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connect with me directly, and buy fresh and dope Bitcoin Matrix merchandise,
like hats, mugs, and t-shirts. If you didn't already know, I co-host a live show every Tuesday
afternoon at 3 p.m. Eastern with Paul Tarantino called Bitcoin Center, where the debate is the
story. Tune in for the laughs and jokes. In this episode of The Bitcoin Matrix, I chat with Lauren
Rodriguez, wife of Keone Rodriguez, co-founder of the privacy-focused Bitcoin Samurai Wallet,
about her family's harrowing journey through the U.S. justice system. Keone was indicted by the DOJ
and sentenced to five years in federal prison for developing non-custodial Bitcoin privacy tools.
Lauren walks us through the shocking pre-dawn FBI raid, the trial that never happened,
the political motivations behind the charges,
and the personal toll of what she believes is a deeply unjust prosecution.
We dive into the philosophical fight for privacy,
the role of open source software,
and the chilling effect this case could have on developers everywhere.
If you care about privacy, Bitcoin, financial freedom, or due process,
this conversation is for you.
And now, let's enter the Bitcoin matrix with Lauren Rodriguez.
What is real? How do you define real? You can't jump into cash. Cash is trash. What do you do? You get out.
Lauren, welcome to the Bitcoin Matrix podcast and thank you for taking the time to join us. How are you?
Hi, Patrick. Thank you so much for having me on. I am doing all right, all things considered.
Sure. Yeah, I wish we were speaking under better circumstances. And I do remain very optimistic. I really think that Keone and Bill are political prisoners and have been persecuted on. Oh, I think they're innocent. But I think sort of the persecution has been sort of politically motivated, at least by certain factions. But I think maybe the best place to start would be the raid. And if you could just sort of what was that day like?
So it was April 24th, 2024, and we were asleep and our dog started barking.
And it's about 5 a.m., so still dark out, April in Pennsylvania.
It's, you know, cold, dark, and it was unusual.
So it woke us both up and we were kind of startled.
And Keone went over to the window and there was a light kind of rising on that side of the house.
It's a small cottage house, but on that side it's three stories.
and it was unusual to see a light moving up towards the window.
And at that moment, it was, you know, I guess chaos broke out.
There was a loudspeaker repeating his name saying, you know, come out with your hands up.
And I guess instinct took over and I was worried about my dog.
So we came downstairs and, you know, you're groggy and not quite sure what's going on or why this is happening.
So as we come downstairs, I get the dog on the leash and we go out and the house is surrounded and there's laser sights on our chest and there's an MRAP armored vehicle.
And, you know, you could kind of see night vision, goggle glow and just people everywhere.
And again, a very we live in a very small rural town.
So just shocking. And at that point, I'm handcuffed.
Keone is told to get down on his knees and he is handcuffed and he's led away and put into a car.
We're separated. I'm passed over to a local officer. I see them fly a drone into our house.
Not sure why, but they do that. And I asked the officer that's holding me, what is this about?
Why? You know, what's going on? And he said, I don't know. They showed up and I'm supposed to be off shift.
And that's all I knew for a while as I stood out in the cold, in my pajamas, handcuffed.
And then eventually they brought me back into the house and pretty much kindly told me that I should leave the premises of my own home.
I wasn't able to speak with Keone, but I was allowed to leave.
And I came back.
I called the company's attorney in shock, wasn't sure what was going on.
And he's in a different time zone.
So, you know, woke him up.
And thankfully, he was able to get the ball rolling and trying to find some kind of counsel
because we still weren't really sure what was going on.
The indictment was sealed.
So they wouldn't tell us.
And it's not like I thought if someone showed up to your house, they'd show you a warrant.
That's not the case.
It wasn't until later.
And then they showed it to Keone when he had a public defender in Pittsburgh.
And thankfully, I was able to pick him up from the courthouse that night.
But at the same time that this was going on, which we didn't find out for a bit, his business partner, Bill, was being a simultaneous raid in Portugal.
So just the coordination and the money that went into a multinational coordinated raid, it's just beggar's belief.
How would you describe your husband's business?
So they were, you know, Samurai Wallet was started in around 2015.
And, you know, it was a full Bitcoin wallet, a Betch32 Bitcoin wallet.
So, you know, similar to a lot of wallets out there.
The kind of special thing about them was they had some added features that were privacy related.
Everything was non-custodial, kept control of your keys at all times, all the good practices
as a Bitcoiner that you would want to have in a wallet.
The two, and there was many features, privacy-related features that the government didn't have
problems with, but the two that they did have a problem with were a feature called Ricochet,
which allowed users to programmatically add additional transactional hops automatically
instead of having to wait for a transaction to confirm and send again,
wait for a transaction to confirm and send again.
So that's what Ricochet did.
And the other feature that they had an issue with was Whirlpool.
Whirlpool was Samurai Wallet's,
what they developed as their CoinJoin implementation.
And this Whirlpool was not just available in Samurai Wallet.
It was also available in Sparrow Wallet and one other wallet actively,
but there were some other wallets that were, I guess, looking into implementing it as well.
