put together i think at the beginning of last
beginning of 2024 and yeah just wanted to to join and voice my support i've read the exact same
same guidance from FinCEN that I know that you guys have read. And it was crystal clear,
not just from the guidance, but also from the private letter rulings that FinCEN had issued.
And while our business as AppRite is very different than what you guys were building
at Samurai, we write software, we take in XPUBs, we facilitate transactions, but we're never in
possession of funds. And if not just the government, but some prosecutors wanted to
decide that we were operating an unlicensed money transmitter business, it would be the
identical case. And that it's important for people to speak up in support of you guys,
because, you know, I heard Larry on earlier, I was watching them just, there's not a case,
And it's basically making up law based on lawyers wanting to make examples of people and to set precedent.
And that's not what our country is about.
So just wanted to join and voice my support and everybody that works on the team supports you guys.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you so much, Parker.
I appreciate that.
I'm glad you brought up the letter for the people who don't know.
I think it was February of 2024.
Samurai Wallet authored with the help of a pretty deep legal team, a letter to FinCEN responding to some proposed rules that they were trying to come up with.
And we thought that the rules went too far and would impact end users quite negatively.
So we put together a letter putting our legal position forward.
And many, many Bitcoin based companies signed on to this letter.
1031, which Marty is representing their hat right now.
They shared out this letter with their portfolio companies and other companies.
And a lot of people signed on to this letter and we submitted it to FinCET.
um so i i again we i had just finished talking about the the little inconsistencies in the
government's theory and and storytelling that that the only reason that we created samurai wallet was
to facilitate crime and money laundering right from the get-go right from the beginning this
was their theory um and how i was saying that there's just these little inconsistencies there
So I think one of the inconsistencies is if we were setting up a illegal money laundering business, why in the world would we engage proactively with the financial crime enforcement network?
Right. The regulator in charge of combating illicit finance.
Our whole goal was illicit finance.
So these things just don't make any sense.
That's not the actions that a criminal organization takes.
They don't engage the regulator.
So thank you. Yeah, thank you for bringing that up, Parker. And also, you're right. Any business, literally any software business that the DOJ or rogue prosecutor wants to target can be targeted using the theories that they put forward in this case, the novel theories that they put forward in this case.
you know so if you're doing something that remotely threatens power they're going to come
down on you like they did with us so it's important to build up that immune system to build that
response up so that if and when this happens to the next group of software developers or the next
miners the lightning nodes or the e-cashments we're here to start the response much earlier than
then the response has been started in our case, right?
We're immediately on them and they know that they're not going to be getting
away with this in the shadows. And, you know,
I think that's really the takeaway that we need to have that next time this
happens,
the community activates and goes all out in defense of our software developers
because it's so important and our builders and our companies because it's so
important.
Yeah. I wish I could find it,
but I just remember when I did my review of the, of all of that,
basically the statutes, the, the FinCEN guidance,
the various different guidance from FinCEN and the private letter rulings,
but it was just, it was,
it's expressly clear that you had to be in control of funds,
that the definition of money transmission required possession of funds and
transmission and that um you know in the private letter rulings they would they would a company
would have a question and they'd say this either was or wasn't and there was one instance where
they said hey you're actually not in possession so therefore you're not a money transmitter and
um you know private keys are saying sacred in bitcoin that that is control and
And if, you know, it's just, it's like, if you want to write a new law, that's Congress.
Congress write a new law and make it very clear what businesses that look a certain way, how they're to be treated.
and if there's a gap in that you know using novel theories to just make examples from what the doj
wishes there to be an actual law in place you know the absence of it is not okay to then just
just prosecute um so and i know a lot of people in the bitcoin world have read those same things
and it creates a lot of uncertainty.
It creates uncertainty for everybody.
And so it's not only that we need clarity,
but in this case, we had, you had clarity,
people had clarity and yeah, so it's a grave injustice.
Well, I'll open this up to everybody, anybody on the panel,
but I mean this really proves the point right That this the money transmission regulations and statutes it also clear but this case even though that was the plea was really about the privacy issues associated with
your transactions and so what does that really say about the state of bitcoin going forward and
the state of development and the creation of privacy tools and it seems to me that that's
where we're really stepping on toes and that that's where the true issues are lying how do you guys
feel about that so i just want to finish i just want to say one thing uh in response to parker
and then i'll let everyone else talk i have been talking a lot um but again you're absolutely right
on the the clarity of fincen guidance 2013 2019 uh private letter guidance like it's it's so clear
no one no one thought that um money transmission uh applied unless you took custody right that was
the de facto understanding in the community uh since at least 2013. and in fact again i'm glad
you brought this up in fact i don't know how familiar you are with the uh details of our case
but the government the prosecutors in our case six months before indictment went to fincen and asked
fincen explicitly our samurai wallet money transmitters and fincen responded explicitly
to our prosecutors no they don't take custody i thought i had seen that i wasn't 100 like
that was my memory but i wasn't as confident in it to say it um because it's not it's nonsensical
right that's why it's hard to believe because it's nonsensical but yeah
Yeah. So they had it crystal clear from FinCEN that we were not required to have a license because we were not money transmitters.
The government then indicted us with one of the charges being unlicensed money transmission.
Then they held that evidence that that letter that they got from FinCEN, they hid that from us for over a year while we were in the pretrial phase.
So, you know, you're absolutely right. It was clear. It was crystal clear from FinCET, right? There was no question about it. The government knew, the prosecutor knew, and it didn't matter, right? They came after anyway, these novel new theories. And again, you hit the nail on the head. If they want to change the law, it has to come through Congress.
