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- [00:07]
Marty Bent
You've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free.
- [00:11]
Lauren
If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all, all the central banks going nuts.
- [00:16]
Marty Bent
So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor.
- [00:29]
Lauren
I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin.
- [00:32]
Marty Bent
If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. Probably should be. Probably should be.
- [00:37]
Sponsor Host 1
Lauren, I. I wish I didn't have
- [00:40]
Marty Bent
to have you on the show. We were just talking before we hit record, and I've spent some time with you and Keone over the years, and
- [00:53]
Lauren
it's.
- [00:53]
Marty Bent
It was clear to me that you guys liked staying out of the limelight and just putting your heads down and working on, on Samurai Wallet. And you've been thrust into, into the public eye as you are forced to fight for the freedom of your husband. And I've been thinking about this interview for, for a few days now, and it's like, where to start? And I guess the best place to start is. How are you? How has this whole process been for you?
- [01:28]
Lauren
Hi. Well, first, thank you for having me on, Marty. As you said, we have known each other for, for a while, so, you know, it's nice to be speaking to kind of a friend in that sense. But, yeah, I'd rather not be here. I'd rather not be in this position. It's hard. It's hard to wake up and not have my husband here and, and not have, you know, the person I would turn to, to ask advice on kind of these speaking matters or, or what to say or how to, you know, keep fighting for him. And I can't ask him, I can't turn to him, I can't message him. I have to wait for, you know, when he can call from prison, and that's different. Difficult position to be in. But I'm also grateful that people like you are allowing me a platform to talk about the real injustices of this case and the fact that we're still here and still fighting. So his kind of memory and, you know, the. Him as a person isn't. Isn't dying on the outside that people can know that this is still going on. So thank you.
- [02:51]
Marty Bent
No need to thank me. We've been in this battle together for many years before even the case began, because I think what Bill and others who are being persecuted right now really fought for something that I Deeply believe is a human right, which is the right to privacy. And in this case, financial privacy. I think Matt o' Dell says it best. You can't have freedom without financial privacy. It is a prerequisite. If you want to build wealth, you need to be able to do that in a way that protects your privacy. And that's why we supported Samurai Wallet on Rabbit hole recap via 1031 for many years, because it's something that we truly believe in. And it's crazy that we live in a time where it is looked at as something that is dirty that you shouldn't want to find. And as we accelerate toward the AI future, where it seems like the digital Panopticon can get even stronger, it's incredibly scary that you have freedom fighters fighting for the right to privacy being thrown in a cage.
- [04:07]
Lauren
And so much of this is just, you know, obviously it's been ramping up. And as you, you know, so rightly pointed to the. The potential with AI, but a lot of this came about in the 90s, and then the early 2000s with the Patriot act. Like this in our lifetime has massively ramped up this attack on privacy. And you said you can't have freedom and liberty without financial privacy. And that also goes to speech. Speech transactions. Who you interact with via your money is a form of speech. And so it just affects so much of the founding principles of this country. And yes.
- [04:53]
Marty Bent
Was this a topic that you and Kiana Ione bonded over, or was this something that you came to learn just the osmosis by hanging out with him?
- [05:03]
Lauren
I was definitely in the libertarian leanings when we met, but he's brilliant and I definitely have learned a lot from him over the years, but I think I had that kind of. I think that's something that bonded us initially that we had those similar sentiments.
- [05:25]
Marty Bent
How. How is he doing?
- [05:29]
Lauren
It's. It's hard. I mean, thankfully he's safe. He's not in a, like, dangerous place. But at the same time, it's prison. He doesn't deserve to be there. It's unjust like yesterday. So the way prison works is you have a certain amount of minutes in a month and that's capped. So you kind of have to budget those and say, okay, so we're going to call for this many minutes a day so that we can talk. And usually we have a 6am call and that didn't come. And by like 10:30, I was getting really anxious because it's an hour. So I called the prison and they give some nondescript Bop answer. Yeah, he's there and he's. Well, not sure what that means but. And then it was hours later and then finally he was able to call and there was a, there had been a system wide outage for the emails and the phone system. But my mind obviously goes to. Okay, well as the time ticked on, you know, worse and worst case scenarios. Is he injured? Do they not know he's injured? Is, you know, did something happen? Like so while it is safe and thankfully he's, he's fine and it was just a technical issue. Those feelings are always on my mind. It's also for, for his side for someone who was building something that he loved and believed in for, you know, a decade and really putting his, you know, heart into it, you know, way more than 40 hours a week. Right. Like that's, that's what he breathed was, was building samurai wallet and, and kind of what was the ethos behind that. And then so to have that stripped away as well. It's, it's very difficult for I think anyone who is a contributing member of society to be thrown into a cage which really you're, you know, boredom, boredom is what gets you the monotony of day to day and, and just trying to, you know, when hours stretch in they feel like a week, like it just really kind of grinds you down. So while he's fine it's, it's and you know, he'll get through it. It's still not a good place. There's still prison.
- [07:58]
Marty Bent
Yeah. I mean, and you're in a prison of your own. Right though you're out here, it's, I mean like you just described, you don't have your husband there to answer questions and that can be a mental prison. Like you said, the worry that you had when you didn't get the 6am call and that's like the most disheartening thing about all this is the collateral damage for you and everybody else. The chilling effect that spread across the industry and when you get down to the brass tax of it, I mean it seems clear to me that what the DOJ was, was charging Johnny and Bill for was not legitimate. I mean as defined by FinCEN, when they went to ask for or an opinion, what was it three or six months before they actually charged him?