So it was in three wallets. Samurai had developed it. So those were, yeah, those were what the wallets
was. So coming out of the raid, I mean, the next couple of days, I mean, what kind of,
how are you processing this? Did you finally, did you guys get to coordinate or speak with Bill?
None of this sounds like a normal response or way to, I mean, were you guys, was Bill or Keone expecting any legal issues?
Were any of this sort of like expected?
Because this is quite the amount of, like you were saying, global coordination, manpower expense.
Very scary.
It was very scary. And to be honest, a lot of it, like thinking, I don't know if I just shut down autopilot function, but I think I must have because like, it's not all totally clear. But there was no inkling that something like this was going to happen.
so the u.s government never contacted them i mean they had an own lawyer but they also had you know
support desks and stuff where some you know if the government government could have contacted
either for help for clarification or for there's something um called a spoilation letter so if you
are under investigation um you know this is depicted in movies and stuff but the government
will send you a letter that says hey don't destroy anything because we're looking into you
And that's like kind of a common practice, especially for I'm assuming banks get these a lot and, you know, those kind of businesses.
But that's not how we were treated. Right. This the raid and the just the all out kind of force that they used just seems so unproportional to what the charges were.
And I mean, I don't even know what my neighbors must have been thinking, right, to see the whole town filled with armed HRT FBI agents.
So no, no, no idea that this was this was coming.
This was our first interaction with law enforcement in any way.
Wow. So bizarre that the things played out that way. And the amount of force is astonishing for the even the things that were being accused here, which, you know, I don't think Keone is guilty of.
But when when did I how did you and Keone meet? Did you find who found Bitcoin first?
So we were together before Bitcoin. We met Chicago and he, I think, had probably heard of it, but was very much into gold and silver and kind of that way, which I guess is finally, you know, silver is finally up again from when we were kind of doing that.
And, you know, the whole coins going through getting rolls and looking for the silver coin.
So like kind of did that stuff.
But then he found the coin and and really kind of got the saw what it could be and saw, you know, the potential not only in the limited supply and value there, but also in the, you know, can't be confiscated.
Can't you know, the real freedom behind it to be able to support causes without someone telling you no.
Because right back when he got in, I think it was about 2013, WikiLeaks was a big thing.
And then being able to donate when Visa and MasterCard said no So actually still having a way to support causes you know a variety of causes And more recently we saw that with the Canadian truckers during COVID So it kind of similar cycles that come around
And so, yeah, he saw the value in it. And I kind of went along for the ride.
I think most Bitcoin spouses will probably end up knowing a lot about it as well, just from the passion that people do have for Bitcoin.
Maybe you could describe your journey as the wife of a Bitcoiner.
Did it take years before you even tuned in to what he was talking about?
Did you think at first this was a crazy hobby of his?
Or when did you know it was more for him?
I, I, he got very passionate very quickly. And like, I got it too. He's really good at explaining
it. And I kind of come from a more libertarian ideologies anyways. So so I definitely was bought
in as well. I don't have the technical skills to do, to do any kind of coding or anything like that
with it. But but I do understand it. And, you know, I was able to do kind of well, well, he
started working for Bitcoin companies, I kind of did some side things as well and was actually
earning Bitcoin, had my own wallet, you know, back in the day as well. So it was always fun,
you know, buying coffee, buying things with it. That's, you know, I like to shop. So
back then, yeah, that was a big selling feature to me that I could do that. So yeah, but I've
been kind of right along and in the space with him, just not in any kind of functional way, I guess.
Sure. So maybe you said it sounds like you were primed for Bitcoin. But Bitcoin can mean a lot
of things to a lot of people. It could be just number go up. It's not even for most Bitcoiners,
is it about privacy and custody? So when did you or how was it that you started to get it more than
just this is an investment or trade or did you always see it as sort of revolutionary money?
I think Keone always saw it that way. And there was so he was earning his salary. We were living
off of Bitcoin since 2015. So there was a lot of times where, you know, he would get paid on the
first. And by the time we went to get groceries, pay rent, that kind of stuff, it was lower.
so when you're kind of in that environment where you're spending I guess more of the value than
than you or than you were paid in it then I think it does kind of change your perspective a little
bit on yes it's going to go up in the long run but this really has a utility and can bring freedom
a lot of the users of samurai wallets were in you know we're kind of right freedom fighters in Iran
or people in Bolivia who, you know, they need this technology that they were providing for their safety, for freedom,
for, you know, all these other causes in addition to the financial security that Bitcoin can provide.
Sure. Maybe you could describe more of the community or the users or his interactions, him and Bill with their users,
and what privacy meant to them and all of you?
Because, you know, it was more than just a wallet
and there's this sort of a cause here around privacy.
And I'm not sure it's fully,
I think this is the fight that is ahead of us still.
That we're in, obviously.
So what was that sort of like?
What kind of feedback would you get from users?
So they would always say, you know,
they built the wallet and the functionality
that they wanted to use themselves.