The legislature wants to make non-custodial software money transmitters, then write a law, get it passed, get it signed by the president.
But that's not what they did here.
Right. Because then if they did that, then you could challenge that in court.
Right.
That's right.
Right.
The absence of it, you can't.
Yeah. Then it becomes a legal battle of what does control mean.
Or just like, is it constitutional? If it was, you know, like, then we could have the First Amendment debate.
Yeah, absolutely right. So sorry for hijacking the answer to that question, but I wanted to get that out there because I thought it was important for the listeners and guys to know that fact.
You set up the question perfectly. I mean, that is what you had to plea to. But what really seems to be happening here is the fact that private transactions are under attack. And the privacy and the ability to censor is under attack. The creation of censorship is their agenda, right?
So what do you guys think about that?
I mean, this is something that Bitcoin has stood for for a long time, that this is uncensorable money.
This is unstoppable money.
But if they're willing to go to this extent, where does that put us today?
We got Maryland Howell jumped in.
Yeah.
Also jumped in.
But Maryland Howell, you want to share some words, maybe some thoughts on the question and just some love and support for Keone?
Sure.
I'll start with Keone.
Yeah, my heart goes out to you and your family.
So sorry you're in this position.
See, my framing around all this is the systems that are set up for TradFi
aren't sophisticated enough to basically work with the system
and the ecosystem that's developing now with Bitcoin and its ecosystem.
So ultimately, they're using you as an example.
and it's a show of force and it's a grave injustice that's happening right now.
It started with the Biden administration and it's continued with the Trump administration.
And I, unfortunately, I think it's going to be very telling whether Trump actually gives the
pardon or not as to where the direction of the country is going to be from a privacy perspective.
and you know i think my hat's off to everybody that's been participating and sharing the message
i do it more quietly just through kind of acts but um been monitoring it basically for months now
and you know i have a lot of hope and thought um that trump's going to pull through on this
but if he doesn't it's i think we're in a very tough situation going forward because
ultimately what I believe is going to end up happening is the state is ultimately out to
control and squash Bitcoin. I can't see it any other way outside of that. But I think hopefully
in the coming weeks, we're going to have clear direction as to a positive stance on that. So
until that point comes, my prayers are with you and your family.
Yeah, thank you very much. I appreciate that greatly. Yeah, the only thing I'll say to that
is I don't think the state has any interest in destroying and squashing Bitcoin. I think the
interest lies in capture. So I think they have a great interest in capturing Bitcoin,
which is one of the same thing as destroying it, at least to me. If it becomes captured,
then it's really not all that interesting. And that's why what we're building is so important,
like focusing on the privacy to support censorship resistance, to keep Bitcoin decentralized through
a variety of distributed miners, to build up the core tenant of non-custody, of self-custody,
reducing trusted third parties. These are all core Bitcoin tenants that are required to help prevent
a state capture of the network. And if we give up on those tenants, the state will capture the
network. And that's really bad, especially with lack of privacy, because Bitcoin is so transparent,
it gives the state way more insight into the movement of funds into your financial picture
than even the fiat system.
So it's essential that we focus on these things.
And I do have one question for you.
What is the moat, basically,
that keeps the stuff that you were working on
from a kid in a basement from around the world somewhere,
figuring it out over a period of time,
or if AI advances enough and a coder has enough wherewithal
to developing a decentralized version of what you guys were ultimately about ready to put out
because i think that's ultimately what the threat was but i mean yeah i can't imagine we're more
than a couple years away from things like this ultimately being out and produced at you know a
high velocity um and if that's the case you know decentralization is always going to win you're
not going to be able to to beat this especially if we start getting more decentralized ai so that
they can't essentially control you know what we're using ai for um i just they're fighting a battle
they can't win to be honest yeah i i think so but then it also becomes like a cultural battle so if
the the culture broadly doesn't care and has that that concept of well i have nothing to hide so
why do I need privacy? If that's like a cultural norm throughout Bitcoin, then we won't move fast
enough. It really won't matter. But I don't think that we're there yet. And as a pure response to
your question, we were way closer than a year or two away from decentralizing our tool. The main
tool we built that the government had the biggest issue with was our CoinJoin implementation called
Whirlpool, we were like four months away from decentralizing that, where our one single point
of failure was the single server that we ran that handled the anonymous communication between
different clients. It passed messages. It couldn't read the messages, but it sent them out.
We're literally months away from making every Bitcoin node that ran our software
a coordinator server, there would have been thousands of them in the blink of an eye.
And I truly believe that the government brought up the raid that they ended up doing on April 24th
from what would have probably been later to April 24th because they did not want us to get to that
state where Whirlpool became decentralized. So we were close. The good thing about that is our code
is still out there. People made copies of our code base. It was always open source. So that code,
all that work that we put into decentralizing Whirlpool still exists. And it's not going away.
So someone will do it at some point, I imagine. Maybe Nate Dogg.
Hello, gentlemen. It's good to see you again, Keone. It's interesting times. I've been listening
to the stream while getting the kids down. And I appreciate what everybody's doing here. I think
it's really important work. And, you know, there's something that really stood out to me. I think we
kind of touched on a bit earlier. I think maybe it was Seb that brought it up. But it's amazing to
me that in all this, the guys from Samurai have given us yet another gift, right? Beyond the
privacy tech. Over the last, what, year, Bitcoiners have basically been at each other's throats.
And all of a sudden, everybody is rallying together, focused on mission, focused on brand.