- [08:54]
Lauren
Six, six months. And yeah, and that's right the regulator who's under treasury, who's mandated by Congress, actually enforce these laws and there's just so many. And that's, you know, that's a fifth Amendment violation Right there. Right. And you can't just change, you're not supposed to just be able to change the law or interpretation of the law and charge people without any kind of notice. But that's exactly what they did in this case. And just kind of time after time how much the system has failed in our case. And again, it's, you know, as much as like, obviously, you know, I care because it happened to me. It has opened my eyes to that. This is kind of prolific in our system, unfortunately, that especially in kind of these white collar cases, there are some that I'm, that I'm sure are just. But a lot of them are these, these twisting effects. And you know, the way the US law is written is it's supposed to be that if there's any ambiguity in the law, it's supposed to go to the side of the defendants. So you know, if, let's say, and I don't think it was, I think it was clear cut, you know, when the regulator themselves are saying, as you said, you know, that they did not break a law, but let's say there's somehow ambiguity in that. It should have still sided with the, with us and it didn't. And you know, every step of the way, the particularly our judge, like just not, not even hearing arguments on it, just, just denying all, all motions. And it's just, it's really, it's hard to come to terms with because in my opinion, you know, we no longer live in a free society. If this is, if this is the case, if they can on, on a DOJ's, on a, on a prosecutor's whim, just decide that the law that you've been operating under for 10 years is, is, doesn't matter anymore and they're going to charge you and ruin your life anyways and ruin your loved ones lives.
- [11:03]
Marty Bent
Yeah, that was, I mean, talking last fall. That was the crazy thing. The, the SDNY particularly seems to have a particular perspective on what they, what laws there, what statutes they can abuse in terms of not playing by the book. And I think that that was the other interesting details. The judges switch midway through the trial. Right. And you attempted to say, okay, we got a new judge. Let's, let's provide, let's try to have a conversation that completely stonewalled you.
- [11:41]
Lauren
Yeah, yeah, those. It was actually just so our first judge we had for over a year and the way he operated his court is he wanted all these big motions and to have one at the same time and then have one large hearing would have been our first real large hearing in front of him where the motions would be argued and then he would take his time and decide on it. So we had presented, I think there was probably over six different motions to him. And then three days before we were supposed to appear in front of him is when we got the change of judge. So she only had three days to review pages and pages of documents, get familiar with the case, get familiar with obviously a complex topic such as bitcoin and coinjoin. And these judges are supposed to be experts in the law, they can't be experts in everything kind of case that comes before them. But apparently she thought that, that she was enough. And you know, I would say there was bias, but you know, that's my opinion.
- [12:45]
Marty Bent
And I mean I imagine there are people who are listening to this who are unfamiliar with the Samurai case. I think maybe now it's important since we're alluding to particular details of, of the case and the charges, maybe a mere perspective explaining exactly what happened in terms of what they were charged with and where the judge fella foul and her ruling and her, her view of what actually, what Samurai Wallet actually was at the end of the day.
- [13:17]
Lauren
Yeah, so, so again Samurai Wallet was a non custodial open source bitcoin wallet like any other wallet. What differentiated them was they had some added again non custodial but privacy features built on top. They operated for 10 years and we're developing this and we're operating under guidance put out by the financial crimes enforcement network FinCEN, who's as we said earlier, the regulator in charge of MSB money service business and money laundering. They kind of anything to do with finances. They're the regulator that, that implements those regulations and laws. And so they're following guidance and building their tools and going around, you know, continuing on for 10 years. And on April 24, 2024 we were rated at a simultaneous raid at our home here in Pennsylvania as well as Bill's home in Portugal is a simultaneous like international coordinated raid. The millions of dollars they must have put into that when they could have just again messaged our, our attorney and said hey, we want to talk to you. This was our first interaction. They never kind of sense letters saying what information do you have? Can you help us? Don't destroy evidence. Like there's all kinds of procedural things that they would usually do, especially if it was an entity that was supposed to be regulated like a bank or something. They're not just you know, raid their CEO's house. And so that's, that's where it's where it started. And we, we found out that they were charging with conspiracy. Two conspiracy counts, one conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter business and conspiracy to money launder. And you know a lot of much smarter people than I have gone into this and kind of explained why these really has no standing. But basically it didn't matter when the, when they get you in their sights they're, they go full steam ahead. And you know, it didn't matter that as you said, six months prior to indictment they asked the regulator whether we were in violation of these, when a samurai is in violation of these regulations and laws and they said no, they brought charges anyways. And you know this, these cases kind of go back to in the 90s. We had the Bernstein who that went to the Supreme Court and determined that code is speech, the code you put out is speech. And then in a more recent case about a month ago, another Supreme Court ruling where an ISP was found not liable for copyright infringement committed by their users even though they knew that these users were violating copyright laws. So the fact that, I mean to me that's, that's applicable to this right? You're saying that the tools put out the code written that users did things and it was a small percentage of users that claim we never actually got got far enough to, to try to analyze to see if their numbers were accurate. But by the government's own numbers they were only claiming I think under 10% of users as being having funds from ill gotten gains. And you know we're not and never were in support of criminality or scams. But that's just a fact of, of any open technology, the Internet, messaging apps, Bitcoin as a whole. Unfortunately if a tool works criminals will use it and. Kind of lost my train of thought. But that's like, that's what they were alleging that, that they knowing that criminals could potentially use the tool was enough to, to, to charge them with a crime. Even though they had never had any interaction, there was never communication with any criminals obviously because they wouldn't have charged conspiracy charges at that point. They said the conspiracy began when they created, when they decide to code the wallet to create the wallet. So it really is an attack on code and therefore speech.