And a big part of that was, I guess, looking, I mean, Keone was very into history. I guess that's just kind of, yeah, that's what he liked. And so I think a lot of it was seeing how there can become a need for privacy.
his father had to flee fled cube as a child under when castro came into power and um people are
familiar with that like a lot of people you know completely but life savings wiped out if you were
lucky enough to get out and not thrown in prison as a political prisoner so i think that probably
did influence him a lot in knowing that this stuff does happen and it can happen quickly and
And, you know, we're very fortunate overall in the West that, you know, we're seeing rights being eroded, but we're still pretty free and, you know, can get by.
But it can change and it can change quickly.
And so their thing was to have the tools available for when you would need it.
And, yeah, they still are out there, thankfully.
You know, they did shut down Samurai Wallet, but because it was free and open source software, there's another team that has picked it up and it's still running.
Also, if you were running your own node, you know, you weren't affected except for the Whirlpool service is no longer available.
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Maybe going now from the raid to the trial,
I believe people and coders that are working on tools for privacy and self-custody are freedom fighters.
And depending on your ability to remain anonymous, there's personal risk.
And so maybe we could talk about the trial.
And you start maybe in the trial thinking, we're on solid ground here.
Maybe we could describe like maybe the way you were thinking going into the trial as a team and then how that developed.
So going into it, we were very confident.
You know, we we knew that these are conspiracy charges.
And with conspiracy charges, they're supposed to prove that that these two parties conspired to commit a crime.
And that didn't happen. So we're like, OK, we can prove this.
They're confused. They don't understand the technology.
we'll be able to explain it. You know, we'll be able to explain it. They'll see that, well,
we didn't have custody. So we couldn't have been conspiring to, you know, operate in an
unlicensed money service business. We weren't a money service business because we didn't have
custody of people's funds. That's kind of par for the course of being a money service business.
And, you know, they never conspired with any criminals to launder money. In fact, the service
was designed, Whirlpool was designed in a way that was almost a deterrent to money launderers,
because if you've stolen money and you want to move quickly so you can get it and cash out,
and they're not interested in holding on to Bitcoin for a long period of time and going
through the slow process, which is what Whirlpool was, and that's how it's designed to function,
was to move slowly and you get more anonymity that way. So we're like, oh, you know, this is
going to be fine. And then, you know, we saw the evidence that they had and it was all, you know,
mis, purposefully misinterpreting or, you know, leaving out of context of, you know, tweets and
these other messages where you're getting a clip this big out of thousands of messages.
And then on top of that, Keone had done 10 years of podcasts and long form writing of explaining,
this is why we're building the software. This is what it's for. This is why privacy matters
to law abiding people. And then, yeah, then the trial kind of went downhill from there.
I can not trial, but the court case.
Maybe in your words, why does privacy matter to law abiding people?
So that's, I guess I'm actually a pretty private person by nature.
Like this is my first kind of foray into any kind of public speaking.
I didn't have, you know, I had a private X account before this.
Like I'm not on social media.
Now I am.
Do this, but it's privacy is about, it's not about hiding everything.
It's about, you know, selectively disclosing. And we all do this, whether we admit, you know,
I have nothing to hide or, you know, those phrases that people use, but, but we do it's,
it's, I don't know. I think it's kind of almost a sense of identity of you let people in that
when they earn it or different things like that. Like we have blinds on our windows,
locks on our doors, you know, bathroom stalls have a door, like just, just things that there's,
I don't know. There's something sacred, I think, about who you allow in and financial privacy,
even more so due to, you know, our money tells us how you spend your money, tells so much about you,
whether, you know, what kind of charities you support or political parties, or, you know,
your religious affiliation, or, you know, I'm sure there's plenty of things people spend money on that
they wouldn't want people in their lives to know about legal, you know, things that are perfectly
legal. And there can be real consequences if things get out, I guess, you know, if you work
for a company that's very liberal, and you happen to donate to Republican causes, we've seen that,
right? We've seen people lose jobs over such things. So yeah, that's, that's my selling on
privacy. I couldn't agree more. I mean, I feel I'm an incredibly private person. I wouldn't want
people. It's already frustrating how much leakage there is in the things we do with our money.
And I would not, I don't, you know, like when you use your credit card, they could gleam your home
address or different things like this. And it's just not necessary. And I wouldn't want to, you
know, and I think about voting and the ability, you know, with financial surveillance and CBDCs,
it's very Orwellian when centralized forces know and can piece together different day bases and just
figure out everything about you from your spending habits.
And it's even more so than centralized forces, right? There with the Bitcoin blockchain,
it being so public, your barista at Starbucks who, you know, maybe messed up your latte and
you only tipped her 5% can now know your entire net worth and also probably knows your address.
from a data leak.
And people have been put at physical risk
and have unfortunately had physical harm done to them
due to this public nature of the blockchain.
Yeah, and that's why there's so much more work
that needs to be done.
I wish the best minds in Bitcoin
weren't working on stable coins and tokenized assets.
And they were helping us first to secure our sats
and to make it real money in terms of cash,
now private cash is hand to hand.
Unfortunately, cases like my husband's
is going to have a real deterrence
on people being willing to do this kind of development
that is much needed, like you said.