We know what's really important and we're pushing behind it. And it's absolutely beautiful and
wonderful to see. And it means, I think it means a lot to everybody, what you've done and what's
happening to you. And I think it's really important. So I kind of want to take a little
bit of a moment here, just to pivot, if I may, just ever so slightly. Everything that everyone's
been talking about is incredibly important, but we've got a large audience here. I was just taking
a look. We've got hundreds of people on X. We've got them on YouTube. Everyone's piling in and
everyone's showing their support. But Bitcoiners at their best is moments like this. And I think
the state made a really, really bad calculation in going after you guys, because by using such
excessive force and going to such an extreme, it was enough to, it was, we detected the threat
immediately. And now we've started to unify and coalesce behind this mission. And we're not,
we're not going to stop until we get these guys out. And so what I'd like to do, if everyone's
out there, just put forward, Chad, I see you going off there. And if you can hear me, please,
you know, let me know there that you're, you're hanging out with us. Everyone that's watching
this stream right now and everyone that's participating in the stream right now has at
the very least already signed the petition. I know that you have, and if you haven't,
I don't know what you're waiting on.
Stop right now.
Scan the QR code and go and sign the petition.
You have no excuse.
It takes no time.
It doesn't hurt you at all.
But that's only going to get us so far.
I saw we got thousands of people.
I think last I looked, we're creeping up on 7,500 signatures there.
I'm not sure if we've gone past that.
We better get past that by the end of the night.
Everybody here can be a little bit uncomfortable and do one extra thing for me.
There's kind of two avenues I think we should encourage people to go out.
One, think of one other person, whether it's like a celebrity, someone on Twitter you like.
It's a friend.
It's a neighbor.
I want everyone watching the stream.
And please, if you hear this message, if you acknowledge it, let me know in the chat.
I want everyone watching this stream, because right now it's a call to action.
We're here to actually try and get something done.
This is not a morning.
This is a time to actually get to work.
So I want everyone watching this right now to reach out to one person at least.
One person, right?
When I'm done here, I'm going to go bug, what's his name?
Former VP for the Libertarian Party.
Wonderful dude.
But he's got You Are the Power.
It's his organization that helps people in these kind of similar situations, usually family
related, but still people that are unjustly prosecuted.
Or Spike Cohen. I'm going to bug Spike Cohen. So as soon as I'm off this stream, I'm going to be typing a message to Spike Cohen if he hasn't already been involved in this and encourage him in his libertarian circles to get on board and help out. So I want everybody watching, please go message one person that you can think of, whether it's somebody that you follow, it's a friend, it's a neighbor. Encourage them to check out BillandKeone.org. Sign the petition. We've got to spread this beyond ourselves. The Bitcoiners are here and they've all signed it. We've got to go a little bit further.
The other one is I just pulled it up.
I wanted to check how accurate or how difficult it would be.
Super easy.
We've all got access to ChatGPT, and we've all got access to Grok or one of these large language models.
All I did just a second ago was ask this thing.
Please write me a letter to my congressman.
I'm Canadian, so it doesn't know that.
Please write me a letter to my congressman in support of the samurai devs,
that what's happening to them is basically unconstitutional.
It's a travesty.
You guys, at this point in time, it's not that hard.
You can copy and paste directly from chat GBT.
You can ask, you can ask,
Let's grok who your representative is and what their email address is and what their contact information is.
You can copy and paste this letter, put your name on the end of it, and send it to them.
We got this in front of President Trump.
He's acknowledged it, which means he's probably been briefed on at this point in time.
I don't want us to feel like, I don't want this to be mourning that the deadline's coming up.
If we hit Friday and it's not done yet, I don't want to let off the accelerator.
I want everybody here to push as hard as they can.
And so that's just kind of the message that I wanted to get out that now is not the time to slow down.
I know it might be uncomfortable to reach out to people.
I know we're all kind of shy.
We don't know what to write.
Use the use use rock.
Have it write a message for you.
Start blasting it out.
We need to go beyond Bitcoiners.
We need to talk to libertarians, to gold bugs, to conservatives, to everybody, because everybody can get on board with this mission.
What's happened here is a complete travesty.
It's obvious that they've been completely railrolded by the Southern jurisdiction of New York court.
We can't let up.
So please, guys, call to action.
Do something.
Don't just watch.
I know that you've already signed and that's so helpful.
Let's do, let's do one more thing.
Cheers.
Well said.
Yeah.
Cheers.
Thanks, mate.
Of course, Dave.
By the way, I, I signed the petition.
I hope everyone else up here did.
It's, you know, it's like, it's, it's, we want our freedoms, right?
And we, it's hard to kind of go onto these websites and do these things.
I did it very easy, very fast, very simple.
So I recommend it.
Um, here's, I think it's, I'm looking at the page.
It's, we're pretty close to 70, 7,500.
Yeah. But yeah, I mean, look, I, I just want to sort of plus one on off of that, Nathan, because, you know, I think it's, uh, and it goes back to the, the thread in the, in the opening, which was by our brilliant, uh, uh, our brilliant leader here, um, in terms of the samurai warrior, Mr. Keone said, Hey, I want this to be kind of happy. You know, I got, I want this to be like a somber thing. I want this to be a, like, we're continuing to like boldly do this.
And yeah, I just look like this thing. Hopefully we have a chance here. I told Keone, like, remember we talked on when did we record Sunday? And we were like, yeah, you know, look, I don't know the likelihood of the timing of this. And then Monday, less than 24 hours after we had done that second interview, we have Trump talking about it.
So like, look, there's a chance here.
But to Nathan, to your point, like we're trying to get something done here.
So this is actually the time to push as hard as we can possibly push to celebrate, celebrate Keone, push hard and see if we can't get something done by Friday.
But that was beautifully said, my friend.