- [17:59]
Marty Bent
Yeah, just the nature of oh it's very enraging when you think about the simultaneous no knock raids like literally showing up with military grade equipment when they could have easily reached out to your lawyers to say hey, we don't like what you're doing, like we need we need you to answer some questions. And then you think about just the two tiered justice system that exists. When you think about the big banks and all defraud that they've knowingly enabled. I mean we can talk about Jeffrey Epstein and Deutsche bank and JP Morgan and the fact that when it gets found out that they were knowingly aiding and abetting that, that particular individual and they get slapped on the wrist with a fine, that is just the cost of doing business. When people like Keone and Bill were not doing anything close to that in terms of coordination, actually terminals.
- [18:54]
Lauren
On top of that they, you know, had oxt, which I think a lot of people forget, which was a platform for average people to, to be able to use the, the powerful tools that someone like Chainalysis has. And there were many times where they helped bitcoiners who had been, you know, robbed or scammed to help trace their funds at no cost to the user just because it's the right thing to do. So these aren't, in no way were they encouraging or you know, crime. They were trying to help victims of crime. And again just another tool that was taken off the board for average people, for victims and it was stripped away and taken down along with the rest of the, the servers.
- [19:44]
Marty Bent
Yeah, OXT was a great tool. I remember back in like 2018, I think I la rent, I think it was before, before Samurai acquired oxt. But I remember hopping in there at Laurent and doing an analysis on the, the dust spamming attacks that led up to, led up to the fork wars in 2017. It was just like an incredible tool, how detailed it got. But I think the, the fact that they, they came down with the hammer was, I mean the, the no knock raids really gets to me personally because it's like number one, you didn't have to use that much force. You have to. I mean sure, you were scared shitless while it was going on middle of the night. And it's very clearly a bully tactic to just say hey, we can't have this. Like we can't have individuals using these, these tools to attain privacy. We need all the information. We need to be able to tag and bag every, every single person as they're transacting online. Which is a very, very scary thought that that is the, the position of the government or Department of Justice at the very least is that no common man like you can't, you can't do that. You can't have privacy. We need everything. And then you think of all of
- [21:19]
Lauren
the
- [21:21]
Marty Bent
waste and overt fraud that exists in the government. And it's exhausting. At a certain point it's like, hey, I'm just trying to live my life to save and spend in a money that I deem to be superior to the dollar. And for that thought crime of thinking that I should be able to use this alternative currency and payments rail and not only that, but do so privately. It's frustrating for those of us who are freedom oriented knowing that just by trying to get a little bit, a little taste of freedom in our financial lives that they will come down with the force of guns and military equipment to send a message to the rest.
- [22:17]
Lauren
Originally they came after bitcoin and they didn't like bitcoin back. We can kind of call back to there. And then I think they came around and realized like you're saying that, that Bitcoin without privacy is the perfect Panopticon. And so how can they use that to their advantage? And that's to scare development because it wasn't just about us, although you know, it was. And they took samurai off the board from people to be able to gain some privacy. But you have legal protections in the legacy system or you're supposed to where people can't just look into your bank account, they're supposed to get a, you know, warrant or there's, there's some third party doctrines that, that kind of ease that but there's restrictions when bitcoin you don't have that. And it with samurai you got just that transactional privacy back to protect yourself, to protect your loved ones. Unfortunately we see year on year a ramp up of, of attacks on people to, because something gets leaked and or trace that they, they might be a large holder of Bitcoin. And it's just like it was really just providing tools to give basic levels of privacy. And they've scared I think the market away from, from working on that which was the desired outcome. And it is, it's just has, it's has so many implications for each and every person, each and every user of Bitcoin. It's scary thing to think about.
- [23:55]
Marty Bent
Oh it is. I mean just look what's going on with the $5 rent your tax in France. Not only France. I mean France is drawing the focus of many people because the numbers are astounding. And it's due to the lack of privacy the French citizens have, particularly as it pertains to Bitcoin ownership. They're forced to declare it to the government on their tax forms and then those tax forms are, are public. And so you have a list for criminals who are willing to break the law, to physically harm people, to steal their bitcoin. You basically just hand them over a list of targets that they can begin to pick off. And it's insane that this is not recognized by the government as a physical security issue. I think to your point about what Samurai Wallet built with Coinjoy and Ricochet Stowaway, all these different tools that made it easier to transact privately. I mean this is a physical security risk because if you're going to be using Bitcoin as money and you're interacting with a bunch of random people as you go throughout your day to buy things they shouldn't know, they shouldn't be able to receive a UTXO and then basically derive how much Bitcoin you have simply because you're going to buy a sandwich or a grill, whatever it may be. This is like a common sense. There's no reason that when I go to interact with a merchant that they should know how much money is in my bank account.
