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THE Bitcoin Podcast
Why President Trump Should PARDON SAMOURAI | Keonne Rodriguez of Samourai Wallet
01:35:22
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- [00:00]
A
Our jaws dropped when we, when we found this information out. Right. And the reason you have this reaction, which is a normal reaction to have, is because you think the justice system has anything to do with justice, but it doesn't. The justice system has nothing to do with justice. It has nothing to do with truth. We like to think that the prosecutor, the prosecutor's office is a noble office. And the role of the prosecutor is to find out the truth.
- [00:26]
B
Truth.
- [00:27]
A
But that is not the case. The prosecutor's only role is to take down the person that they put the target on. No matter what. No matter what. Even if the person is innocent. That is inconsequential to the prosecutor. The prosecutor says, we painted you with the target, therefore you're guilty and we're taking you down. I look to my lawyer and I go, we're gonna get railroaded here. There's no way we're getting a fair trial here. She's going to make sure the jury can't do anything but convict us. And when that happens, she's giving us 25 years. If you don't take the deal, if you get convicted, not only will you spend 25 years in federal prison, but when you're out, you'll be responsible for paying $237 million in restitution to the government, which is essentially saying, we're giving you a life sentence. They send some poor slub FBI agent out into the street of Manhattan to pull out his cell phone, install Samurai Wallet on it, make a transaction with it, and then they say, we have jurisdiction now because a crime occurred. I think one of the most powerful things in our case in trying to get a pardon from President Trump is he also has experience with the justice system. He, he also has been impacted by the Southern District of New York. So he knows this type of information coming that I'm telling you today that you're surprised by would not surprise the President. He's seen it firsthand. So all we need to do is get it in front of him. Because if it's in front of him, he will unders, he will recognize it, he will see it, and he is a fair minded person who wants to see justice. And I think a pardon would be not only possible, but likely. We just have to get it in front of him.
- [02:25]
B
Kyone, I wish we were talking under better circumstances. I wish this was a happier time, but it's not. You are scheduled to go to prison on December 19, Bill. I think slightly after that, it's kind of down to the wire. Thank you for Taking the time to come talk. I'm really honored to be talking to you. And first of all, I just want to say I'm sorry for what you are going through. I think it's a miscarriage of justice in the United States of America. And honestly, I hope that it is rectified because if not, it will be a national shame on our part.
- [02:58]
A
Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you very much. It's coming down to the wire now, but I'm trying to do everything I can to get the story out there so that I know I can tell myself, hey, I did everything I could. I talked to as many people as I could, I shared the story, and hopefully, even if it doesn't happen right away, hopefully the message gets to the right people.
- [03:22]
B
Yeah. And that's what I would say for anybody who is, who is tuning in right now. And I'm going to continue repeating this message throughout because you never know when somebody might tune in. If you have the ear of anyone or any contacts within the Trump administration that you can reach out to and somehow get this in front of Trump, please do so. You never know what text, what phone call may make a difference. And right now we're talking about two open source software developers going to prison for a number of years for writing open source software or never having control of any customer funds. We can get into all of that. But really, I would just say if you're listening to this and you have any way to get in touch with anyone, please take that opportunity because it could make a real meaningful difference. So with that said, I want to set the stage a little bit, maybe. I think it's important for people to understand the why of why you guys were operating Samurai for 10 years with no issues. What made you want to build this tool, build this solution for people? Why was this important to you guys in the first place? You've been operating this thing for 10 years prior to this miscarriage of justice taking place.