Yeah, I mean, I think there's already a chill.
And I couldn't imagine, I think it's,
yeah, it's so scary, I think, for developers.
and I think it just, it doesn't make it easier if you have to be anonymous to be a developer.
And there could be a lot of pros.
I think there's a tremendous amount of pros to anonymity and whether you're a developer or anything.
Maybe you just want to, you could share different, not different opinions,
but there's a freedom to sort of anonymity online.
So what was the trial like?
Did you feel as an American citizen that the justice system was fair?
that you were getting a fair shot that samurai was?
Well, we didn't go to trial, but so the court case,
it's been about a year.
So it was April 24th is when we were raided.
And I think that was probably one of the biggest shocks is how slow the justice system moves And so there is I think it was five or seven terabytes of discovery produced by the government in this case
And as Bill's lead defense attorney said, if you would print that out on paper, it would go to the moon and back 22 times.
So this is an immense amount of data that had to be sorted through by lawyers because, you know, the prosecution doesn't give you a little file saying, here's all of our evidence we're going to use.
No, you have to go through every single piece, which obviously takes time, takes money.
And so that was months and months of work.
And then through that discovery, our attorney thought to ask the prosecution if they had ever had a conversation with FinCEN.
And FinCEN is the Financial Enforcement and Crime Network regulator.
And their job is to regulate money service businesses and illicit finance.
And they put out guidance.
They did one in 2013 and then again in 2019.
And that's the guidance that everyone in the industry had been following as to who needs to get a license and who doesn't.
And the kind of understanding of that was if you're a custodian, if you hold people's money, if people are able to buy and sell Bitcoin through your services, then you need a money service business license.
There was even a specific in the 2019 regulation that mentioned non-custodial anonymizing software providers, which is what Whirlpool would have fallen under.
And it says, again, as long as you don't take custody, you're fine.
You don't need a license.
So our attorney asked the prosecution, have you had any communications with them about our client Samurai Wallet?
And they said, oh, in fact, we did.
we did have some communications. We spoke with them six months before we indicted. And in this,
you know, this letter, they said, No, they don't take custody. We don't think they need a license.
And they had hidden this from us. This was a year into the case. And that's what's known as a Brady
violation. It's exculpatory evidence that they hid. And that's something that they definitely
should have given over. So that was, you know, we're like, this is it, right? They're going to
dismiss the case. On top of that, there's something called a motion to dismiss. And a motion to dismiss
takes the indictment as fact. So you're not arguing the facts of the indictment. You're just saying,
even if all of this is true, which, you know, it's not, but even if all this is true,
due to the law, the way that, you know, the letter of the law, you cannot, you know, this cannot
be a conviction. They didn't break the law. And so we spent a year and a half preparing all this
to go before the judge. And our judge at the time was Judge Berman. A few days, I think it was three,
four days, something like that, before we're going to make arguments, oral arguments on the
motion to dismiss, on the Brady violation to see if he's going to do anything about this.
And there are some other things, amicus briefs, which are, you know, industry participants will write advising the courts.
You know, it's known as friend of the court letters.
So there's a bunch of things that this is going to be our big push before Judge Berman.
A few days before we're going there, the judge gets changed.
We don't know why, so I don't know why.
And our new judge is Denise Coat.
She was the former head prosecutor in the criminal division of SDNY.
Those are the prosecutors that were bringing charges against us.
And our first appearance in front of her, she comes out and she says, I'm denying all of these motions and thank you, goodbye.
Pretty much.
She gave no explanation as to why she was denying our motions, either orally or in writing.
and we were stunned. Our attorneys were stunned. They were prepared to be arguing our case as to
why it should be dismissed and why she needs to hold the prosecution accountable for breaking
the rules of the court and violating Brady. And it was maybe a 10-minute conference in front of her.
And at that point, we realized this isn't going to go well. There's no justice to be had here.
is really disheartening, right?
You think, especially, you know, you're learning school
that America's criminal justice system is the best in the world.
And I'm sure, you know, what it's founded on, it is.
But in practice, in the federal system,
at least the way we've experienced it, it wasn't.
You know, we had lies, manipulations,
and a judge acting as the fifth prosecutor from the bench.
So that's really where kind of our whole thoughts about taking this to trial changed.
Right. When was that, this moment with the judge?
Not 100%. I think it was October. It may have been earlier. I don't have that exact date.
2024?
No, no, 2025. So we were about a year and a half or a year plus into preparing all those motions
and millions of dollars into preparing all these motions.
And for her to go, nah, denied.
Right.
And were you in New York?
Yeah, I attended every conference,
every attorney meeting I was present for.
I wanted to be there to support Keone.
And so why was this in New York?
Why is SDNY, the nickname is Sovereign District of New York, I guess,
But why are they presiding over this?
That's a good question.
So Samurai was blockchain only.
They didn't have any bank account, any fiat bank accounts.
They didn't do business in New York.
Keone hadn't been to New York in years.
But apparently the way that they get jurisdiction in cases like this is an FBI agent downloaded Samurai Wallet off of Google Play,
walked down onto the streets of Manhattan and made a Bitcoin transaction.
