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You've had a dynamic where money has become freer than free.

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You talk about a Fed just gone nuts.

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All the central banks going nuts.

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So it's all acting like safe haven.

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I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their

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currency, Bitcoin wins.

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In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.

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I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.

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If you're not paying attention, you probably should be.

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Gian, this is crazy.

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This is the first time that you've been on this show,

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and it's for a very, I don't want to say somber,

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but we're going to record to make the case for yourself and Bill

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to stay out of prison.

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this is a morbid way to start with the podcast how are you

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yeah i'm doing good thank you for having me on here marty um i was trying to remember if i had

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done this podcast or not as samurai because i know we've done some things together um but i don't

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think it was uh this podcast yeah i think we've done rabbit hole recap and right other things

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together the uh i don't know i've been thinking a lot over the last few days of uh how to start

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this episode. I've been watching

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a lot of the appearances you've done on Pod

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256.

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The show with Kevin Kelly and

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Tableau last week.

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And I think jumping

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off, obviously, you are

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the co-founder of Samurai Wallet. Yourself

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and Bill

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were subject

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of prosecution from the Department

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of Justice.

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You guys

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pled out

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to take on a lesser sentence.

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And I think we'll get into the sort of details of the trial and how that went.

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But before the what, I think it's important really, because I've known you in the space for quite a while, going all the way back to your blockchain.info days.

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I think it's important for the audience to really understand why you decided to found Samurai Wallet and why you dedicated your life to privacy for people using Bitcoin.

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Why did you get into this in the first place?

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Yeah, sure.

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So as you mentioned, I started my career in Bitcoin at blockchain.info, now known as blockchain.com in 2012.

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And that's actually where I met Bill, who would co-found Samurai Wallet with me later on.

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And to really understand why I co-founded Samurai Wallet, I think you have to kind of understand why I got into Bitcoin at all.

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And when I got into Bitcoin 2012, it really wasn't about making money or a number go up or an investment.

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It was a real practical purpose. And I saw Bitcoin as a truly censorship resistant version of digital cash. And that's what brought me to Bitcoin. That's what I had been passionate about even prior to Bitcoin. Right.

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So I spent a lot of time dealing with gold and silver because it was a bearer asset that couldn't be confiscated.

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And, you know, no one could tell me what I could spend that gold and silver on.

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So when I discovered Bitcoin, I was like, oh, this is a better version of gold or silver.

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This is an electronic version of that.

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And I knew right when I discovered it, this is what I wanted to work on.

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And privacy, to me, wasn't like the thing I needed to work on because at that time, to me, privacy was obvious.

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If you have a censorship resistant form of digital cash, it needs to be private or it won't be censorship resistant.

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It would seem like a pretty basic thing.

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Um, so really what I focused on at the, at that time in 2012 was making sure, um, any

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of this stuff we built was non-custodial or self-custodial, or I guess the parlance of

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the day is self-hosted.

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Right.

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Um, and, and really focusing in on that aspect of things, right.

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Because the whole point was to, um, get rid of intermediaries and third parties.

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So I wanted to make software that really put the end user in total and absolute control.

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And I thought at that time that privacy was just going to come naturally as part of the

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progression of the protocol.

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So all that being said, by 2015, I think I started to get a little jaded with the Bitcoin

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space in general.

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And I think Bill was kind of right there with me in feeling that way.

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We felt like because of the run-up in price and because of all the new entrants in the space, a lot of VC, a lot of traditional finance types, privacy was being pushed to the bottom of the priority list.

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It was more about scaling at that point and less about privacy.

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And we saw that as a problem, right? Because if we didn't take care of privacy at this point,

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when there's not a huge amount of users, it's going to be very difficult to do it when there's

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billions of users. And it's going to be very difficult to start changing the protocol.

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So we realized then that protocol is not going to change. They're not going to implement

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confidential transactions. They're not going to implement things of that nature,

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which I don't necessarily think is wrong, but it was something that we recognized.

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and instead of crying about it or making a fork of bitcoin or moving to an altcoin like monero or

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something else we said well we're into bitcoin and the majority of people are into bitcoin

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they should have a private experience and they should be able to use bitcoin in the way that

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we foresaw it uh as a as a peer-to-peer cash and if it's not going to happen on the protocol

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than it needs to happen on the application layer.

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And the primary gateway for users to interact with the network is through a wallet.

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So let's create a non-custodial Bitcoin wallet that is solely focused on the transactional

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privacy aspect of Bitcoin.

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And that's what we did with Samurai Wallet.

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That was the whole starting off point.

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and diving deeper to the philosophical side of this uh we live in a day and age where

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many assume that privacy is a bad thing why why is that not the case like why do individuals need

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privacy in their financial dealings yeah i mean people need privacy in every aspect of their life

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and people enjoy privacy in every aspect of their life even the people who say oh only criminals need

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privacy, right? Those same people put their letters in envelopes and they put blinds or

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curtains on their windows. These are privacy technologies, right? So I think in order for

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the human condition to flourish, privacy has to be part of that, right? Because you have to be able

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to, speaking specifically about transactional privacy or financial privacy, if like me,

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you believe that being able to transact is a form of speech, right? So you, for example,

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are supporting a political candidate or you're supporting financially or you're supporting a

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charitable organization financially. That's a form of speech. And if it becomes dangerous for you,

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like if you're not in the United States, you're in some authoritarian country, it's dangerous.

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It's dangerous to support a political opponent or it's dangerous to support a charitable cause that runs contrary to what powerful people want.

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So being able to do that in a way that's not going to get you imprisoned or killed or something else is essential.

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But even more practical than that, especially on Bitcoin, there's a safety issue.

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if anyone can look at the blockchain and see you know essentially your net worth in bitcoin

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you're putting a giant target on your back and saying hey i have x amount of money rob me or

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or kidnap me or torture me and we've seen this happen countless times and it's only ramping up

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you know so there's practical you know concerns with financial privacy there's philosophical

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concerns of financial privacy being able to support the causes you want to support

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But ultimately, all we really wanted to do with Samurai Wallet and Bitcoin more broadly is just replicate the existing financial privacy that you get in the existing traditional finance world.

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When you go and use Visa at Starbucks, your Visa card, the barista or the cashier doesn't get to see what you've spent your money on in the past, doesn't get to see what you're spending it on in the future.

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They don't know your bank balance.

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That's a private transaction.

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and that's what we wanted to replicate with um with bitcoin yeah i think the aspect of bitcoin

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that makes us particularly unique is the fact that it's a bearer instrument right like many people

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say oh you can go look at the forbes rich list you can see all these extremely wealthy people

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they're not subjected to this but i think the fact that bitcoin is a bearer instrument really

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increases the sort of security uh security risks that exist for for individual bitcoiners and like

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you said the five dollar wrench attacks are only accelerating as more and more nefarious individuals

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begin to hone in on this key aspect of bitcoin yeah absolutely and and to the the forbes rich

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list like two points there right like you don't really know what other wealth those people have

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You just know the public available information that Forbes prints.

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But I'm pretty certain a lot of those people on that list have more than just what's on that list.

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Right. That list is and they're they're not quite liquid.

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I got to your point about a bare instrument. Right.

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Their bank balance might be something, but that's all tied into securities and and, you know, other investments and property, this and that.

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it would be like them having that Forbes Rich List walking around down the streets of Manhattan,

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just pockets filled with gold coins, right? And you could see the outline of the gold coins in

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their pockets. And you could hear the metal clanging together. That's an invitation to say,

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hey, rob me. I'm walking around with gold coins in my pocket. And that's essentially what you're

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doing when you transact on Bitcoin without any kind of privacy knowledge or strategy.