So I agree.
Thank you.
I just.
Yeah, absolutely.
Beautifully said.
I just want to piggyback on it just just briefly, Nate.
Sign the petition on change.org.
Change.org is a little sneaky.
after you sign it, they ask you to donate.
And a lot of people think they're donating to me and Bill.
They're not.
If you donate on change.org, you're just donating to change.org.
So don't do that.
Unless you really like change.org, then I guess do it.
If you want to donate to Bill and myself,
you'll find the link on BillandKeone.org,
b-i-l-l-a-n-d-k-e-o-n-n-e.org. There's a give send go link there that will go 50% to my wife,
Lauren, and 50% to Bill's wife, Sabrina. If you do want to support us financially,
that's the way to do it. Don't donate on change.org. Just want to make that clear because
people have been donating to change.org. I think about $15,000 worth of donations have gone to
change.org and they're they're just a little sneaky um so keep that in mind are you allowed
to interact with bitcoin keonan no that's i'm glad you asked that so um part of my bail conditions
are that uh i cannot uh indirectly or directly send or receive any crypto transaction um so
So we don't have a way to accept donations in Bitcoin yet.
If I may, sorry to interrupt, Ben saw that after our conversation too.
I tweeted out, I'll send it to you as well.
Ben did set up a Bitcoin donation page that if anybody can only send Bitcoin, Sessions is collecting Bitcoin.
We'll convert that all to fiat and then give it right to the give, send, go.
Okay, that's awesome. I didn't ask you to do that.
You did not. There was no affiliation and we're in Canada and he's in no way receiving it.
This is the first time I'm hearing of this.
So for any prosecutors listening, that was not direct or indirect.
Had nothing to do with that.
So thank you.
Awesome.
But yeah, so I just can't do it right now.
Once I surrender on Friday and once Bill surrenders, I believe it's January 3rd.
We'll try to get crypto or Bitcoin donations available at that point where it's safer.
And, you know, I won't have a prosecutor saying, oh, he violated bail conditions.
there's a new charge. So we just wanted to be on the safe side of that. That's why it only gives
him go current. Can you talk to Bill now? No, that's also a bail condition. I'm still not
allowed to talk to Bill without lawyers present. Just so people listening understand, there's bail
conditions here. So he's basically waiting now to go serve the trial. Correct me if I'm wrong on any
of this, Gioni, but that's why we're in this in-between period. And part of those conditions
were you can't do anything with Bitcoin. And so he's had to abide by that agreement. And that's
why we're sort of waiting now to get to the 19th, see what happens. Hopefully we get the pardon.
If we don't get the pardon, then it's like game plan shift from 19th after based on the fact that
he will be then in and then we can do some different things. But I don't want to get over
our skis. I think right now it's just get the petition signed, continue to show the support,
continue to be loud, continue to push. We still have until Friday. It's Tuesday, remember.
We just heard from Trump. And so, look, I said publicly when I saw that Trump posted,
I was very impressed. Keone, I would love to get your, actually, your thoughts on this. Like,
I was very impressed, very surprised, kind of blown away on Monday. And look, it took the guy,
it took Lutz, I think is the name of it, Sanders, Lutz Sanders. And he said something to Trump,
and that's what got it across the board.
But I did not expect that to happen.
Kind of, you know what I mean?
So I think now we're kind of in a different place
than we were even 24 hours ago.
Oh yeah, I totally agree.
And we kind of talked about it right at the top.
But again, if the president didn't want to answer that question
or didn't care to answer it, he wouldn't have answered it.
The fact that he did spend so much time answering it,
I think is a positive sign.
Just reiterating what I already said,
the president knows about a weaponized Department of Justice. One came after him.
So putting that in combination with him now knowing our story, I think our chances are
much better than they were a few days ago. We're moving along. I'm cautiously optimistic. I think
it's still very likely that I'll report to prison on Friday. But I think that the possibility of a
pardon is significantly
better than it was just
the day before yesterday. So I'm
optimistic, cautiously.
Gentlemen, I have to
bail out Kayone, praying
for you, brother. Hey, thank you, Marty.
Everybody go sign the petition.
Thank you, Marty, for having on the call on
everything you're doing. Appreciate it.
See you, Marty.
All right, Marty's gone. We can get this party started.
marty's marty's been fantastic uh i just want to say because he's he's also sort of been you know
obviously early supporter early user early content around this thing and then came back around during
this heightened period and he's been a he's been a big supporter behind the scenes as well so
yeah we have a tremendous group behind the scenes who have just been who've been helping so much
I'm very appreciative of all the work that people are doing and donating their time and energy and effort to to this cause, which is just truly tremendous.
I thank you. I know Bill thanks you. I haven't spoke to him for any prosecutors listening.
But Bill's been one of my closest friends for well over a decade.
Before this all happened, we spoke to each other every day, hours at a time.
I know that he's appreciative of all the help that everyone is donating and putting out.
So from both of us, I'm confident saying thank you.
Thank you to that.
And I've seen some people say, well, don't forget about Bill.
And this is all about Keone and not about Bill.
That couldn't be further from the truth.
It's just the way Bill is.
He doesn't like press.
He doesn't like getting on camera.
He doesn't like talking publicly.
Ever since we created Samurai, I was always the one that did press and interviews.
and podcasts. I was the public voice. Bill was the man behind the throne. He's an essential part
to the whole operation. So everything that I'm doing is to raise awareness for me and Bill.