- [25:30]
Lauren
It's exactly that. Yeah, you're exactly right. And that's when coming after samurai and and then the repercussions of other companies pulling out of offering their services to Americans and then, you know, has the implications of the wider world. Right? What, what policy is set here dictates to other countries as well. And there's a lot of people in other countries that, you know, you mentioned France, but there's dictatorships that their ability to transact privately in Bitcoin is literally a life or death for these freedom fighters. And so it has global implications.
- [26:14]
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- [26:57]
Marty Bent
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- [28:18]
Marty Bent
Have you become disheartened throughout all this as a reaction and what do you think the reaction from the overall community or the builders? Because it has been interesting to watch the proliferation of things like ecash and I think proliferation is a strong word, but I think the maturation things like ecash, which have a trade off, you get increased privacy for a custody trade off. The interoperability between all these second layer networks seems to be increasing privacy and the advancements are certainly moving forward and they seem to be relatively under the radar. So I'm actually personally pretty bullish on private bitcoin usage from a tech perspective. But do you think we're in a quiet lull where the state is just like, okay, we've got a couple examples on the board, we'll lay low and then come down with a hammer later? Or do you think we're actually making progress on getting the message out there that privacy is a human right? And we should be able to use these, these technologies privately.
- [29:28]
Lauren
I think it's a real risk. I think every builder in the space specifically, you know, you're saying these, and they're, you know, all very, very smart options, these layer twos and different things. But the actual coders are at risk. The precedent, the sets, that is, if you're working on something that they don't like and a user of your software could do something with it that we deem is bad, that we will come after you, you are liable for the actions of your users. This has implications for miners, for lightning node channel operators, for eCash, whatever they're called.
- [30:10]
Marty Bent
Mint operators.
- [30:11]
Lauren
Mint operator, yeah, it really does. And you know, again, outside of, even outside of the bitcoin space, which obviously that's what we care about, but I think a lot of us probably are using some kind of secured messaging app and all of these. Also, if you're writing code, if someone's using your messaging software to plan a bank heist, you're now part of that conspiracy by providing them software. That's what this says. And so as much as I'm hopeful and it's great to see that there are so many, you know, you and Matt had mentioned in one of the panels at the conference about how percentage wise between kind of cypherpunks and you know, say suits, their percentage might be higher, but the overall number of people working on kind of cypherpunk technology is up. And that's, that's so great. But I do worry that they're, you know, they can come and bring these same theories, the same charges again and there might be, you know, someone else's wife and you might have to develop, you know, be interviewing someone else's wife in a couple years when they decide that, okay, they, you know, these bitcoiners are still a nuisance. Let's, let's show them, let's show them a little force again.
- [31:37]
Marty Bent
Yeah, no, that's something that everybody who's listening should be aware of too, because I mean it, we may be in a lull in terms of indictments and charges being brought against developers in the space, but if you actually pay attention to what the administration is putting out there whatsoever, not even the administration, but what's being put in the genius act, Clarity act, and I think the smoking gun in terms of the long term trajectory of where just the government, I won't pick on an administration, but I just think the federal government in general wants to go. But if you look at the crypto brief that was released last July. They explicitly say that they want to expand the Patriot act to include digital currencies which would preclude that open source software developers try to embed KYC AML compliance into their projects, which is number one a nonstart, number two, technically infeasible. If it's open source software, anybody could fork it and take out the KYC aml.
- [32:43]
Lauren
The compliance, not to mention pointless as we've seen, you know, since the Patriot act was, was introduced that you know, criminals will find a way and it's only hurts law abiding, you know, your average citizen and those are the only people that are hurt. The people that are willing to follow these laws and give their selfies with their IDs and then to have that data stolen. Yeah.
- [33:06]
Marty Bent
And then on top of that, the physical risk, not only the data stolen, but the data used to locate you in meatspace and hold you at gunpoint to steal your Bitcoin. And it's not only Bitcoin, I mean credit fraud, all that still your credit card information and put you into insane amounts of debt and force you to go through the legal system to try to prove that hey, this wasn't me that spent this money. It is completely ineffective. I think the data as of five years ago, I think it's the last time I checked. But I think if you're looking at, if you're trying to be objective of the adequacy of KYC AML compliance laws, I think something like 0.01% of money that was deemed to be laundered was actually prevented by these KYC AML regulations. And so, and that's what I worry about is like how much of a sunk cost. It is a massive sunk cost fallacy because we're. What. When was the patriot act passed? 2002, 2003. We're 24 to 23 years into this and it's just become the water we swim in is that we're all expected to just comply and give up all this information. And time and time again, literally every week now there's another hack of a database that leaks sensitive personal identifying information to the Dark web and just increases the physical attack surface of everybody that is interacting with products and services that demand this data.
- [34:46]
Lauren
Yeah, this is something that you know, Keone and Bill were so passionate about. And so you know, again their life work that they put in to try to try to help people and protect people from, from this, that was a big reason. It wasn't, you know, as much of the Reasons they didn't take KYC was. And they built their software so that they weren't required to by the regulation. They stayed within those bounds was so that they wouldn't have that data for someone to steal. They didn't want to have that responsibility because it's a grave responsibility that I think a lot of these companies don't take seriously enough. And because, you know, you seem, you get data breaches and it's kind of, sorry, you know, sorry this happened to you, good luck. And there's still people getting, you know, emails and getting scammed from, from data breaches that were almost 10 years ago. And it's.