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A lot of people just don't know the way the blockchain works, especially as Bitcoin's

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adoption has accelerated so rapidly.

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You have people who really don't understand what they're doing when they are sending to

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their self-custodial wallet.

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And they're not taking into account that everyone can see, anyone who's looking can see everything.

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And unless you're doing something specifically to combat that, and that's what the tools of Samurai Wallet were designed for, it's pretty difficult to maintain a basic financial privacy.

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It takes quite a bit of work.

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uh so again that why that's why we created samurai wallet and tried to make it as user-friendly as

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possible so that the majority of people who don't who aren't so technically minded and don't know

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the specifics of how to read a blockchain could benefit from the basic privacy that they deserve

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and they probably thought they were getting quite frankly and i mean it's obviously abundantly clear

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that the government does not like what you and Bill built with Samurai Wall

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and what others outside of Bitcoin, Tornado Cash, Bitcoin Fog.

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That was Bitcoin related, but you have Roman going through some troubles there as well.

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They do not like individuals using Bitcoin, trying to do it privately.

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And yeah, obviously you are intimately aware with the perspective of the government

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after the last few years.

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And I think it's important for people to be aware

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of how their government views them

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through the lens of transacting privately.

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They do not like it.

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And you've experienced this uphand and personal,

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up close and personal.

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Yeah, it's actually still surprising to me

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because it became abundantly clear

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throughout the last almost two years

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that the government doesn't see any legitimate reason for financial privacy in general, not just

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on Bitcoin, in general. And they have a open hostility to any kind of privacy. They feel

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the Fourth Amendment that protects you from certain seizure is a detriment to their cause

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of pursuing justice and pursuing order,

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which is just such a shocking it so contrary to my worldview and I think a lot of americans worldview that it shocking to hear these people who are supposed to be these paragons of of law and order and justice

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have such disregard for basic privacy of the citizenry uh so yeah it became abundantly clear

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that the government doesn't see any legitimate use for financial privacy on bitcoin uh at all

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And their whole case revolved around the idea that the only reason we created Samurai Wallet was to facilitate crime, not to do anything regarding privacy or protecting people's rights or giving people the basic privacy rights that they allegedly have.

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It was solely to facilitate crime, which is, you know, laughable because that's not why we got into this at all.

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It's not only laughable, it's scary.

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I mean, obviously, very scary for you.

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You're going through.

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You've been sort of thrown to the ringer of the court system here in the United States.

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But like Matt and I, we've been literally up until the DOJ, the FBI sort of raided your house and took you to a cage.

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we even talk weekly about the software updates that you guys were incorporating into Samurai

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Wallet and literally teaching people listening to our podcast how to leverage tools like Samurai to

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achieve financial privacy when using Bitcoin. And if you extend what's happening to you and Bill

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into the future and this precedent is set,

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what's to stop them from coming after individuals

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like Matt and I, Kano Alchemist,

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others who care deeply about this

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and are trying to educate other individuals

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about how to use Bitcoin privately,

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that they're not going to be subject

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to some sort of blowback from the government

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because they're educating people about how to do this.

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Do they think we're educating criminals

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how to evade the government.

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Yeah, it's an absolutely legitimate and valid concern.

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I think more builders within the space

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should be looking at what the government has done here

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and really shoring up their defenses,

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both legally to at some point expect

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the government will come knocking

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and they don't just knock peacefully.

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know they come in heavy-handed i think miners in particular um are going to be squeezed next

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right because if we're if we're going by the government's theory that um and this is their

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theory with samurai um that you don't that custody and control makes no difference um to money

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transmission if that's their and that's their theory of samurai that's their theory in tornado

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cash custody and control makes no difference well if you really want to put it through that lens

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then the only people who are actually performing money transmission on Bitcoin network are the

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miners, because they're the ones that are selecting which transactions go into a block.

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All of the transactions that Samurai Wallet created, while unconfirmed, there was no

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transmission, nothing moved. It wasn't until the miner included it in the block that it became

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a transaction for real. So I think miners are going to be the next ones that are squeezed.

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And I think they'll do it, you know, in such a way to say, look, you need to only accept transactions from, you know, certain counterparties like Coinbase and regulated exchanges.

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You can't accept self-hosted transactions.

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And if you and you need to do OFAC screening and you need to do KYC AML or your counterparty does, you know, I don't know when that's going to come.

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But that's, to me, it seems like a pretty obvious next step for a government that wants to not destroy Bitcoin because that would be counter to their desires, right?

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They want to control Bitcoin.

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And that's a great way to do it.

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Let's dive into this key aspect here, which is the non-custodial nature of Samurai and what the

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government claim that you're doing again throwing this sort of technical detail to the wind for

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money transmission laws uh and i guess let's just go through the history of the prosecution

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particularly the detail about fincen and their call to fincen what they found out what they hid

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from the defense and how that came and how you became aware of that and how it became part of

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the trial and then ultimately what it was looking like before the plea deal why you guys decided to

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and what type of precedent this sets there yeah so i mean it's important to start the the story

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with FinCEN. And FinCEN is the financial crime enforcement network. It's the regulator as part

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of the treasury that's in charge of money transmission and combating illicit finance

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and money laundering. In 2013, they were one of the only regulators to put out pretty clear and

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common sense guidance when it comes to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. And they clearly

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stated in 2013 that in order to be a money transmitter, as they saw it and get a license

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from them, you needed to take custody and control of the money or the crypto or whatever you want to

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call it. So that was a key aspect to FinCEN, that if you took custody and control, like an exchange,

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for example, then you were a money transmitter and you had to register with FinCEN and get a license.

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they then followed that up in 2019 and made it even more explicit and said if you're an anonymity

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provider software provider that does not take control of customer funds then you are not a

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money transmitter pretty straightforward we as samurai wallet who started in 2015 so two years

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after the initial guidance it's all that and said pretty straightforward we're not a money

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transmitter if we don't take custody we've never taken custody not a single one of our tools we've

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ever created takes custody we're not a money transmitter um so fasting uh fast forwarding now

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to april 24th uh 2024 when the fbi conducts a pre-dawn raid on my house and arrests me

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i come to find out uh that i'm charged with uh two crimes conspiracy to commit money laundering

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and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money service business, an MSB. And the agency that

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you would get the license from to be an MSB is FinCEN, the Financial Crime Enforcement Network.

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So I'm thinking about this and saying, well, FinCEN's always been really clear on their

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guidance that you can't be a money transmitter if you don't have custody. So the government must be

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confused. The government must think that this is like an old school traditional mixer that would

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take custody and then send the Bitcoin back out, kind of like Bitcoin Fog did and all of these old

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school mixers. They must be confused about how this works. Because surely if they knew, they

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wouldn't bring this charge. And same with money laundering. How can one launder money if they

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never had the money? It's a common sense reading of the statute would mean if you're a money

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launderer, you need to actually take the money to launder it. So that was kind of our understanding

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through FinCEN and part of our defense was going to be that the guidance was so clear from FinCEN

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and the government never got in contact with us. The DOJ never tried to communicate with us and say,

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hey, we think you're breaking the law here. So there's like a due process violation.

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You can't really be guilty of something if all of the guidance and all of the literature and the regulator saying one thing, then the government comes up and says, oh, actually, what the regulator says doesn't matter, what we say matters.

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That's a due process issue.

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So one of the things that happens in a criminal trial that your listeners may or may not be aware of is a sharing of discovery.