We went through this. We built Samurai together. We were indicted together. We fought the case
together. We took the deal together and we will get pardoned together if a pardon is going to
happen. So no one's forgetting Bill. I love Bill to death. When a pardon, sorry. Ride or die.
still optimistic that right on the night in jail and obviously you know it's gonna be hard to be
separated from your wife but what what has it been like to be have the reduced communication with bill
he's been such a big part of your life and a friend yeah that was tough that was absolutely
tough again i i spoke to bill hours every day uh from essentially the moment i woke up uh so it was
it was uh getting getting used to to not having that in your life anymore it's it's tough right
this is a very close friend uh so yeah it's been tough uh dealing with that um you to know he's
there but i just not allowed to speak with him without lawyers present you know you talking about a five to six thousand dollar an hour conversation if you need to speak with him without lawyers present You talking about a to an hour conversation if you need to speak with him We can do that right That not going to be
something that we can manage. So I'm hopeful that once this is all over, we'll be able to
start speaking again. I need to find out the legality of actually inmate to inmate male.
I know it does happen. It's allowed, but you have to get approval.
So I'm hopeful that once we're both inside,
I'll be able to get approval for that so that we could at least write each other.
Can I just hang on that for one minute?
Because it just takes me back to the inhumane nature of this whole situation.
So disgusting that they had found all these different ways to get at you.
And this is just another example of this is your business partner and friend,
arguably best friend. I know how it is.
I've built things before. When you're in there with a co-founder for 10 years building stuff,
that is a very, very close person in your life. That might be the closest person. I don't know
how it was for you, but my co-founders, we are close, man. And it's like to then say,
oh, by the way, now you just can't talk to that person. And it's been how long? Almost two years
of this. So they can just sort of do these things. And it's very tricky because it's pre-trial. So
it's like it's just happening like there's no backstop no way for kiana to fight anything it
just is what it is and in this case just one of many many examples one of the lawfare tactics is
you can no longer talk to your friend and i just think it's horrible so i hope you guys get to
read yeah not only your friend but your co-defender yeah in the criminal action they're taking against
you um it's it's ridiculous right they should have severed the trials if they wanted to to have that
condition. But no, they wouldn't sever the trials. In fact, they denied the motion to sever the trial
and they still continued the bail condition of not being allowed to speak to my co-defender
in this matter. I don't know why, but that's just what they do. And they have all the power
in this situation. You are powerless. My marijuana dealer just joined the show.
what's up everybody pleasure to be here um what's up with that yeah keone i spoke with you
interviewed you it was a pleasure to have a conversation about the unfortunate events you're
going through and um yeah i just wanted to jump on and pay my respect man you know i've spent many
years most of my adult life doing things the federal government doesn't like i think i crossed
the line you didn't. And so in some ways, you know, quite obviously what's taking place with
you is unjust. And yeah, I just have a tremendous level of respect and admiration for the way that
you've handled and conducted yourself. You've been in great spirits, like a little powerhouse,
just jumping from one podcast to the other. Articulate, you look good and healthy. I'd
probably be stressed, weathered away and skinny by this point if I were you. So yeah, man, I'm
I'm impressed. And I think the attack on privacy is a real issue. You can't really have solid
property rights without privacy rights. And, you know, it's unfortunate, but I do think,
you know, when I saw the clip from Trump, I was blown away. I could just absolutely shocked
how impactful all the people's efforts have been. And I have a very hopeful feeling about it.
in some ways it's a very telling moment for what the next 10, 20, 30 years look like.
I think Bitcoin is the biggest deal, arguably, in human history. It's obviously one of the most
important things happening in the world today. And what happens in your situation, I think,
is going to be very telling for what the future looks like for us. And yeah, man,
I commend the shit out of you for taking it like a G because you really have, man.
So much respect to you and everybody involved who's participating in this revolution.
When you were at your peak of growing marijuana, did you ever imagine 50 agents showing up at your house?
I had some close calls.
Yes, I did.
I had a close call.
I got roped into some sub licensing deal with a breeder of a strain that was out of state.
and I ended up face to face with what I am absolutely convinced at this point still to
this day was a DEA agent.
I wrapped up all my shit, took all my paperwork, put it in my took it to my attorney and I
spent a few days in hiding.
So I I've been scared at times of getting in trouble, but I've never been facing anything
like you.
You are Keone.
Not even close.
You play through your mind having to explain that to your mom, your dad, your big time
family and and yes even the cage maybe yeah i got pulled over driving to a high times cup
with uh an enormous amount of product the whole litany everything you could ever want like a
mobile dispensary in the middle of the night driving to southern california from humboldt
county and it was uh a powerful feeling you know getting pulled out of the vehicle thinking like
oh fuck dude all my houses all my shit's getting raided it turned out being okay but uh yeah i
I mean, I definitely definitely lived a sketchy life there for a little while.
But once again, it's it's nothing on the level that that we have going on here.
Not even close. This is a much bigger deal.
And what's crazy about it is that there's nothing, no criminal activity, not one communication from anyone bad with Gioni, not one piece of evidence, no hard evidence whatsoever in this case, period.
There just isn't. If you look at the details of the case, the plea is for conspiracy. It's something that was forced. What he's been to is a forced situation. And it really is disgusting, man, because you're talking about people like yourself that have done things that whatever.
And Keone is looking at five years with with no crime, with pure pure innocence, just building software.
It is it's to me, it's the worst case that I've ever seen in my lifetime.
And I believe like you do that Bitcoin is a once in a human history moment.
And I think that's why we see the aggressive nature that we see being taken on Keone.
So that's yeah. And and after, you know, listening to Keone's story a handful of times now, I suspect that the prosecuting team, the DOJ, FBI thought that they were going to be able to link him with helping somebody launder, launder their money.