And that's all it takes for them to say, we have jurisdiction.
So simple as that.
And then I guess at some point between October and now there was a plea.
Yeah.
So after our first appearance in front of Judge Coat,
we had pretty frank discussion with our attorneys
and they kind of informed us of,
and some other people as well,
that she had a reputation.
She was a no-nonsense kind of pro-prosecution.
If you are convicted, she will give you the max
and with a smile.
And also the fact that we probably would not be able
to present an offense of advice of counsel
or kind of a lot of other things.
she just wasn't going to allow that. I think a lot of people maybe don't realize the power that
a judge has in a courtroom. So it's not just, oh, you go in front of the jury and present your case.
There's so many steps beforehand and the judge decides, you know, what evidence the jury is going
to be allowed to hear, what kind of experts you can put on the stand, what even theory of defense
you're allowed to present down to in Roman Storm's case in the same Southern District of New York,
I think their judge, Fela, she kind of put stipulations on words. So I don't think they
were allowed to use the word privacy. So like there's there's so much that they are a judge is
the king or queen of their courtroom. So they really do control what happens and they they do
control the outcome in a way. It really depends on your judge whether you win or lose a case.
There is one, and I don't recall what the case was, but fairly recently that went to two kind of
in front of two different judges and, you know, one judge, they lost in front of the other one,
they won. So it really is that arbitrary. So at that point, once we had those discussions,
the prosecution came to us and they gave us 24 hours so you have you know here's the plea we will
drop the conspiracy to commit money laundering if you plead to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed
money service business and it's like a subsection of that you have 24 hours and you both have to
agree if one of you agrees the other one doesn't deals off the table if you don't and we go to court
and you lose, we are going to go after you for the full, I think it's $248 million.
That's the amount that they say was transacted through Whirlpool.
But again, they know how the software works.
They know that they never had this money.
So they said, well, if you pay us all the fees that you made while operating the business
over 10 years, you pay us those fees, we'll say that's, that's, you know, good. And we won't go
after you for this additional, additional funds that we know you, you've never had. And it was
tough. It was, you know, a really tough decision to have to, you know, agree to something that,
you know, you didn't do, you know, there was no intent behind. And there was a lot of back and
forth with Keone and his allocution. Because if you are pleading, you have to stand up and
say what you did. And the court has to accept that. And he was able to word it in a way that
he wasn't lying. That was a really big thing for him. He's like, I will not get up and lie in court.
So he got up and said, I developed, operated, and maintained Samurai Wallet, which users
used to transact Bitcoin and knowing that users could, or whatever the Bitcoin could be from
criminal proceeds, something along those lines. But it was very clear in that, that it was the
users that were doing the transacting and the court accepted that. So that's what he pled to.
and at sentencing uh she so you do the plea and then it's a few few months and then you go for
sentencing and at sentencing she just clearly did not like him did not like that he had libertarian
kind of ideologies and threw the book at him so she with the plea the max she could do was five
years. And the max fine she could do is $250,000. The both of those were are more than pre sentencing
report, they kind of do something and look and kind of calculate these things out. And pre sentencing
or pre pre sentencing was for both those numbers was lower. And she she went max out. And if she
could have given him life, she would have given him life. And at that point, you know, any doubt,
any kind of reticence we had about taking that plea wiped away.
But yeah, that this, it was the right choice, unfortunately.
Unfortunately, we were kind of backed into a corner where that was the only choice.
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Yeah, this is so unjust, it's disgusting.
But I'm going to try to parse it out a little bit.
So on one hand, you know, I've always feared the law because I know it's unjust or it could just, it's not going to be good to get involved, right?
But I never really thought about it as like an American.
You know, maybe you get into a car accident, it's not your fault, and like you're involved with the law, right?
Or here it sounds like, you know, if someone robs a bank, they're going to take the Ford family to jail because they made the car.
And it's like, that's just not American.
And like, you know, I feel like this is not a good place to live if there's no law here.
There's no justice.
When I say law, I mean lawfulness or, you know, things that law that makes sense.
Yeah, representative Warren Davis said, it's like taking it's like holding Microsoft responsible, if a cartel would would use Excel. And it's it is it's as simple as that, like, the, there's nothing kind of safe, because criminals use everything.
As you said, they use cars, they use the Internet, they use VPNs.
If, you know, if a Bitcoin transaction, you know, isn't actually a transaction until it's confirmed by a miner.
So are miners now, you know, money service businesses?
I hope not.
That's a terrible precedent.
Yeah, I think this is a horrendous precedent.
I do think this points to miners are next if not second in line Someone next in line This is to scare the shit out of coders developers innovators
Really, that's the thing.
It's like the coding is just the tool to innovate.
And what I'm still trying to like slice and dice here a bit is users can do bad things and say, okay, well, if users were doing money laundering, that's bad.
But I think the notion of custody and or privacy being bad in of itself, which is what I think the government's really after.
When you said the judge didn't like his sort of libertarian leanings or what did you mean by that?
She she called it out and sentencing that due to that somehow because of his beliefs that that that equated to him thinking he was above the law.