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and the government needs to provide to our lawyers all of the evidence that they have against us

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including uh what's called exculpatory evidence meaning evidence that's actually helpful to us

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evidence that may exonerate us from the crimes and this is a legal requirement that they hand

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over all of this information and so they handed over tons of information in discovery

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but they didn't hand over everything we came to discover because my lawyers wrote to the government

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and asked them very specifically did you ever have a conversation about samurai wallet with

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fincen and the government then had to reply oh why yes we did and here's conversations that we had

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now the government was supposed to hand that over to us without us asking because you may not know

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what to ask. You may not know what questions to ask the government in order for them to send over

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the evidence. So Supreme Court has said that the government has an obligation

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to hand over everything without being asked and to do so in a timely manner.

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We got that information a year after the prosecution had been going on. And when we

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looked at that information, that evidence, it was a bombshell because they had asked FinCEN

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six months before indicting us if they thought if fincent thought that we were operating a money

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service business without a license which is again this is the agency that gives out the licenses

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and fincent said no they they're not a money transmitter because they don't take custody of

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anyone's funds clear as day but it didn't matter to the government because six months later

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they indicted us anyway with one of the charges being you know operating a money service business

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without a license, even though the people who give the licenses said we didn't need a license.

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So that was a huge bombshell. And it was something that we thought was very important. And, you know,

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we needed to get the judge involved at this point to say, hey, one, why didn't you hand this over

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when you're supposed to? And two, what other information aren't you handing over? We need to

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have a hearing about this and figure out exactly what evidence exists that you're not sharing with

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us and what happened at that point well we wrote that motion um it's called a like a it's called a

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brady violation when the government does that it happens all the time in a criminal trial government

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almost never hands over the information they're legally required to hand over

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um we wrote several motions at this point one was about this brady violation uh one was a motion to

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dismiss the indictment.

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Um and one was a uh motion to allow third parties to write to the judge and explain aspects of Bitcoin to the judge that the judge probably doesn know about Right So Coin Center for example which is a Bitcoin advocacy group in DC they wanted to submit a submission to the

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court just to give the judge some more working knowledge about Bitcoin and non-custodial versus

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custodial and what that all meant. So you have to get permission from the judge to let these people

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submit this stuff, which is very common. Most of the time judges accept it because they want to

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know as much information as possible uh so the so we made those motions submitted them to the court

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and then about a few days before we were meant to go and argue those motions in front of the court

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our judge changed um suddenly which is pretty unusual for criminal cases usually you get a

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judge and that judge sticks with you throughout the whole case um so we got a new judge and this

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judge has a pretty, pretty strong reputation as being a one, a pretty heavy sentencer. So if you

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if you go to trial, get found guilty, she's giving you the max sentence almost every time. And two,

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it was formerly a high level prosecutor in the Southern District of New York herself. She was

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the head of the criminal division at SDNY. These are the same people who are prosecuting me now.

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So, you know, very usual, very pro prosecution judge, a little concerning, but we didn't really

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know what to expect. We hadn't seen her yet, hadn't appeared in front of her. So a couple days go by,

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and now it's time to appear in front of her for the first time and argue the motions that we had

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submitted to the court. And I just want to take a moment to give your listeners an understanding of,

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in particular, the motion to dismiss, because that's an important point in this whole story.

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at this point of proceedings you write a motion to dismiss indictment and as the defendant you

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have to at this point assume that everything the government has said about you in the indictment

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is true right you're not there to argue the facts of the case because juries are the ones who decide

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facts the judge is the one who decides the law and in the motion to dismiss you have to keep it

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solely on the law so you're saying anything the government said is true and it should still be

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dismissed because of XYZ points of law. And we wrote a really phenomenal motion to dismiss a lot

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of research, a lot of time went into it. And we found various precedent setting cases, Supreme

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Court cases, that really tied into this situation beautifully. Two, I will mention briefly,

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one was in 1940, a sugar distributor was charged with a conspiracy charge, just like we were,

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because he knowingly sold sugar to a bootlegger who was creating alcohol, which was illegal at

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that time. And the Supreme Court said, you can't convict him of conspiracy just because he had some

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vague knowledge of a crime, right? He had to be actually part of the crime. And just by selling

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the sugar, that didn't make him part of the crime. And then the second one that was really compelling

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was a case from the 90s, a grow light manufacturer.

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So usually you use like grow lights when you're growing tomatoes or hydroponic systems, that

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type of thing.

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They got this guy on a conspiracy charge because he knowingly sold his grow lights to a marijuana

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dealer or grower.

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And he even advertised his grow lights in High Times magazine, which is a marijuana enthusiast

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magazine.

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And he even had jokes, which the government doesn't have a sense of humor. They do not like jokes. And he said to the person he was selling to, I don't even want to know what you're doing with these lights. Right. And he got convicted on conspiracy in front of the jury. And then it was overturned on appeal because, again, the appeal court said just mere knowledge isn't enough. You have to be part of the actual criminal act itself.

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So we were pretty confident in our arguments on this motion to dismiss.

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And even if we didn't think it was going to work and she was going to dismiss the indictment, because that's pretty rare, we still thought that she would have an opinion on it and tell us why she's either approving or denying the motion, granting or denying it.

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So we go into court.

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We have all of our motions.

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Keep in mind, getting to this point alone has cost us about a million and a half dollars.

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right getting this motion getting all the stuff together very expensive process and uh we're ready

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to argue and no argument she says i don't need any argument i've read all the motions they're all

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denied and that was it right so she didn't she didn't have any argument on the brady violation

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no argument on the motion to dismiss no argument or or anything on the the amicus briefs for the

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third parties to give her information, all denied with one word, and no oral or written opinion as

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to why she was denying it. So we just had nothing to even work with. So at that point, when that

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happened, I kind of looked to my lawyer, and was just like, what is going on here? Like, this judge

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isn't even going to listen to our arguments. You know, he even isn't gonna, you know, entertain

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a free and fair trial. This is not going to go well. And at that point, I think my mindset shifted

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from we're going to put our version in front of the jury. We're going to have a fair trial.

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The jury's going to examine the facts and make a determination. And I think we're in the clear

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to there's no way that this judge is going to let us put on the defense that we want to put on.

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we're not going to get a fair trial. And the jury is going to have no choice but to convict us based

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on the evidence that they get to hear. Because again, people think everything comes out of trial,

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it doesn't. The judge has so much control as to what evidence the jury actually ends up hearing

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that I really felt that going to trial was going to end in a conviction. And that conviction would

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be a 25-year sentence, just knowing how this judge operates. So that's where my head was at

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00:33:34,090 --> 00:33:38,610
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a CrowdHealth member, a very happy CrowdHealth member for four years. I've had two children,

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a couple of health events in that time period, and CrowdHealth has been there. You pay a monthly fee,

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you contribute to the crowd. We were paying $1,800 on Cobra as a family of three. Now we're paying

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around $900 a month as a family of five. And that's with CrowdHealth and direct primary care.

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Did they give any reason for why they switched the judge midway through the trial?

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Nope.

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Oh.

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This is kind of mind-blowing.

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I mean, it's like, do we actually live in a free country?

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And I think, even outside of this case, I think it's becoming pretty clear that judges are exerting way too much power over the legal system in the United States.

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And the fact that you wouldn't even hear arguments to...

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It was something.

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Like, what is a judge?

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What are they supposed to be?

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There's supposed to be some sort of impartial arbiter of the law.