- [35:42]
Marty Bent
Yeah, no, and it's like, what now we're gonna. Now you got Marty Jones coming out. Like, what is the government exist? Like, what is it supposed to exist to do? At the end of the day, it's supposed to be as the, the founding fathers laid out, supposed to be a very small surface area, just a, a, an agreement between the states and the federal government. Okay, we'll protect you. At the end of the day, the brass tax, it's like, hey, we will provide protection for the states when need be and help coordinate interstate commerce, and they're not. I think it's become abundantly clear, at least in our lives as millennials, that a lot of the actions that the government takes makes our lives worse off, whether it's taxation. If you look at health care regulation, I think it's become pretty clear that the American Care act has increased health care costs significantly. If you look at where tax money is being funneled to these Medicaid and Medicare projects that are just being raided by overt fraudsters who don't seem to be getting reprimanded for that. And then obviously, you have the money printing aspect where people are most people, 99% of people, I would say, are just regular common man, people who just want to work a job, build a family, live somewhat comfortably. And the government in its current form seems to make that harder and harder to do. They want more of your money, they want more of your liberty. And it just forces you to ask the question, like, what are we even doing here? Why does this thing exist? And going back to, like, it's just the water we swim in. When do people sort of come to the surface and say, hey, I don't, I don't like this water. It's pretty filthy. We need to, we need to change something here.
- [37:39]
Lauren
And I, I really hope, and I think that people are starting to kind of wake up to that at least you know, what you said, like the fraud that we've seen being exposed by citizen journalists, the American, you know, from the American government or how they haven't been holding up their end of the bargain. We'll say for, you know, not doing the responses that, that they should or that they're expected to. And you know, goes back to the old saying, one of the scariest phrases you can hear is I'm, I'm from the government and I'm here to help. And that's, you know, in our, in our case, right. They, part of the end result of this is there was a forfeiture of the website and the app and stuff, but the government then allowed the website to lapse and some scammers reset up the samurai website probably to try to commit some kind of scam on innocent people. And that was the government's that was forfeited to them. That was their property to protect and protect the American people and people at large. Right. That's, that's why they took over. Had it remained in, had it not been forfeited, I'm sure, you know, we could have kept it up and it wouldn't have been offering anything, but at least it wouldn't have fallen into the hands of scammers. And that's just like another way that there were no victims in this crime. In this case. They never pointed to any victims because what they were saying it was a compliance violations. But there were real potential victims as a result of actions that the DOJ took.
- [39:21]
Marty Bent
That's comedically poetic that. I mean they're, I mean from a dollar amount, I think, I mean who knows exactly how much money flowed through that. But to be very clear, like even if it was a dollar, like more people were harmed directly or scammed directly from the DOJ lapsing there then Keone and Bill actually running the service itself. It's laughable and it is funny because I don't know if you can tell, but a bit of apprehension in my voice right now because in the back of my mind I'm like, I don't want to piss the government off by saying all this stuff. And it is that chilling effect that exists. It's like the act of even highlighting these very clear and absurd realities. Just it, the chilling effect is real where it's like, oh, am I going to be put on a list now for, for saying that I don't like this and probably already on all the lists. But it's still, it's like, ah, the self censoring is is real. And that's again, going back to the point of like, what are we doing here? What is the water that we're swimming in? I think anybody listening, it's important to ask that question, like, should we be afraid to even talk about this? Because not that I'm afraid, but I'm a bit apprehensive to really go full bore into what I'm thinking right now.
- [40:49]
Lauren
I mean, so much of what they used in the case as quote, unquote, evidence against, again, conspiracy charges. So they're trying to. The government pulled out post, public posts and other comments taken out of context, but it was. It was all speech that they had, you know, typed or written. Most of it was. Was twisted in. In some way to say something that really wasn't the intent. And if you. If you knew either of the guys or interacted with them, you could see. See where they were being facetious or, you know, humorous or whatever. But it's true. And people say, well, they shouldn't have said that. Well, okay, they're operating within the bounds again, of the laws and regulations. Had they not been, I'm sure they would have been watching what they say. If you're. You're. If you are a criminal and doing criminal things, you would not be going around and, you know, trying to. To say things that might be, as you said, challenging. You'd probably watch what you say. But unfortunately, I think this case shows that needs to kind of be watching what they say because they could take something you said in a chat 10 years ago to a buddy and use it to throw you in jail.
- [42:08]
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- [42:09]
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- [42:54]
Marty Bent
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- [44:12]
Marty Bent
feeling in terms of the progress towards getting a pardon right now? I think there's been a lot of momentum. I've been talking a lot with some people who are working on it and I think we're definitely getting some attention. There definitely needs to be more attention. I think that's part of the reason I'm bringing you on is to draw more attention to this because it is a grave injustice in any day, any minute that Keone and Bill and others that are in a similar situation for writing open source software. They're sitting in a cage like they need to get out immediately.
- [44:51]
Lauren
Yeah, it's. It's hard. I didn't, I didn't think, I didn't think it would Take this long. I'll say maybe that's unnaive, but we saw what the bitcoin community can do when the now president of the United States got on stage at the bitcoin conference in 2024 and announced he's going to free Ross. And he did. There's 35 to 70 billion estimated voting age adults within the United States who own bitcoin. That is a huge voting block. And as we just saw this past week, they're here and they want something from bitcoiners. They want your votes, they want your donations. They're, you know, they're coming to the conferences, they're talking about it on, you know, the floor of Congress about bitcoin and the momentum and the fact that we were able to get something done and get Ross free, which I'm so thankful for. I think if we, you know, let them know that this is, this is another cause. We don't want to see bitcoin developers in sitting in prison for non custodial open source software and that they need to just make this right too and fix this injustice. And I think it's a powerful enough group to get that done.