And I think at this point they're saving face and they didn't even have that. They just made up some random. Go ahead, Keone.
I think you're actually right about that. I think because the indictment, every attorney that we spoke to, whether we hired them or didn't, all kind of said the same thing about the indictment. They said, this is really thin. This is a pretty flimsy case based off of this evidence. They must have something else. There must have more.
And so my theory is that they they they had enough to get an indictment.
And, you know, the old saying, you can indict a ham sandwich.
Indictments are incredibly easy to get.
Right. It's a prosecutor and a grand jury and a judge.
There's no defendant. There's no defense.
And they're putting their side of the story forward and they're going to get what they want most of the time.
And I think they were 100 percent confident that once they got this indictment, once they got the search warrant,
Once they raided my place, took every single one of my electronic devices, all of my notes, they were going to find their smoking gun that linked me to a specific criminal activity to some particular criminal.
And they had the smoking gun where we were discussing laundering the funds.
And they didn't find it because that never existed.
So in the superseding indictment, which for your listeners is the government just has another go at it.
They found some new evidence. So they rewrite the indictment and bring you a new one.
In the superseding indictment, they still didn't have anything like that.
They just upped the number of illicit activity that they say went through the software.
It went from like 100 million to 200 million.
And again, no smoking gun, no connection to actual crime.
Lots of innuendo, lots of public statements made on Twitter that they can twist and turn into making intent.
but nothing, no meat and potatoes. And I think you're absolutely right. I think the dropping of
the charge was to save face. And I think it's pretty likely that we would have had at trial
a similar outcome to what Roman Storm had, which was a hung jury on money laundering and a conviction
on money transmission, even though it's so absurd because we had the FinCEN guidance, we had all of
the things on our side, people don't realize that the judge is in so much control of what the jury
is going to hear. The judge decides whether the jury hears about FinCEN at all. The judge decides
whether the jury hears that we have legal counsel that gave us advice about FinCEN. So ultimately,
I think we did the right thing taking the deal. And everyone who's been in this situation,
who has fought the Department of Justice, I mean, everyone I spoke to said, you did the right thing
taking the deal, they were going to railroad you. They were going to put you away for 25 years.
No question. So yeah, I think you're right. I think that they really thought they were going
to find that smoking gun because in their heads, there was no other possibility than that we were
guilty. They knew it in their core that we were money launderers. And when they didn't find that
that evidence, I think it embarrassed them.
Yeah I think that half the reason they put on such a show when they rated you And if they couldn convict you then what what message does that send to the marketplace Within no time there would be tons of coin mixers tons of privacy
tech that goes against obviously everything that this establishment is fighting against.
So yeah, it's unfortunate you've been caught in the crosshairs, but I have a pretty hopeful
feeling about it. Like I said, I was shocked to see Trump this morning on Twitter talking
about your case and so he's in a in an interesting position he doesn't need to get re-elected as
president but he's going to disappoint a lot of the libertarian in the bitcoin community if he
doesn't do something here and the fact that he pardoned ross albrick which i think is in some
ways is a harder pill for a normie to swallow than you getting pardoned i think it's a much
clear easier thing for somebody who doesn't understand what's happening to accept like hey
this guy made a wallet he's being pardoned so i'm hopeful there's i think there's a lot of
positive uh events that have taken place over there i just want to ask the group quickly on
that note too maybe brandon parker you have some thoughts on this as well in terms of keeping the
pressure on trump what do you guys think is like the best tactic for actually making sure that this
stays on his radar it stays in front of him that we actually do our best to to push it forward how
do we how do we as Bitcoiners in the community influence them?
I mean, my view or Angela McArdle came to the awesome bit devs last month or maybe awesome
Bitcoin club.
And what she said was and I know she was on here earlier, but to continue to put the pressure
on because of the midterms that like Trump's not on the ballot.
But if the Republicans lose the House or Senate and the House is more problematic, then that creates problems for him.
And if he doesn't have the Bitcoiner voting block, then in her words, they're going to get destroyed at the ballot box.
So even though he's not on the ballot, like keeping the pressure on like if Bitcoiner don't turn out to support them, then they'll lose.
that close. And so I think that that message resonated to me. And I think that there's
rifle shots of everyone that has relationships to lean on those relationships. But then in terms of
public pressure, there's a lot riding on the midterms for Trump, even though he's not on the
ballot. I think this might be actually a good opportunity, Keone, for you to talk for a minute
about maybe what you think we can do or how we can interact as, you know, let's assume
that you don't get the part in and you go in on Friday.
Because I know you and I have talked about some things, but this is your last public
appearance if you were to go in.
And so I think one of the hardest things, the way, because I've been, believe me, man,
I'm going through this in my head.
And I'm like, if you go in on Friday, you know, it's a big, it hurts because you're
amazing, right?
Like you're, you're, you're the tip of the spear of this, this whole thing.
You are, this is your story and you're such a good speaker and you're, you know, you're
just, you're tremendous.
And so once you're, once you're gone, you're gone.
And then it's just up to us to try to fight for you, you know, in your absence.
So is there anything you want to talk about?
I don't want to say anything for you, but, you know, just in terms of keeping in touch,
you know, I think that, I think that for us guys, it's, it's about like, you know,
We just don't, we don't stop, right?
Like Trump's going to do what he does.
It's going to be, do we stop or not?
Do we stop talking about it or not?
So that's, so Keone, I don't know if you have any words about that as your last public appearance,
but just thinking about how we can continue to, like, I don't want you to feel like you're,
I think one of the, here, I'll put it this way.