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And it's very clear in this case and many others that these judges have a bias and ego and hubris that's really tied into their careers.

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Yeah, I think especially in the Southern District, almost all the judges there are formally prosecutors.

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And I think it's true broadly in the federal system.

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Uh, which there's just, uh, I understand they have to come from somewhere, you know, so you're

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going to inevitably have, you know, prosecutors become judges, but there's a bias just implicitly

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in that, right.

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Where, oh, I was a prosecutor.

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I know how it works.

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There's some credibility that the prosecutor has.

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If there wasn't actually a case here, the prosecutor wouldn't have brought it.

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All that kind of builds in, into the system when it really shouldn't be that way.

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You know, there's, it should be non-biased. It should be, let's figure out the truth. And what I discovered in this entire process is the truth does not matter. The truth is inconsequential to a criminal trial, a federal criminal trial.

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the prosecutor has decided pre-indictment and they will you know force feed any evidence they

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can get into their narrative and that's that even if their narrative becomes untenable

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they'll never admit that and they will go as far as they can go even if they know it's not the

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truth and that it you know again i knew there was something wrong with the justice system we all kind

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of know there's something wrong with our justice system but you still think that well it's probably

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the best in the world even with all its problems and it's probably you know one of the most fair

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um it's probably better than a lot of other places and then you go face to face with the

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department of justice and you go oh this is a clown show this is a circus and uh it's not just

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me is i mean this is happening to a lot of people um you know so it's it is definitely a

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a sobering experience yeah an indictment on the state of uh the united states particularly

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the justice system yeah like what what uh what is this contract we're engaged in with the federal

407
00:37:42,690 --> 00:37:51,170
government if the department of justice feels very emboldened to not show impartiality and just

408
00:37:51,170 --> 00:37:56,490
put up judges who are going to dictate the way they think things should be dictated.

409
00:37:56,990 --> 00:38:02,050
I mean, this gets to the broader question of the times that we live in. I mean, obviously,

410
00:38:02,670 --> 00:38:07,910
everything's getting hyper-digital surveillance state is being erected quicker than ever now,

411
00:38:07,910 --> 00:38:13,750
especially with AI all around us. And many people are asleep at the wheel, not really

412
00:38:13,750 --> 00:38:19,670
noticing that it's happening. Even some people are, I think, intuitively and implicitly

413
00:38:19,670 --> 00:38:22,870
understand that it's happening but i don't think they understand the scale

414
00:38:22,870 --> 00:38:27,990
or the desires of the federal government and what they would like to cattle herd

415
00:38:27,990 --> 00:38:31,450
individual citizens not only here in the united states but globally

416
00:38:31,450 --> 00:38:39,850
into so they can they can tag track and bag whoever is stepping out of line

417
00:38:39,850 --> 00:38:46,750
and something as what for the longest time for human history was innocuous financial privacy

418
00:38:46,750 --> 00:38:53,150
I think we're trying to make an example out of you specifically just to send a message

419
00:38:53,150 --> 00:38:53,990
of chilling effects.

420
00:38:54,190 --> 00:38:56,190
Like, Hey, there will be no privacy.

421
00:38:56,970 --> 00:38:58,910
Yeah, I agree with that completely.

422
00:38:59,230 --> 00:39:03,490
You know, so for the, again, for the longest time we, we operated openly for 10 years,

423
00:39:03,490 --> 00:39:04,110
right?

424
00:39:04,110 --> 00:39:07,770
So it's not like we just came on the scene and they took us out.

425
00:39:07,770 --> 00:39:13,990
You know, we've, we've been operating openly for 10 years and, um, we, we thought, and I

426
00:39:13,990 --> 00:39:20,630
still think that what we were doing was legal right we didn't take custody and we figured out

427
00:39:20,630 --> 00:39:28,050
a novel way of providing a very strong privacy protection on bitcoin without taking custody

428
00:39:28,050 --> 00:39:34,170
and they did not like that right because they could go after bitcoin thought and they could

429
00:39:34,170 --> 00:39:40,330
go after the old school mixing uh tools because all those tools took custody and they had existing

430
00:39:40,330 --> 00:39:49,510
laws in order to get them. And they got them fairly easily. But then suddenly comes Biden's

431
00:39:49,510 --> 00:39:56,410
Department of Justice, which really had a negative view of crypto. And they needed to figure out a

432
00:39:56,410 --> 00:40:06,110
way to take us out when we didn't have those same issues. We didn't take custody. Guidance was on

433
00:40:06,110 --> 00:40:13,990
our side. FinCEN was on our side. How do we get them? And at that point, my discovery is

434
00:40:13,990 --> 00:40:21,030
that precedence, law, truth, none of it matters. If they want to take you out,

435
00:40:21,230 --> 00:40:26,610
they will take you out. And it doesn't matter what the regulator says. It doesn't matter how

436
00:40:26,610 --> 00:40:32,830
the actual thing works. It doesn't matter that what they're going to do is upending

437
00:40:32,830 --> 00:40:37,530
years of precedence. They don't care. They're going to do it and try to get away with it.

438
00:40:38,010 --> 00:40:41,410
And unfortunately, in this case, they managed to get away with it.

439
00:40:42,590 --> 00:40:44,110
What I pled to,

440
00:40:44,810 --> 00:40:48,810
unlicensed money transmission, is the charge that FinCEN said,

441
00:40:49,030 --> 00:40:53,610
I didn't need to be licensed. And no one cares about that in the system.

442
00:40:55,190 --> 00:41:08,145
They got their win I mean it again incredibly scary What do you think needs to happen to force these institutions to care about this stuff

443
00:41:08,925 --> 00:41:10,145
Broadly, I don't know.

444
00:41:10,465 --> 00:41:18,605
I think on a micro level, the Trump administration needs to clean house at the Southern District of New York.

445
00:41:19,285 --> 00:41:23,345
I think that's really one of the most corrupt U.S. attorney's offices in the country.

446
00:41:23,345 --> 00:41:38,305
And it's something that President Trump should know himself. He's dealt with them. They've come after him. Right. And, you know, they they've ignored so much about what his administration said they wanted to do. Right.

447
00:41:38,305 --> 00:41:49,585
So we had Todd Blanche, the assistant attorney general, write a memo, the Blanche memo, that was, I mean, it couldn't have been about any other case other than Samurai Wallet and Tornado Cash.

448
00:41:49,685 --> 00:41:52,265
It was like written about us, this memo.

449
00:41:52,625 --> 00:42:01,265
And it said mixers, tumblers, software developers are not going to be held responsible for the crimes of their end users.

450
00:42:01,465 --> 00:42:03,525
We're going to go after the actual criminals.

451
00:42:04,525 --> 00:42:05,505
Clear as day.

452
00:42:06,465 --> 00:42:08,125
Southern District ignored it.

453
00:42:08,305 --> 00:42:14,065
They ignored their boss, the deputy attorney general, and they continued ahead.

454
00:42:14,485 --> 00:42:20,905
Just the fact that we were brought under indictment in the Southern District of New York is crazy because we hadn't been to New York.

455
00:42:21,205 --> 00:42:27,225
And their claim is, well, someone in New York could use the app, so we have jurisdiction.

456
00:42:28,165 --> 00:42:29,065
It's insane.