And it's like, no, we were following what the law was and what the whole industry was following.
So, yeah, again, the hostility and the vitriol that she was kind of spewing from the bench was shocking.
But it shouldn't be that shocking when another judge within that same courthouse, the same SDNY, made a comment that cryptocurrencies is good for nothing but criminals and scams.
So this really is their opinion of, you know, industry that millions of people use. And yeah, I don't I don't know how you get past that. Right. They're and there doesn't seem to be any repercussions for them, at least yet. Hopefully that'll change. But currently.
Right. And SDNY Southern District of New York is also where Ross Ulbricht was prosecuted, I believe.
And so was President Trump. Yeah, I really believe Ross was unjustly persecuted and a political prisoner.
And they really, I think that with the sentencing made an example of him and I think also held back a lot of evidence and what was happening in parallel trials.
and you start learning about how judges are appointed
and what you're saying with the judge being changed at the last minute
and then all the motions are not even heard or sort of explained,
sort of really just feels incredibly frustrating.
What was the reaction like from the community?
How has that been?
I feel like word really started to break
and people started to gain some sense of urgency
when we got a lot more clarity
And I honestly, I felt I came to it very late because I just didn't understand what was at stake.
I think we all know the Bitcoin community could be quite immature at times.
And there is no community, right?
There's no group.
But wherever people go to chit chat, right, some of it could be really immature and we can get involved in issues that get us sidetracked from important ones like this.
But what has it been like?
So I think, you know, you say there's no community.
I think there's a lot of little separate communities within the Bitcoin space.
and kind of the privacy community, you know, if you will,
and then users of Samurai Wallet and some other softwares were,
you know, they knew about it from the start
and had been very vocal, but it did take a while.
And it took till after Keone could really come out
and speak on his own behalf because, you know,
your buys like don't say anything,
especially when a case is completely built off of them,
you know, taking things out of context that you said,
You know, you don't want to add any more fuel to their fire. So once sentencing was done, he was able to speak. And, you know, people like yourself and Bob from Bitcoin Veterans and just, you know, and Puncher and just all these people kind of came on board and heard about it and realized what was gone.
And it was really amazing kind of having that swell of support and seeing that other people got it, right?
That it wasn't just because it is it's such and, you know, I've spoken to other people that have had similar dealings.
You know, they all seem to be conspiracy charges and this and that from the federal government.
And it's a very isolating feeling when you're going against the power of the state.
And so to have that support from, I'll use community from Bitcoiners, we'll say, has been really great.
Just to know that people understand you, they believe you, they read the evidence themselves and they come to the same conclusion you have.
It's validating, which is kind of needed.
Yeah, I found this is one of those things where, you know, just as a Bitcoin, there's all these expressions, don't trust, verify, you know, things validate for yourself, do your own research.
But you have to put in the time.
Fortunately, in a short amount of time, you can rock this.
It takes a few minutes.
It takes about probably 45 minutes to relearn the law or learn the law.
and after about 25 minutes you're like holy shit this is just kind of clear that they don't belong
in prison the i don't think any there's anything done wrong here at all and um it sounds like
sdny continues to go rogue and the scary thing is the implications obviously on a personal level
for you but but for all of us and i think this is global i think sort of american law
and precedent. And this sort of, this is sort of like soft precedent where it's not legal precedent,
but I think, you know, this is sort of, you know, very scary. I think what was the process like of
driving Keone to prison? Um, so that was hard. So that was another kind of one of,
one of the judges last little dig she could get is oftentimes between sentencing and, you know,
if you're out on bail, you can do something called self-surrender.
And oftentimes I'll take months because, again, bureaucracies move slowly.
And once it's sent from the courts, you're sentenced,
and it gets sent to the Bureau of Prisons,
and they have to determine various things.
You know, they try to keep you close to family and, you know,
depending on what level of security you need.
If you're violent, obviously you need to go to a high security prison versus, you know, Keote who's never had any interactions with the law is nonviolent.
So he was designated to a camp and that process usually takes some time.
But she gave us a little over a month from sentencing to you need to report to your prison.
If you don't have a prison, you need to come back to New York and surrender and you'll be put in the MDC, which is one of the worst jails in the country.
Thankfully, we were able to get a designation and driving down.
And it was weird. I think I think Keone mentioned this in a letter that we kind of didn't focus on where we were going.
We're big kind of road trippers in general. We just prefer to drive.
And oftentimes we drive off highway. And so and being kind of not able to go anywhere for so long, it almost felt very natural and comfortable.
And that just sitting together in a car because you just can talk and talk about anything but going, you know, the destination.
And but it was hard. It was actually pulling up to the prison.
we had to park in the visitor's parking lot and he then had to walk away from me and walk
to the prison and you know I wasn't sure when I was going to be able to hear from him because it
takes a while for like you to get phone credits and just just various things and it's an unknown
and and thankfully once I did hear from him you know I heard he was okay and and that was really
reassuring, but, but driving away and, you know, leaving, you know, my best friend, my, my husband,
my, my partner for, you know, 14 years, it was, it was sad, hard. Wow. Well, my, my heart goes out
to for dealing with all this. What can we do to sort of raise awareness and continue fighting?