Ross came into our space.
remember this was the big one of the biggest moments for me of this whole week was ross came
into an x space with us and he started talking to keone very just matter of factly you know like
how are you feeling like are you prepared to go in like do you need anything and i know keone you've
done a lot of prep um but a couple things ross said that have stuck with me this whole week have
been you know signing the petition because that matters and then letters meaning sending
communication to Keone while he's in there because the biggest thing that they are trying to do,
even when the pretrial happens, it's isolation. That's one of the biggest weapons that they use
is isolation to try to make someone go away. They use distraction. What's the next headline?
What's the next news story? Everybody forget about Keone. And that I think is a big deal here.
Hopefully, look, that's why I think this next until Friday is such a big deal. Like continue
to put your foot down on the gas, everybody. This is important. This is the moment when we get to
maybe hopefully avoid all of this, right? That would be such a blessing if we can just say, cool,
we did it. But we also have to be prepared to continue to just work through it for the worst
case scenario, five years, right? So Keone, any thoughts on that front? Yeah. Yeah. I mean,
if the pardon doesn't happen if i report and i'm i'm in in federal prison i think what um what shannon
was saying earlier keeping the keeping the message alive on on socials is going to be important it's
going to be tough because you know we feel like we didn't win in getting the pardon uh but keeping
that pressure uh up and speaking about it um keeps me and bill alive so to speak i mean i i spoke to
ross privately after that call and one of the things he he kind of said he said a lot and i'm
only i'm not going to say everything he's told me but one thing he he said that stuck with me is
is that whether you go you're going to prison for life like he did or for five years like I am
in a way you die on the outside because you're not there you're gone you're now in the prison system
and they take that away from you they take that life away from you and if you're out there
speaking on my behalf, because I won't be able to speak for myself to the same degree,
you keep the person alive. And I think, and their thoughts alive. And I think that's
an important thing. And I hope that people do that. To communicate with me, for the second part
of your question, so communication will happen one of two ways. I will at some point,
write to my wife in my own words what I would like her to post on my behalf. And she will post
that on my behalf to my ex profile. So follow me there if you want to hear what I have to say.
She won't be writing it. It will be me writing it. And it will be something that I want to
communicate publicly. That's communication from me to you. And if you want to communicate with me,
possible, like Jesse said, Ross mentioned that letters are so important while you're inside
because it's boring and lonely in there. One thing that every single person who's been to
federal prison has told me is the hardest part is the boredom. You're just bored. So getting letters
and having this outside connection is something that is important. So we'll put the address on
billandkeone.org for both me and Bill, if you want to write us letters. And speaking for myself,
I will write you back. It might take a while because there's a limit to how many letters you
can send out at any given time and buy stamps, how many stamps you can buy. But I will respond
to the letters I receive. And I think that's a great way to communicate and really the only way
to communicate with me two-way fashion other than me broadcasting out through my wife.
If I may, guys, I also just looked up too, if we don't get that information right away. So it looks
like we can search the Bureau of Prisons website, so BOP.gov, to find inmate and their location.
And then you can search for that specific facility and the inmate mail policy to figure out what the
restrictions and rules are in terms of setting letters. And the other thing I just want to quickly
point out for everybody here right now is if you go to house.gov slash representatives, it has every
single representative you can find their email and their phone number so maybe that's something
to get cracking on later this week when you have a spare 20 minutes I also thanks Nathan I also
want to say publicly that you know Keone and I so I'll be I will be able to communicate with Keone
through email so we're gonna set up set that up through the through the system through the through
jail system so that i'm able to do that and so you know there'll be communication both through
his twitter his ex you know his wife uh i'll be connected with his wife um and so you know
my hope is that we can like you said keone keone keep you alive on the outside right and i think
that's going to feel really good for you on the inside knowing that you're being kept alive on
on the outside. I, you know, cause it's, this is a psychological thing more than anything else
in my estimation. And so, um, just so everybody knows we will have those communication lines.
It may not be, it's actually not going to be fast for sure. It'll be slow. That's a guarantee
because it will be clunky going through the jail system. But I think it's going to be a good
strategy for us, Keone, and I hope that it helps. And I'm really glad, uh, I couldn't be more happy,
to know that you talking to Ross and that you got that kind of support from Ross and and Lynn so yeah day one is still day one we we gotta keep him out of jail um yeah I don want to turn
this a little bit into a party before we roll out but you know FinCEN in both 2013 and again in 2019
explicitly stated that you must take custody of Bitcoin through your money transmitting business
that non-custodial software did not count.
DOJ Blanche memo in 20.5 again reiterates this fact,
and prosecutors asked Vincent specifically
if Samurai was doing something illegal.
And when the defense tried to bring these facts to light,
they squished out the judge on the case.
Horrendous.
The system is broken.
I'm going to play the jingle,
Christmas jingle from Shannon Fitzgerald,
and then we'll roll out with a little more of a party vibe.
Hold on, I want to add something first real quick.
As far as you dine on the outside, I would have to assume that if you're not pardoned by Friday and you step foot into a jail cell, this movement is going to grow by orders of magnitude.
A lot of people are sitting on the sidelines and I think that will change.
So I would say that my assumption is that you're going to have more support if you actually step into a jail cell.
people are not going to forget about you.
Especially with people like
Jesse and Puncher. I mean, go down the list
of all these incredible people.
So,
yeah. You're not going to be forgotten.
Appreciate that, guys.
Cheers to that.
Cheers. Let's get this party
going.
Shannon Fitzgerald wrote a
jingle.
Oh, yeah.
We're going to play that now.
I'm laughing because she specifically told
you not to credit her, which is hilarious. This was the AI. This was written by my friend.
This was by the robot. All right. Let me bring that up.