457
00:42:29,065 --> 00:42:34,745
uh so i mean i think that trump and the administration should take a cold hard look

458
00:42:34,745 --> 00:42:40,405
at the southern district uh which is just they have their their nickname is the sovereign district

459
00:42:40,405 --> 00:42:46,665
of new york because they do what they want and that's they've done that for a long time uh getting

460
00:42:46,665 --> 00:42:51,785
them under control i think would be a good start um besides that i don't know i mean i think it's

461
00:42:51,785 --> 00:42:57,685
just a inherent problem with our system yeah no the fact that they got the case in the first place

462
00:42:57,685 --> 00:43:03,045
make a very good point is astonishing yeah you know how they did it they got they sent some fbi

463
00:43:03,045 --> 00:43:10,005
agent into the streets of manhattan who opened up his phone downloaded samurai wallet made a

464
00:43:10,005 --> 00:43:16,165
transaction into whirlpool and that gave them the jurisdictional ability to bring charges against us

465
00:43:16,165 --> 00:43:24,365
that sounds like a conspiracy right it's crazy it's crazy we had never done business in new york

466
00:43:24,365 --> 00:43:29,445
are they allowed are they allowed to just contract fbi agents to go do this stuff

467
00:43:29,445 --> 00:43:36,825
yeah apparently i think they they they can do whatever they want you know and even if what they

468
00:43:36,825 --> 00:43:43,285
do ends up being uh illegal which has happened they have prosecutorial immunity you can't do

469
00:43:43,285 --> 00:43:50,485
anything about it you know so they are a protected class yeah and i don't know i forget if i cover

470
00:43:50,485 --> 00:43:54,385
in the newsletter when I did a video last week on this case

471
00:43:54,385 --> 00:43:57,325
and just juxtaposing the treatment that you've received

472
00:43:57,325 --> 00:44:03,885
and the numbers that they cited in the prosecution.

473
00:44:04,185 --> 00:44:07,945
I think it was like $236 million in volume

474
00:44:07,945 --> 00:44:08,885
and gone through Whirlpool.

475
00:44:09,105 --> 00:44:12,045
And then you look at just J.P. Morgan alone since 2000.

476
00:44:12,185 --> 00:44:13,945
They've paid $40 billion in fines

477
00:44:13,945 --> 00:44:18,605
for way more quote-unquote money laundering.

478
00:44:19,425 --> 00:44:19,785
Yes.

479
00:44:19,785 --> 00:44:27,365
and yeah no ceos no executive level raids employees no raids nothing it's just the cost

480
00:44:27,365 --> 00:44:33,845
of doing business i mean yeah yeah i mean i think jp morgan chase all those guys would have killed

481
00:44:33,845 --> 00:44:40,225
for a ratio that we had right so here here's the government's numbers i i haven't checked them i

482
00:44:40,225 --> 00:44:44,765
don't know if these numbers are accurate or not but this is what the government is saying so in

483
00:44:44,765 --> 00:44:54,785
In the indictment, they said $2 billion worth of unlawful transactions, not illicit, unlawful, went through Samurai Wallet.

484
00:44:55,005 --> 00:44:55,805
What does that mean?

485
00:44:57,005 --> 00:45:02,165
The government's contention is that Samurai Wallet was a financial institution.

486
00:45:02,165 --> 00:45:09,245
And as a financial institution has the obligation to perform KYC and AML on all of its users.

487
00:45:09,245 --> 00:45:16,045
And because we didn't perform any KYC or AML on our users, every dollar that went through Samurai Wallet was unlawful.

488
00:45:16,705 --> 00:45:20,605
That's why the total amount of $2 billion is all unlawful.

489
00:45:21,145 --> 00:45:29,125
Then of that $2 billion, they say $237 million were the proceeds of illicit activity, of crime.

490
00:45:29,705 --> 00:45:34,565
And that was the amount that we allegedly laundered by creating Samurai Wallet.

491
00:45:34,565 --> 00:45:38,045
So $237 million out of $2 billion.

492
00:45:38,045 --> 00:45:48,645
okay that's like 10 right jp morgan chase hsbc would kill for 10 their numbers are way higher

493
00:45:48,645 --> 00:45:54,565
in terms of illicit stuff and they know about it too right and they court it and that's why they

494
00:45:54,565 --> 00:46:01,185
keep getting these fines and you know uh so the government was saying that 237 million

495
00:46:01,185 --> 00:46:07,445
bill and i would be responsible for paying in restitution to the government they knew full well

496
00:46:07,445 --> 00:46:12,765
we never had a cent of that 237 million because they acknowledged that samurai wallet was

497
00:46:12,765 --> 00:46:20,525
non-custodial we never had it but they were going to make us pay that 237 million to them in the

498
00:46:20,525 --> 00:46:26,985
event of a conviction which essentially is a life sentence right so a conviction is 25 years

499
00:46:26,985 --> 00:46:34,105
and when you finally get out after 25 years you have a 237 million dollar debt on your head

500
00:46:34,105 --> 00:46:37,945
that you need to pay the government. You can't travel. You can't leave. You're under

501
00:46:37,945 --> 00:46:41,245
basically supervised release for the rest of your life.

502
00:46:43,605 --> 00:46:48,105
They knew full well that we couldn't pay it. So what they did was as part of the deal,

503
00:46:48,105 --> 00:46:56,785
they said, well, Samurai Wallet earned $6 million in fees over the course of 10 years that you

504
00:46:56,785 --> 00:47:03,885
operated. So you pay us that $6 million that you earned total, and we'll consider the $237 million

505
00:47:03,885 --> 00:47:09,185
fully satisfied. So that's part of the deal we ended up taking.

506
00:47:10,445 --> 00:47:16,905
And I saw you, I watched you talk about this on Pod 256, but I think it's important to reiterate

507
00:47:16,905 --> 00:47:23,985
here. I mean, the means by which the Department of Justice is attributing that illicit activity

508
00:47:23,985 --> 00:47:30,005
that went through samurai is murky in and of itself with the chain surveillance tools

509
00:47:30,005 --> 00:47:36,325
chain analysis historically is not as accurate as they claim to be definitely and you know they

510
00:47:36,325 --> 00:47:42,625
can't show their work uh they they basically get a report from you know chain analysis or elliptic

511
00:47:42,625 --> 00:47:48,445
or one of these other pools and they run with it and no one can actually say well how did you get

512
00:47:48,445 --> 00:47:55,145
to that conclusion. They say the Silk Road coins are going through Whirlpool. But we already know

513
00:47:55,145 --> 00:48:00,845
that the Silk Road cluster that Chainalysis and Elliptic and all these companies use is pretty

514
00:48:00,845 --> 00:48:06,025
polluted. Stuff that has no relation to Silk Road gets clustered in and tied into being part of Silk

515
00:48:06,025 --> 00:48:10,725
Road. But we don't know. And that would have been something that we would have had to deal with

516
00:48:10,725 --> 00:48:17,365
at trial, trying to figure out and cross-examine their experts. But we already know from the Roman

517
00:48:17,365 --> 00:48:24,185
sterling off case and bitcoin fog that you can't cross-examine those people because they'll they'll

518
00:48:24,185 --> 00:48:31,485
make a case in national security and that's it they use those magic words and suddenly our our

519
00:48:31,485 --> 00:48:37,305
you know our system our constitutional right to confront our accusers goes out the window

520
00:48:37,305 --> 00:48:44,845
uh so that would have been an uphill uh challenge at trial uh but one that we were willing to to

521
00:48:44,845 --> 00:48:52,205
fight um knowing that it's a it's a tough thing to do right because they get to say these came

522
00:48:52,205 --> 00:48:57,465
from north korea these came from the silk road these came from so and so and then we have to go

523
00:48:57,465 --> 00:49:02,845
up there and say no they didn't and the only way you can do that is by cross-examining that witness