- [46:29]
Marty Bent
Yeah, I think it certainly is too. And that's again reiterate. I think it would be naive of anybody listening out there who's looking at the proliferation of technologies like ecaas, Ark, Spark Lightning, their interoperability and the advancements that are being made to think that we are in the clear. I think without freeing the political prisoners that Keone and Bill and others and then not only that, but writing we need to write into law, like if you're a developer, the precedent is there. Like you said earlier in the 90s during the PGP wars, we got it stated by the Supreme Court, the code of speech. This is no different. Which is one of the most frustrating things is we already have the precedent, it's there. The ability to write software, issue it on GitHub in an open source manner should be a non starter like pretty black and white. It is legal, go to speech. And if we don't free the political prisoners and then enshrine again. Unfortunately it seems like we have to do it again. Enshrined the right to develop and program computer software in a way that is deemed speech that every American citizen and hopefully everyone on the planet should have the right to where we're living with this false sense of confidence. I think do not rest on your laurels here because I think depending on who's in office at any given point in Time, the tenor can switch rather quickly until we get the political prisoners release and enshrined into law that it is okay to write code that allows people to, to use Bitcoin in particular ways that were not out of the clear. Not only that, maybe in a more dangerous position than anybody realizes, because maybe they're just waiting in the, in the, in the tall grass for, for people to, to, to build up enough of a, of, of, of a privacy infrastructure to come down with a, with a sledgehammer and say, no, you're not doing this.
- [48:55]
Lauren
Yeah, unfortunately, we still have people like Senator Elizabeth Warren, who, she despises everything. And we have judges. There's a judge within the Southern District of New York, not our judge, but another one one of her colleagues that, you know, made a statement shortly after kind of our case that said he's. Judge Radkoff said he saw no point for, of cryptocurrencies other than for crime and scams. So these are the people that are kind of lording over us until like you said, if we, we need to get some, some actual protections, even, you know, and this is a, this was supposed to be an uplifting speech given by our acting Attorney General Todd Blanch, at the Bitcoin conference, but about how it should be safe to develop. You should feel comfortable developing within the United States. But he said, you know, there was one little part that he said about knowing that you can't, can't something along the lines of develop knowing that criminals could. Are using your software. Well, anyone, again, as we touched on earlier, anyone developing any kind of software knows that criminals, if it's open source, if you don't have a, a closed, I don't know, you know, if you can't download it from anywhere, you're, you're distributing software or making software available, writing software with the knowledge that someone could take your software and use it in a way that you never intended. So, yeah, I completely agree that we need to keep pushing to have some protections to free the political prisoners left over from, from the war on crypto. And, you know, it's not really over until they're free and then going further and getting some real protections so that people can develop within the United States and make it, you know, as President Trump said, the, he wants it to be the crypto capital of the world. Well, you know, there's going to be a real flight of development talent if these things aren't fixed.
- [51:03]
Marty Bent
Yeah, like, what if somebody kidnaps somebody and somebody else and they tortured them by playing a song on Loop for 120 hours for an extended period of time and they use Spotify to play that song to torture somebody. Like, is Spotify liable for that torture mechanism? That's a tool of torture right there for someone.
- [51:27]
Lauren
They should have known. They should have known that if someone's playing a song for 120 Hours that, yeah, it should have flagged on their back end, I guess.
- [51:35]
Marty Bent
Yeah. No, but I mean, just to highlight the absurdity of this all, I mean, if you extend the logic that is being used in the case of Bitcoin privacy tools, open source privacy tools, I think if you stretch the interpretation of the law far enough by I guess, reductive reasoning, you'd say, well, yeah, Spotify should have known that people are using Coco Melon songs to torture people for 120 hours a week. But let's see again, it's the absurdity of it all. What can anybody listening do to help your efforts and the efforts of others looking to not only free the political prisoners, but also make sure that nobody else becomes a political prisoner in the future?
- [52:28]
Lauren
So first for, for us, please go to billandkeone.org that's B I L L a n D K E O N N e dot org. There you can find links to sign our petition calling for a presidential pardon as well as links to donate. Unfortunately, you know, I hate to do this. This is not something I don't think anyone likes to do, but we are, you know, millions of $2 million in debt, legal fees, and to try to kind of continue raising awareness, it does take money. That's just kind of the bottom line of that. But you know, further than that, if you have connections or ideas or something, please reach out to me. I would love to just speak with you. You can find me on, on X is probably the best place. Or contact me. There's an email address at the bottom of that website. And then you know, further, like, if this is something that resonates with you, like your voice is not too small, you know, you can, you can post about, you can speak about it, you can let your families know, you can contact your representatives and say, hey, you know, you want something from me. We have midterms coming up and these politicians are out there looking for something from you. It's okay to ask them for something back. And that's to lend their voice as well to calling for an end of this, you know, this war on crypto and free the political prisoners.