You know, Keone is one of his, is his own best advocate. And that's what was, you mentioned so
he wasn't really able to probably speak for so long and they did an amazing job speaking under
such probably what i can't imagine such strenuous circumstances speaking so eloquently and
articulately and really explaining the situation so people can grok it very quickly and then his
voice kind of i mean he's gotten the letters out but it's a bit silenced but you know so what what
can we do to kind of keep his voice live but also get keep the fight going yeah so there's a few
things. And, you know, the first thing would be to sign the petition for a pardon. That's
really what we're going for. When you when you do a plea deal, you unless there's like
constitutional grounds that you can do, you're signing really signing away any any options for
appeals or anything like that. So really, a pardon is our option, our best option, only option. And
some people think, oh, signing a petition, what good does that do? But, you know, you mentioned
Ross earlier, Lynn, his mother, and Ross himself both said that, you know, it really does matter.
Every signature, when you can take it to, you know, the president or, you know, the president's
kind of representatives and say, look, people care about this issue. This is going to be
a popular choice. You know, they're asking for it. Other people see the injustice that was,
you know, done here. So definitely sign. The other thing, if you're, you know, willing and able,
court cases are very, very expensive. They took our life savings, we're massively in debt.
Same with, you know, Bill and Sabrina, and with them being away, if people are willing to donate
through the billandkeone.org, there's Bitcoin donation options, and as well as a give, send,
go. It, you know, really does go a long way. And then, you know, if anyone has any connections,
or just, you know, to keep raising awareness, whether or not be on X, or writing to your,
you know, senators or representatives, being courteous and respectful, right? We don't want
to turn them against us, but letting them know, again, it's just another way to say, you know,
this is a cause that matters to Bitcoiners.
And, you know, something we're willing to give our time and our voices to.
If anyone would like to write to him, his address is also on the BillAndKeone.org website.
He's received letters so far and he's been writing back.
And, you know, I think you do feel so, you know, especially in this day and age, right,
where we do have X and other social medias where you're constantly connected with people
to then be put in a space where they limit your amount of minutes you can have on the phone.
They, you know, it's everything's very restricted and limited. And so just that connection to
the outside world and, you know, it could just be sharing a funny story or, you know,
it doesn't have to be anything serious. But I, but I know he, he'd appreciate that.
Yeah. We'll put the links in the show notes. I think the rage is publishing his letters. I
encourage people to read them. They're very well written, very insightful. A couple more just points
that we want to touch on before we roll out. So didn't Trump issue a letter or guidance to the DOJ
in Washington? Yeah. So the Deputy AG, Todd Blanche, he wrote a, under Trump's guidance,
wrote a letter that said, we, as the Department of Justice, are no longer going to be prosecuting
developers or manufacturers of software for the actions of the users. You need to go after the
real criminals. And I think, I don't know, I agree with that. I think most Americans would,
that you go after the criminal, you don't go after other people. That's, you know,
self-responsibility and all that. And this was something that the prosecutors clearly were aware
of because they hemmed and hawed and tried to skirt their way around it and decided to drop.
So what they dropped is what they're charged under was conspiracy under 1960. It's the money,
it's the money service business. And the first part that they dropped was operating a money
service business without a license. And then if you fall under that to the, I think it's,
I could look it up real quick. So they dropped the 1960 B1B and then recharged under 1960 B1C.
1960 B1C states that if you are a money service business, and if you're a money service business,
used, you do things like KYC and AML. And so if you are a money service business, and they still
is knowingly transacting, I think it's transmitting funds from criminal offenses or otherwise used to
support unlawful activity, then it's an additional charge that they can file against you. But,
and the law is supposed to be written for a person of average intelligence to be able to understand.
And if there's any ambiguity, it's supposed to fall in the defense's favor.
So my understanding is if there's a subsection,
then the top bracket must apply for then the subsection to apply.
I think that's kind of common sense of hierarchical structures.
They disagreed, and so they charged a subsection
when the previous section didn't apply.
And that's how they got around, I guess, the Blanche memo.
I don't see the logic.
Well, you know, Trump administration has really touted America
as being the Bitcoin capital of the world,
And this is not what the Bitcoin capital world would do to developers and innovators to have innovation here.
I do want to point out that there were other cases that at the time of the Blanche memo in other court districts outside of the SDNY that did drop cases.
So they listened to the Blanche memo and said, OK, we're not we're no longer going to prosecute people for the actions of their users.
SDNY, there's two cases. There's also the Tornado Cash, which is an Ethereum protocol.
that they didn't drop theirs and they didn't drop ours.
And they did this kind of switcheroo with, with, you know, charges.
So some people did.
I think that's another one we have to pick up the torch on because, um,
the fight for freedom is real and it affects wherever it is. We have to,
that's where we have to defend freedom and privacy,
the right for privacy and custody, self-custody. Um,
and then they seized Bitcoin, I guess, as part of the deal, um,
Well, they couldn't seize it.