524
00:49:02,845 --> 00:49:06,245
saying well how did you come to that conclusion what's the scientific method you use what's the

525
00:49:06,245 --> 00:49:13,985
error rate uh of this this heuristic that you're using and you're not allowed to do it uh so that

526
00:49:13,985 --> 00:49:18,625
would have been that would have been tough but i mean even if that's true and it could be true

527
00:49:18,625 --> 00:49:25,545
right i would not surprise me if north korean hackers used whirlpool wouldn't surprise me

528
00:49:25,545 --> 00:49:30,885
because of course bad actors are going to seek out privacy tools they always have they use tor

529
00:49:30,885 --> 00:49:35,825
they use vpns they use signal people use technology and bad actors use technology

530
00:49:35,825 --> 00:49:42,585
so that wouldn't have surprised me uh and that's i think really the key to the government just my

531
00:49:42,585 --> 00:49:49,005
mere knowledge that bad actors could use my tool meant that i was guilty that's where they got me

532
00:49:49,005 --> 00:49:54,765
they said you knew and you continue to do it therefore you conspired with them by you building

533
00:49:54,765 --> 00:50:00,705
this software knowing that bad actors could use it you conspired with those bad actors to create

534
00:50:00,705 --> 00:50:09,985
a money laundering empire right yeah i mean and this is the craziest part right because 90 i mean

535
00:50:09,985 --> 00:50:23,405
Even going off the government's numbers, which may be exaggerated to the higher end because of the murky chain heuristics, chain surveillance heuristics that we just discussed.

536
00:50:23,405 --> 00:50:41,405
The fact or the potential for them to shut down these technologies, just come in with a rubber stamp, an iron boot, and stamp them out because there are nefarious individuals also using them is completely insane.

537
00:50:41,405 --> 00:50:52,345
I mean, going back to what we were talking about earlier about the sort of security risk that's introduced if people know exactly how much Bitcoin you have and in which wallets it sits in.

538
00:50:52,485 --> 00:51:04,445
The fact that it would prevent law-abiding, privacy-conscious individual citizens from accessing this technology because a few bad actors may be using it as well is completely insane.

539
00:51:04,865 --> 00:51:05,385
Yeah.

540
00:51:06,845 --> 00:51:10,445
And, I don't know, it's...

541
00:51:10,445 --> 00:51:18,605
I try to be optimistic, but it's like cases like this, your case particularly, it's just like,

542
00:51:18,685 --> 00:51:24,565
holy crap, what world are we living in? Is the government even, are they even going to try to

543
00:51:24,565 --> 00:51:30,345
pay lip service to the fact that we live in a free country and as individual citizens, we have

544
00:51:30,345 --> 00:51:38,665
inalienable rights that we are God-given rights that we can defend and leverage? It doesn't seem

545
00:51:38,665 --> 00:51:40,165
like that's the case anymore?

546
00:51:41,385 --> 00:51:43,725
No, no, not in that court at least

547
00:51:43,725 --> 00:51:45,905
and not with those prosecutors.

548
00:51:46,585 --> 00:51:49,085
Like I said, they have an open disdain

549
00:51:49,085 --> 00:51:51,045
for the rights of privacy

550
00:51:51,045 --> 00:51:52,825
and being secure from search and seizure,

551
00:51:53,585 --> 00:51:56,745
an open disdain for financial privacy

552
00:51:56,745 --> 00:51:58,365
and not just them, the judge as well.

553
00:52:00,505 --> 00:52:03,945
It's a losing battle in the Southern District of New York.

554
00:52:04,085 --> 00:52:04,965
That's for sure.

555
00:52:05,625 --> 00:52:07,965
I want to make it very clear

556
00:52:07,965 --> 00:52:16,505
that the government didn't charge any of these criminals, didn't go after any of these actual

557
00:52:16,505 --> 00:52:23,345
criminals, right? They went after Bill and me who made a tool, but the alleged hackers and

558
00:52:23,345 --> 00:52:29,645
money launderers and this and that have not been charged. And they didn't have someone to bring up.

559
00:52:29,845 --> 00:52:34,645
And this is why they charged us with conspiracy instead of actual money laundering. Because if

560
00:52:34,645 --> 00:52:37,765
they would have charged us with actual money laundering, they would have had to bring up

561
00:52:37,765 --> 00:52:43,985
somebody to say, yeah, I sent my money to Keone and he laundered it and we agreed to do this.

562
00:52:44,705 --> 00:52:48,445
They didn't have that person because that person never existed because I obviously did not get

563
00:52:48,445 --> 00:52:55,025
into this to create a quote unquote criminal money laundering enterprise. And if I had,

564
00:52:55,025 --> 00:53:03,165
I certainly wouldn't have only earned $6 million over 10 years. That's not a money laundering

565
00:53:03,165 --> 00:53:13,025
enterprise that's a pretty modest amount to have earned over 10 years and at one and something that

566
00:53:13,025 --> 00:53:18,805
i'm very proud of and you know building an open source company an open source tool and monetizing

567
00:53:18,805 --> 00:53:24,485
in a way that we could at least keep it going for a decade is a point of pride that i have

568
00:53:24,485 --> 00:53:30,025
and that's something they absolutely will not take away uh from me i'm proud of what we what

569
00:53:30,025 --> 00:53:34,645
we built at samurai and you should be you should be extremely proud because these are

570
00:53:34,645 --> 00:53:41,065
extremely important tools that people need and again it's just crazy that

571
00:53:41,065 --> 00:53:49,165
you bill others building non-custodial software that helps people taint privacy on bitcoin and

572
00:53:49,165 --> 00:53:54,545
other chains for that matter have to feel like actual criminals and the fact that they didn't

573
00:53:54,545 --> 00:54:03,365
bring anybody forward it's just incredibly poetic in a way yeah in this no victims no victims and no

574
00:54:03,365 --> 00:54:13,965
criminals yeah so obviously now you guys pled down you're facing five years in a cage sorry

575
00:54:13,965 --> 00:54:22,085
for putting it that way but i think it's important to be to be blunt here um it looks like the

576
00:54:22,085 --> 00:54:29,825
only potential to avoid this is a pardon from president trump um what is the case what what

577
00:54:29,825 --> 00:54:34,225
would what would you put forth as the case for a pardon from president if you could speak to the

578
00:54:34,225 --> 00:54:40,145
president directly i know he listens to the show quite frequently what would you say to him i think

579
00:54:40,152 --> 00:54:48,552
I don't know what I would say to him exactly, but I think the president has an innate barometer for fairness.

580
00:54:48,892 --> 00:54:50,932
He knows what's fair and what isn't fair.

581
00:54:51,032 --> 00:54:53,532
He knows what's unjust and what's just.

582
00:54:54,072 --> 00:55:00,112
He himself has been the target of unjust lawfare used against him and his family.

583
00:55:00,672 --> 00:55:05,332
So I think he knows what it looks like when he sees it.

584
00:55:05,332 --> 00:55:12,772
And if he understood this case, he would see it is profoundly unjust.

585
00:55:13,572 --> 00:55:25,812
And I think the strategy at this point is to raise enough noise and awareness around this case to get it in front of someone in the administration who could bring it to his attention.

586
00:55:26,492 --> 00:55:30,932
He said he wanted the U.S. to be the crypto capital of the world.

587
00:55:31,652 --> 00:55:32,552
So do I.