All right. It's going to take me a minute. I can create filler or anybody can, but I guess
what's on the top of my mind while you're bringing something up that someone created is just again
the uh organic kind of contributions oh here we go the organic contributions that have come out of
this you know with it's just like people's skill sets whatever they do you know they're like hey
i did this i did this this is another example of that but uh cedric are you ready i'm just yeah
i'm ready now here's to everybody who signed the petition today
They wrote open source software for people doing right.
But the DUJ came knocking and said this tool's a crime.
Oh, pardon the samurai.
Oh, didn't do wrong, that's true.
Privacy is not a crime.
And code is speech for me and you.
Pardon the samurai.
Let innovation stay
Don't jail the folks who build the tools
Just because bad guys play
They blame the builders of the road
For how the cars were driven
That's not how justice works at all
Or the rights we've all been given
Oh, pardon the samurai
They didn't do wrong, that's true
Privacy is not a crime
And code is speech for me and you
Pardon the samurai
Let freedom ring and stay
Protect our rights, protect our code this Christmas
Do it the right way
I love it.
Well, we have a new jam, a new winter jam.
We'll be playing that for the next 10 days, at least for the holidays.
But let's just keep making noise.
Yeah, dude.
And we have until Friday.
This is on Trump's plate.
I'm cautiously optimistic.
And it will get louder if you have to go in on Friday.
But that's all we can do.
I mean, there's nothing really more important, I think, in Bitcoin than this right now.
You know, maybe the silver lining is it's, you know, it's not the gains, it's the friends we make along the way.
Amen.
Yeah.
And I think one of the things that I have my good old trustee declaration and constitution, pocket constitution sitting here.
So for the many Americans, but also Canadians, Nathan, my favorite line is the end of the declaration.
And in Bitcoiners, I think this is maybe some of the last vestiges of the American Revolution.
Let's just call it what it is.
And the last line is, and for the support of this declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence,
we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
And that's really all there is at the end of the day.
because we're all going to be six feet under.
No one's getting out alive.
So what's the marker we're leaving
and what are we here for at the end of the day?
So just appreciate you, Keone,
everything you're doing.
Godspeed.
Let's get Keone out of here alive.
Thank you, fellas.
This has been tremendous.
Keone, we wish you the best of luck
and Godspeed.
And anything we could do to help, let us know.
It's good to know that you'll be communicating
with us through whatever
channels you can.
We'll be looking to hear from you. We're just going to make as much noise
as we can.
That's what we do.
You're an inspiration to all the
coiners and everybody
that came on this channel tonight and helped
support him, we appreciate you greatly.
Yeah.
I definitely appreciate it.
I wanted to, like I
said right at the beginning, let's not make this a somber
affair. Let's treat this
as a going away party.
And we did, I think.
And we had a lot of people,
some people I'm meeting for the first time,
like Parker, like Larry, like Bob.
I've never met.
I know about these people, of course, who doesn't,
but I've never met them.
So I was happy to finally meet
and have great discussion.
So yeah, thank you for putting this together.
I'm sure logistically, it was kind of a challenge
getting this many people into a room.
But I think it was well worth it.
And I think the viewers and all the views,
it looks like there's a lot of views on this thing,
I think is saying something, right?
People are interested in this.
They want to hear.
They want to keep this alive.
And from what everyone has said,
and I've been watching, I've been reading the comments,
they're going to keep it alive.
And that's comforting to know.
So thanks again.
yeah i mean the only challenge was trying to fit everyone in who wants to support you
and make as much noise as possible so um we appreciate you and um we're here for you uh
this is just the beginning i'm very optimistic but you know this this you know you're you're in
the line of fire for all of us so we're here for you uh i'll leave it you know do you have any
parting words or you know jess parker stacks nate i'll just say real i'll just say real quick um
you know keone's exhausted okay he's put in so much effort to do this this is his last public
appearance he doesn't he's not supposed to go until friday we've heard from the president already
so we have between now and friday okay so let's continue to go hard um this guy deserves some
time with his family. Okay. He's going to be his family tomorrow. His Christmas is basically tomorrow
in case he has to go in. So he's going to be with his loved ones. So just, you know, when you get
off this call or when you stop listening to this, you know, go look at your, your loved one that's
next to you or your pet or your family member or your friend. And just think about it. Think about
if you couldn't be with that person, if you're about to go behind, you know, behind bars for,
for no reason um so let's let's do everything we can guys too because i think we like uh cedric i'm
i'm optimistic i was so blown away uh you know by the by the mention from the president of the
united states i i what was it keoni i woke up in the morning and i said hey the president is saying
your name that's what i that's what i that's what i texted to keoni so let's keep it up guys i mean
i'm so proud of the of the bitcoin coalition i'm so proud of everybody for stepping up for speaking
up there's so many unsung heroes and uh keone i love you buddy and um we're we're here we're
we're working right beside you we're going to be beside you the whole time okay yeah i just want to
i just want to have one more thing and i know that you guys i know that everybody hanging out here
and everybody who's come through has had the same thing too the amount of times that i've had people
ask me how they can work in bitcoin how they can support bitcoin people that they find it they want
to get involved well here's your chance that song was great you can make songs you can make memes
you could write letters you could take the videos and clip them you could ai translate them into a
different letter this is the perfect every opportunity for everybody and i know we've all
had a ton of them ask us that want to work want to contribute want to do something in bitcoin but
don't have the skills to code but want to do something this is your something this is that
moment find something and do it amen right on well thank you fellas godspeed keone cheers cheers
Happy holidays.
Thanks, boys.
Thanks, guys.