- [53:58]
Marty Bent
So just thinking about it, I was doing this last week at the Conference for Bitcoin de minimis Block spun up this website to easily go to and find your representative and send them a message about that. In the case of pardons, is it just as impactful? Obviously they're not passing a law, but if we get enough things to different representatives across the country and they shoot it up the ladder to the president, like, hey, a lot of my constituents are very worried about this particular, this particular, these particular prisoners and would like to see them release. Is it basically just a social pressure campaign that eventually he had a tipping point where it's like, okay, there's, there's enough of a critical mass to. It seems pretty clear that these guys were wrongly charged and thrown in prison?
- [54:49]
Lauren
I think it is, you know, the President Trump is, he's dealt with this office that came after us like the Southern district of New York came after him and his family. I think he, if he was actually presented with the case in front of him, like would definitely see the merits of it and understand it because I think he is a fair guy. But it's a matter of he is the president. There's a lot going on. So it needs to be raised to a level where he, you know, it's on his agenda by whoever that is. You know, I'm sure he has a lot of people working for him saying this is something that matters. So it, that's why, although it is just with, you know, the one person, President of the United States, Donald Trump, to grant the pardon, as you said, I think it is kind of the pressure and the calls to action that this is something we care about and we're not just going to sit silently and oh, you did one thing for us and you're talking about de minimis and other things. There's been a lot of promises, a lot of I think proposed to laws. But, you know, what have you done for Bitcoin lately? And you know, to me it's lacking,
- [56:08]
Marty Bent
but I would concur focuses not where I would like it to be. In the last. Just to wrap up, there's going to be a ton of people out there say privacy isn't worth it or privacy isn't necessary. If you have, if you're looking for privacy or doing something nefarious and I have no sympathy for developers who are writing tools. What, what would your message be to the, the, I guess the naysayers out there, the people who don't understand what Samurai Wallet was or why privacy is important in the first place?
- [56:50]
Lauren
First, privacy is important to everyone. Whether you recognize it or not. It's privacy is, you know, allowing you as a person. You get to decide. It's not hiding things, but you just get to decide what information you share. It's, you know, back to the classic examples, why we have blinds on our windows and locks on our doors. If you come over my house, I might invite you into my living room, but I might not have you upstairs into the bedrooms. And you're definitely not looking through my underwear drawer. That's privacy. I don't have anything to hide in there, but, you know, I'd rather not have people that I don't know that well in those private spaces. So this is our finances, as we, as we said at the beginning of this, are indicative of our speech. Who you transact with, who you donate money to, what organizations you support, what causes, you know, it's just all of this is indicative to speech, and it's a freedom. If you don't have financial privacy, you can't have financial freedom. And, you know, the way it is today, you need finances. There's very few people who can go, you know, live off grid and be completely private. That way. They, you know, we have to interact and have a meeting of exchange with people, and that's what hopefully bitcoin will be going forward. And. But you need privacy for that. So that's the first thing and why you should care. Maybe you don't. You know, at this point, right, we're feeling kind of good in the Western world, but as we saw with COVID and with the trucker convoy in Canada, that can switch where they will cut off your right to interact, to transact. And when you need, when you need privacy, you want tools to be there. You might not think you need it now, but there may be a point in time where you need it. And if they've thrown all the privacy developers in prison, it's a lot easier to take away the rest of your rights. Just like with guns. Right. It's the same kind of the same arguments they used in these cases against us of, well, there's these. This small percentage of bad actors using this tool. Same thing they use to try to take away second amendment rights. And the countries that we've seen where they do have taken away their rights to bear arms. Other freedoms follow shortly after. So, you know, it's. It's really slippery slope. It's. It's kind of, you know, I guess I wish there's another term, but it's something that we need to stay on top of and not let it to continue to be eroded as it has been.
- [59:27]
Marty Bent
Yeah, that's what I worry about, the complacency. I mean, going back to the Patriot act saying we're 23, 24 years into it now. And that's what I worry about. The frogs boiling water. Like if we don't stand up for this, I think bitcoiners and obviously your husband and Bill being sort of the shining examples of this, of recognizing this slippery slope and this frog boiling a water effect that we're all being subjected to with the KYC AML compliance and the financial surveillance that has been erected around us over the 21st century. If we do not push the tide in the other direction and use the tools that give us the ability to do that, which Bitcoin I believe is the strongest tool to do that. You don't have to ask permission. You can build on the protocol and the protocols being built on top of it without needing to go to the government and get a license or ask permission to open a bank account. You can simply download software and access this network. And it is an incredible tool to push back against the encroaching surveillance state that, that is only getting stronger as time goes on. And if we don't act intentionally and with a sense of urgency, we could wake up not to, in the not too long future and find that we've lost all of it. And getting it back at that point will be a much, a much harder task than it is today. And so the, I think whether or not you're recognizing it or you're just simply somebody who goes about their day, you go to your 9 to 5 job, you work at your desk, you come home, you do homework with the kids, maybe you open a beer, you watch a basketball game and you think, I don't need any of this, I'm fine. I'm not, I'm not operating outside the lines of what the government deems is appropriate. Like you said, that could switch on a dime. And if the Panopticon is sufficiently robust and resilient, you could wake up one day and say, hey, you know what? We're going to need you to stay in your house for a while and you can't go to your job anymore. And oh, by the way, if you do want to go outside, you need to get this injection. I mean, it's already happened. I think a lot of people woke up during that. But again, going back to how the state or these forces, who knows if it's the state itself or, or the conglomerate of, of supranational powers that really have control, but what doesn't really matter at the end of the day, they are slowly but surely taking ground, establishing precedent, lulling people into a false sense of security, and then waiting a couple years and then taking some more ground, establishing more precedent. And you may not feel that it's worthwhile to speak out or to act in a way that pushes back against this. But I would just caution that you may want to start thinking about it.