588
00:55:32,552 --> 00:55:40,232
but you can't do that if you're putting your builders in prison right and he wants um the

589
00:55:40,232 --> 00:55:46,672
his department of justice todd blanche wants the department of justice line prosecutors to focus on

590
00:55:46,672 --> 00:55:53,792
crime which would be great not focus on builders uh and and hold them accountable to for their

591
00:55:53,792 --> 00:56:00,292
users actions with him a hundred percent but his u.s attorney's offices aren't following that

592
00:56:00,292 --> 00:56:09,092
directive. He wants a strategic Bitcoin reserve. And if you do have to forfeit Bitcoin to the

593
00:56:09,092 --> 00:56:13,352
government in a criminal action like we had to, he wants that Bitcoin to become part of the

594
00:56:13,352 --> 00:56:18,952
strategic Bitcoin reserve. Well, I hope that he is aware that the Southern District of New York

595
00:56:18,952 --> 00:56:24,172
disregarded that executive order and immediately sold the Bitcoin that we forfeited to them.

596
00:56:24,632 --> 00:56:28,272
So bypassing his executive order for a strategic Bitcoin reserve.

597
00:56:28,272 --> 00:56:35,892
yeah yeah it's lawless over there they do what they want and the president needs to know that

598
00:56:35,892 --> 00:56:41,312
they do not respect him they do not respect his administration they do not respect main justice

599
00:56:41,312 --> 00:56:47,192
they do what they want there and they get away with it constantly so i think the president can

600
00:56:47,192 --> 00:56:54,452
restore balance to this can restore uh the injustice that has occurred in this case

601
00:56:54,452 --> 00:56:57,092
by granting Bill and I full pardons

602
00:56:57,092 --> 00:56:59,012
and then turning his attention

603
00:56:59,012 --> 00:57:00,492
to the Southern District of New York.

604
00:57:01,592 --> 00:57:02,072
Yeah.

605
00:57:03,512 --> 00:57:06,552
If, even if you and Bill,

606
00:57:06,992 --> 00:57:07,912
when you get pardoned,

607
00:57:07,952 --> 00:57:08,672
we're going to manifest it,

608
00:57:08,732 --> 00:57:10,692
when you and Bill get pardoned,

609
00:57:10,692 --> 00:57:12,572
does the plea deal,

610
00:57:12,732 --> 00:57:13,772
is that still set a precedent

611
00:57:13,772 --> 00:57:16,132
that could be used in future cases though?

612
00:57:16,812 --> 00:57:19,132
No, no, that was a consideration.

613
00:57:19,472 --> 00:57:21,752
So the way court precedent actually works

614
00:57:21,752 --> 00:57:28,332
is true precedent doesn't get sent doesn't get set at the district level right and that's where

615
00:57:28,332 --> 00:57:35,152
we were at it gets set at appellate and above so if we were found guilty for example at a trial

616
00:57:35,152 --> 00:57:41,592
criminal trial that wouldn't be precedent it would be like i forgot the exact term they use

617
00:57:41,592 --> 00:57:47,272
like persuasive authority i think is the exact word they can use so the concept is that a district

618
00:57:47,272 --> 00:57:50,752
judge is not bound by the decision of any other district judge.

619
00:57:51,172 --> 00:57:51,572
Right?

620
00:57:51,592 --> 00:57:55,072
So they can, they can look at that case and say, nah, I disagree.

621
00:57:55,392 --> 00:57:56,492
Or they can go, yeah, I agree.

622
00:57:56,972 --> 00:58:02,092
Um, so we would have had to appeal it up to the appeals court, uh, to get

623
00:58:02,112 --> 00:58:03,032
actual precedent.

624
00:58:03,032 --> 00:58:14,987
And this is what Roman storm is doing right So Roman storm with tornado cash he went to trial I don know if they offered him a deal or not but he went to trial and he was found guilty on the charge that bill and i pled to

625
00:58:14,987 --> 00:58:22,467
um same charge unlicensed money transmission and it was a hung jury on money laundering um

626
00:58:22,467 --> 00:58:29,907
so he gets to appeal that conviction of unlicensed money transmission and he's going to appeal it

627
00:58:29,907 --> 00:58:39,667
And he's going to raise at appeal the fact that as a matter of law, you cannot transmit money if you've never had the money to begin with.

628
00:58:40,567 --> 00:58:46,867
And I think he has a pretty good shot on appeal there because the appeal court, they look at this sort of thing.

629
00:58:47,387 --> 00:58:51,387
So that's where precedent will get set when he does that.

630
00:58:51,387 --> 00:58:59,007
for us because we didn't go to trial and we took a deal there is no precedent nor is there any

631
00:58:59,007 --> 00:59:07,407
persuasive authority it's just done it's a deal but all that said the government doesn't care

632
00:59:07,407 --> 00:59:14,107
about precedent if they want to go after you they will go after you they there was no precedence

633
00:59:14,107 --> 00:59:19,167
in going after samurai wallet there was no precedence that an unlicensed money transmitter

634
00:59:19,167 --> 00:59:25,947
could be non-custodial everything was said otherwise and that doesn't matter they will

635
00:59:25,947 --> 00:59:29,727
make precedence when they want to make it they will spin things when they want to spin it so

636
00:59:29,727 --> 00:59:34,287
we give a lot of weight to this legal concept of precedence it doesn't matter they do what they

637
00:59:34,287 --> 00:59:42,947
want when they want and unfortunately that's just true oh it's fucked up how um how has this affected

638
00:59:42,947 --> 00:59:50,627
you. I mean, obviously it's been a long couple of years. How are you holding up? What's gotten you

639
00:59:50,627 --> 00:59:59,167
through this? How's your mental state approaching the time at which you have to report to prison?

640
00:59:59,487 --> 01:00:06,607
What does this do for the individual? Yeah, I mean, it's tough. I tried to look on the bright

641
01:00:06,607 --> 01:00:10,947
side of things, right? It could have been worse. I could have been held in pretrial detention,

642
01:00:10,947 --> 01:00:14,307
which would have been difficult to aid in my defense.

643
01:00:14,487 --> 01:00:17,647
I was lucky that I was able to get bail and go home

644
01:00:17,647 --> 01:00:20,647
and spend time with my family and my wife.

645
01:00:21,567 --> 01:00:23,967
So I try to look on the bright side of things,

646
01:00:23,967 --> 01:00:25,827
but even that is tough.

647
01:00:26,427 --> 01:00:29,267
You're sentenced to home incarceration,

648
01:00:30,127 --> 01:00:32,287
meaning you can't leave the four walls of the house.

649
01:00:33,927 --> 01:00:37,687
And it's for someone who is not used to that,

650
01:00:37,987 --> 01:00:40,287
is used to being able to go on a whim,

651
01:00:40,287 --> 01:00:47,707
go shopping or go to the park or go for a hike or a walk that getting used to not being able to do

652
01:00:47,707 --> 01:00:55,007
that does take some time um and i guess it would be quite easy to kind of go stir crazy right and

653
01:00:55,007 --> 01:01:01,647
i joke about it because um like they didn't get me on on covid lockdowns like i completely

654
01:01:01,647 --> 01:01:06,007
disregarded that and i would go out for walks and i would do whatever i wanted i wasn't going to be

655
01:01:06,007 --> 01:01:11,487
stuck in my house then. So I laugh with my wife. I say, well, they finally got me. They finally got

656
01:01:11,487 --> 01:01:17,327
me in the lockdown. So I guess some people did experience that. So they know what it's like

657
01:01:17,327 --> 01:01:23,967
being cooped up inside. So it's just been trying to fill the time. Primarily, I think the biggest

658
01:01:23,967 --> 01:01:31,007
thing to get used to was for 10 years, I would get up every day, five or six in the morning,

659
01:01:31,007 --> 01:01:44,762
and essentially start work Work on Samurai talk to Bill because he was in Europe so it was a perfect kind of of time zone thing start talking to bill start talking to the other people on the team and just get moving how

660
01:01:44,762 --> 01:01:51,102
are we going to change bitcoin today how are we going to you know uh deploy software uh in a way

661
01:01:51,102 --> 01:01:59,482
that no one has seen and just go 100 110 and we did that for 10 years just suddenly nothing right

662
01:01:59,482 --> 01:02:02,202
Nothing to work on, nothing to build.