I'm using the wrong word.
But just because, yeah, if you have proper, I guess, Bitcoin hygiene, then they couldn't seize it.
But they did part of the agreement.
They did have to send the prosecution the Bitcoin.
Originally, they had actually asked.
They wanted it in fiat, but there was just under 6.4 million.
We had no way to get that.
So finally, they relented and agreed to accept it in Bitcoin.
But in the writing and I think this is where you going with this when they sent it over it stated that they were going to be selling it which again ignores another of President Trump executive orders because this money it was a clean forfeiture meaning there was no injured parties that were awaiting restitution
Like there would be if this was, you know, if there was a victim or something, money couldn't go directly to the strategic Bitcoin reserve in that case.
But as this was a clean forfeiture, they were supposed to under the executive order.
This Bitcoin would have been part of that strategic Bitcoin reserve.
Actually, I think it may have been the first.
I'm not sure about that, but that's not what they did.
Wow.
And so there's like no victims here.
And we can go into it.
We don't need to go into the details here, but this is my conversation with Keone.
You can look up for yourselves if you're listening.
But the fine was egregious.
the fact that they're selling the Bitcoin is going against Trump administration policy,
which that has its own maybe flaws.
But, you know, it would be just really this is just terrible and unfortunate.
You know, this is brave of you to step into the public eye to support your husband.
And it's supporting all of us in the fight for privacy and financial freedom.
because if the way things are going,
if we, this is a slippery slope
to us not being able to vote with our money.
And that might be even like,
it really might affect real voting and politicking.
And even if you don't want to be in politics,
it might affect how you're able to acquire goods
and what you can buy and sell and trade
with everybody, including your neighbors.
Yeah, it's on the way to being a social credit system, right?
like by China is 100 percent in a lot of ways. And something to point out here, I think that I
learned through this or relearned, you know, or you remember, but just sort of the difference when
people think about sort of black and gray and white markets. I mean, if you sell an apple pie
to your neighbor, that's a black market sale. And this is right. So there's nothing wrong with black
markets And I not a fan of KYC and AML as it stands So too many people have been hurt by by poor storage practices of that data that very valuable data that unfortunately has been breached and caused a lot of harm And on top of that I think if you know
the research that's been done into it
hasn't really stopped money laundering, right?
Some of the largest money launderers are banks
that do all those kind of checks.
Yeah, so I want to thank you again.
I think, you know, your time is very precious and anything we could do to get the word out.
The raid on your home was a terrifying experience.
I mean, this involved armed agents.
Keone and Bill were operating within legal guidelines.
The DOJ's actions are, I mean, I think this is politically motivated.
I think this is scary as an American citizen and a front on financial freedom.
But it's also just a misallocation of resources against innocent American entrepreneurs.
while there's tremendous fraud in the country.
And privacy and financial transactions
is a critical issue in today's society.
So, you know, the community support is vital
and it's even more vital going forward.
So I hope people click on the links,
sign the petition, donate what you can.
And I'll leave it to you for any parting words
and let people, again, just remind people
where they can find you and kind of get involved.
Well, I just want to thank you so much for having me on
and giving me the chance to talk.
Hopefully I did Keone some good.
He's definitely the better speaker out of the two of us.
So I just want to thank you first.
And, yeah, people just, you know, please sign and keep continuing to get the message out.
I know I'm sure it seems probably annoying to see it over and over again.
But, you know, eventually, if we're loud enough, you know, the right people will hear and, you know, hopefully grant us a pardon.
And as far as finding me I so you know I mentioned earlier I don really didn do social media before this And so when I set up my X account I didn really ever do it for a handle that that would be easily searchable It was never the intent So so maybe you could link that below And so people could follow me there And you know this is kind of all I all I post about Also follow at Keone K And that so there an intra prison kind of email system It very
delayed, very, you know, it looks like it's from the early 2000s. But he sends me things and I just
copy and paste them over that he wants posted. So anything coming from there, they are his words.
I'm just actually clicking post so they can follow him. And then, like you said, the rage,
There's there'll be more articles and they are. I think they're quite entertaining and kind of funny.
I think he's a good, good writer. So, yeah. Thank you very much.
Yeah, for sure. And we'll drop those links and people can write to him.
They can read his letters. This is an obvious weaponization of the law.
And, you know, one thing I'll just end on. It was President Trump mentioned Keone when a reporter asked about Keone.
I mean, I thought that was just tremendously optimistic.
It seems like it's on someone's, his radar,
at least someone over there hopefully jotted it down,
and hopefully we're here soon and this nightmare will end.
So thank you so much.
We'll continue to do everything we can.
Please remember, every signature does matter.
Even Ross's mom, Lynn Ulbricht, mentioned that.
I think you guys are close or above 15,000 signatures,
and that's a meaningful number,
but we've got to get this up to hundreds of thousands.
But we are, I think, at a faster start pace than Ross's team was at.
But that doesn't mean we need to let up.
We got to go like 10x harder.
So hopefully next time we chat, we'll be at 100,000 and he'll be free way before that,
though.
But thank you so much.
Be well.
Thank you.
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