- [62:47]
Lauren
So when the kind of reporting laws, so when third party reporting laws, when banks had to start reporting on suspicious activity, it was $10,000 and that the reason they said it, that was because this was such a high number, it would be, it would stick out well when they wrote that law, you know, in today's money, that's nearly $70,000. So just by the devaluing of the currency and not ever readdressing that number, they, and so many laws that they do this right, they start with we're just going to tax the billionaires. And then it just happens that it just spreads and it gathers so many more people within their, their nets, if you will. And that's exactly what, what you're warning about there, that, you know, this complacency can lead to where everyone is affected.
- [63:43]
Marty Bent
Yeah, I mean that's a conversation for another day. But repealing the Bank Secrecy act is something that should be another priority of bitcoiners. But I don't think we have enough time to tackle that in depth.
- [63:58]
Lauren
Get them out of prison first.
- [64:00]
Marty Bent
Yeah, let's do that. And then take that ground and then start fighting back and getting rid of the Patriot act and the bank Secrecy Act, I think should be your top priorities uphill.
- [64:12]
Lauren
So when sounds crazy when we were doing like right when Samurai was in development and you know, early bitcoiners in general, I think it was so much about, let's root around the state. Let's, we're going to kind of follow they're putting out these laws. Okay. We're going to do something different. But in our case, I think it's a perfect example that the state's not going to leave you alone if you're doing something that's actually affecting them. They're not going to just ignore you and let you, you know, continue on with your, your little bitcoin. Like if you are actually affecting the state, they're gonna, and affecting their control, they are going to come after you. So just, you know, as a warning like this, this isn't, this isn't over.
- [64:54]
Marty Bent
No. And for the Girl dads out there listening like, well, I'm never going to do that. It could come down to, like, hey, you want to send your kids to private school? You know, we could wake up 15 years from now. We got private schools banned. You have to send them to our public indoctrination camps.
- [65:08]
Lauren
There's countries that are trying to try to shut off homeschooling. So, yeah, I mean, that's. That's very real.
- [65:14]
Marty Bent
Yeah. Lauren, you're incredibly strong, incredibly brave. I know it's been difficult for you to be forced to be out here and doing this. I know for sure that you would rather be doing anything but this, but I highly commend you for. For doing it. And I think it's good to know that there's strong women and strong wives out there that love their. Their husbands and the ideals that they fought for enough to get out there, because I know many, many others would. Would crumble under the pressure. And so I just want to again commend you because I think you're incredibly strong and it's incredibly important what you're doing.
- [65:59]
Lauren
Thank you. You know, Keone actually said before he went in that even though knowing that if there wasn't someone speaking that he would. All the momentum he had gained in that last little bit where he could speak for himself would be lost. But he said, like, I didn't have to do this. I didn't have to come and kind of put myself out there because it is. It is a vulnerable position to be in, to speak about things that are. That are personal, that I care about, that affect us in a very real way. But I couldn't not. I knew that if the positions were reversed, and there's so many times that I've told him I wish they were because I think he would have just been so much better at this than I am. But I know he wouldn't. It wouldn't have stopped. Wouldn't have given, you know, given up anything to. To see me released if I was in unjustly. So, you know, I couldn't not. It's. He's my best friend and my husband and, you know, it's partner and everything. So. Thank you.
- [67:08]
Marty Bent
Freaks. Go to billandkeone.org support the efforts, reach out to your representatives and make some noise. Keep the noise up. That's the one thing. We had a lot of momentum at the end of last year leading up to the beginning of this year, and I think it fell off a bit. But we need to get back on the train and make sure that this injustice is this wrong is righted, if you will. And we'll keep pushing on our end here. If there's anything we can do, Lauren, please let us know. And I'm optimistic he's going to get out, Bill's going to get out, then we're going to reset and then begin taking the ground that we need to take to make sure that this never happens again.
- [67:54]
Lauren
Thank you. Thank you, Marty, for some political office, Is that what you're saying?
- [68:00]
Marty Bent
No.
- [68:02]
Lauren
No.
- [68:04]
Marty Bent
Maybe. Probably not. Too much. Too much social media baggage that they'll pull up in point office.
- [68:18]
Lauren
Sorry. Sorry. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on.
- [68:21]
Marty Bent
Thank you.
- [68:22]
Sponsor Host 1
Peace and love, freaks. Thank you for listening to this episode of tftc. If you've made it this far, I imagine you got some value out of the episode. If so, please share it far and wide with your friends and family. We're looking to get the word out there. Also, wherever you're listening, whether that's YouTube, Apple, Spotify, make sure you like and subscribe to the show. And if you can, leave a rating on the podcasting platforms, that goes a long way. Last but not least, if you want to get these episodes a day early and ad free, make sure you download the Fountain podcasting app. You can go to Fountain FM to find that $5 a month gets you every episode a day early ad free helps. The show gives you incredible value, so please consider subscribing via Fountain as well. Thank you for your time and until next time,