663
01:02:02,462 --> 01:02:07,242
Can't talk to my friend who I've talked to hours a day for 10 years.

664
01:02:07,662 --> 01:02:10,482
Can't talk to all the other people involved in Samurai.

665
01:02:12,082 --> 01:02:13,302
Completely isolated.

666
01:02:14,102 --> 01:02:16,202
That was tough getting used to.

667
01:02:16,762 --> 01:02:20,922
And I think I just filled my day with reading, with learning new stuff,

668
01:02:21,522 --> 01:02:25,902
playing around with little projects I could do on my computer,

669
01:02:26,282 --> 01:02:29,422
coding, ideas that I may have had throughout the years.

670
01:02:29,482 --> 01:02:31,742
and just try to fill the time.

671
01:02:32,462 --> 01:02:34,222
And now it's just a waiting game.

672
01:02:34,862 --> 01:02:40,422
I report on December 19th, so I have 10 days.

673
01:02:41,502 --> 01:02:44,442
So it's just spending time with my wife and my family

674
01:02:44,442 --> 01:02:47,882
and making sure everything logistically is ready for me

675
01:02:47,882 --> 01:02:50,602
to be away from the house, the household.

676
01:02:52,922 --> 01:02:54,522
I'm sorry I have to go through this.

677
01:02:57,282 --> 01:02:58,682
It's really demoralizing.

678
01:02:59,482 --> 01:03:11,942
I can't imagine for you, but even for someone who cares, I mean, deeply about Bitcoin, but just human liberty generally at the end of the day.

679
01:03:12,102 --> 01:03:19,642
It's insane to me that you and Bill are going through this and we even have to have this type of conversation in 2025.

680
01:03:19,642 --> 01:03:27,002
five um yeah i mean if anybody who's listening to this is close to the administration i think

681
01:03:27,002 --> 01:03:35,582
kian has made a pretty uh cogent and clear case here that there this was not justice at the end

682
01:03:35,582 --> 01:03:41,862
of the day if anything it was unjust what's what's happening it is unjust what's happening to you

683
01:03:41,862 --> 01:03:50,502
bill and others in the non-custodial privacy space across crypto right now um and i think this is

684
01:03:50,502 --> 01:03:59,042
a critical part of inflection point because it seems pretty clear that governments around the

685
01:03:59,042 --> 01:04:04,702
world want to lean into this technology bitcoin crypto a lot of them are focused on stable coins

686
01:04:04,702 --> 01:04:11,762
and other things, but we need to make sure that we preserve privacy and liberty in this

687
01:04:11,762 --> 01:04:15,002
digital age with these digital currencies.

688
01:04:15,542 --> 01:04:19,902
And if we stomp that out at the beginning, we're 17 years in, but it's still the very

689
01:04:19,902 --> 01:04:23,462
beginning of humanity leveraging these technologies.

690
01:04:23,462 --> 01:04:27,062
It's not a very hopeful future.

691
01:04:27,182 --> 01:04:29,922
In fact, it's bleak, very, very despotic.

692
01:04:29,922 --> 01:04:37,962
so if anybody's listening has the ear of the administration i think this is a critically

693
01:04:37,962 --> 01:04:44,722
important topic to to really lean into and focus on and make sure we get this right for

694
01:04:44,722 --> 01:04:51,602
not only ourselves but our children grandchildren people that will be born decades from now

695
01:04:51,602 --> 01:04:58,802
yeah i i agree completely you know it's um i've always said that bitcoin

696
01:04:58,802 --> 01:05:18,157
um broadly i guess crypto in general but bitcoin broadly really has the potential um to advance human freedom like no other technology before it But on the same side of the coin it has the ability to become a surveillance panopticon

697
01:05:18,157 --> 01:05:20,917
and completely enslave us.

698
01:05:21,577 --> 01:05:27,197
And we really have to be vigilant and do the right things to keep that from happening.

699
01:05:27,777 --> 01:05:31,137
We do not want a totally surveilled open network.

700
01:05:31,137 --> 01:05:39,177
right we want private digital cash and we can have it we're so close to having it

701
01:05:39,177 --> 01:05:45,157
and we need to make sure that that's what our focus is uh because the alternative is

702
01:05:45,157 --> 01:05:52,477
is is very dreary julius kian thank you for um

703
01:05:52,477 --> 01:06:00,317
your hard work on bitcoin samurai wallet for more than a decade now uh

704
01:06:00,317 --> 01:06:10,177
and wishing you bill everybody really uh the best of luck and hopefully sensible individuals

705
01:06:10,177 --> 01:06:17,957
uh rise up and and right this wrong uh issue you a full pardon you and bill full pardons roman

706
01:06:17,957 --> 01:06:25,937
storm as well um even though he's appealing his case right now i think again to what you said

707
01:06:25,937 --> 01:06:30,437
earlier if we want to be the bitcoin slash crypto capital of the world stuff like this

708
01:06:30,437 --> 01:06:34,897
cannot happen you're not going to be the bitcoin capital of the world if

709
01:06:34,897 --> 01:06:41,497
the builders are being thrown in cages for writing software open source software

710
01:06:41,497 --> 01:06:49,137
non-custodial software that just simply enables people to use bitcoin smarter in a more private way

711
01:06:49,137 --> 01:07:01,697
yeah absolutely we will link to the change.org petition um bill and kian.org as well logan

712
01:07:01,697 --> 01:07:09,737
and yeah i admire the um the strength that you're showing through all this i've been watching a lot

713
01:07:09,737 --> 01:07:14,557
of the interviews that you've uh been a part of the last couple weeks and it is incredibly

714
01:07:14,557 --> 01:07:20,817
impressive that you're um as put together and sort of steadfast as you have been the last few

715
01:07:20,817 --> 01:07:28,137
weeks so you're uh you're much stronger than i may be uh if i were in a similar situation so

716
01:07:28,137 --> 01:07:35,117
i appreciate it marty thank you for having me on all right make some noise freaks peace and love

717
01:07:35,117 --> 01:07:41,077
thank you for listening to this episode of tftc if you've made it this far i imagine you got some

718
01:07:41,077 --> 01:07:47,057
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719
01:07:47,057 --> 01:07:52,357
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720
01:07:52,597 --> 01:07:59,037
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721
01:07:59,037 --> 01:08:03,677
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722
01:08:03,677 --> 01:08:11,057
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723
01:08:11,077 --> 01:08:11,917
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724
01:08:12,677 --> 01:08:13,577
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725
01:08:13,677 --> 01:08:14,697
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01:08:18,377 --> 01:08:19,497
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731
01:08:21,517 --> 01:08:23,717
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732
01:08:24,297 --> 01:08:25,197
Thank you for your time.

733
01:08:25,677 --> 01:08:26,577
And until next time.

734
01:08:27,237 --> 01:08:27,417
Okay.