- [04:36]
A
Yeah. You have to kind of go back to pre Bitcoin times for me. Right. I was like 20 years old when the economy crashed in the Great Recession. That kind of showed me that there's something wrong with our money. Right. I watched bankers get bailed out and everyday average people get slammed. So I knew something was wrong with the system that early on and I didn't go quite the direction of Occupy Wall Street. Like our politics didn't align. But I understood what they understood, that something's wrong. And so what I ended up getting more into is gold and silver as a Hedge against inflation as a hedge against, you know, bailouts and hair, bank account haircuts to pay for the bailouts. And what gold and silver represents essentially is an early version of what I saw bitcoin as, right? So you have a self sovereign type of money. You have a money that is, there's no third party in between, right? There's no Federal Reserve, there's you and the precious metal and a censorship resistant form of money. So that's where my headspace was at before I really knew about bitcoin. So when I did finally Discover Bitcoin in 2012, it was illuminating, right? It was like, oh, this is like a digital version of the best aspects of gold and silver. It's a digital version that can't be censored where there's no financial institution in the middle of it and it's self sovereign. So I got so incredibly engaged in bitcoin at that time that for those reasons and I got so engaged that I said, I need to get my hands on this stuff. And it wasn't so easy like it is today. There isn't ETFs and there isn't, you know, stock equivalents and there isn't really that many exchanges, right. You had Mount Gox and I knew that was kind of sketchy before, before anything even happened. I could tell that was a sketchy place. So how do you get bitcoin? Well, the only real reliable ways are to mine it. And I didn't have that kind of capital to get invested in that or to earn it or to trade for it. And I chose to earn it. So I started working@blockchain.info now it's called blockchain.com. they had a non custodial web wallet. And I was going to work on their wallet and bring it to mobile and develop that product further. And that's what I, I got hired. I was earning my salary in bitcoin. So I finally was a part of this economy that I was so into. @blockchain.info I met my partner Bill, who's codefendant in this case. He was like the seventh employee they hired, I was the eighth employee. And we got on like a house on fire, you know, we had the same exact view of what bitcoin should be, which is censorship resistant digital cash. Right? And a digital analog to cash in your pocket. And we worked together@blockchain.info from around 2013 to 2015 or 2016. And by 2015 things started to change in the industry and the focus no longer was on self sovereign digital cash in the sense of censorship resistance. It was more on scaling and it was more on inviting financial institutions, inviting Wall street, getting VCs involved, and that's fine and good. But we were not convinced that Bitcoin was ready yet because of the privacy problem that we identified. Now if you want censorship resistant cash, you need privacy. You can't have censorship resistance without it. And by that time it was clear that privacy wasn't going to be baked in at the protocol level. Bitcoin wasn't going to be a Monero type of currency. The protocol developers were clear about that. So we had a couple of options. Do we fork off, go do bitcoin cash or something else? Do we go to Monero and work on that stuff or do we stay on Bitcoin and build software and write code to make Bitcoin what we want it to be? And that's ultimately the option we chose. We wanted to make Bitcoin more private for everyday users who needed to transact on Bitcoin. Primarily us, right? We're earning in bitcoin, we have to pay rent, we have to buy groceries, we have to do a lot of transacting on Bitcoin. And when you have to do a lot of transacting on Bitcoin, you very quickly see the privacy problems of a transparent blockchain. So that's why we decided to build Samurai, to build a wallet that we needed to use and we wanted to use.
- [10:14]
B
And I mean, first of all, you guys built a product that again operated for 10 years, had, I don't know if you guys even know how many users, but I mean, a massive amount of users. It was a very beloved product because it gave people something that they wanted, which was the ability to improve their privacy. And I think that it's, it's frustrating that we're at this point in time where things that were just kind of givens before the digital age, like yeah, you should just be able to have private conversations and private transactions with cash and nobody needs to know about it. Certainly the government doesn't need to know about it in the digital age. Now that that presumption has just kind of gone out the window. The would be totalitarians believe they should just be able to watch everything you do and stop you from doing it if they don't want to. And if you do manage to do it, they'll, they'll throw you in jail. Right. And you know, prosecute first and ask questions later. But, but Privacy is such a fundamental thing. It's. It's a, it's the cornerstone of everything else that, that we have, right? This is the baseline of our freedoms, is the ability to do things privately. And so, I mean, did you guys have any interactions with, with law enforcement or with prosecutors prior to basically getting your doors kicked down? I mean, was there any. Did they ever, you know, come. Come to you guys earlier, do any investigate anything like that? Or was this kind of like, was this really out of the blue for you guys?
- [11:41]
A
It was out of the blue, yeah. We had never had any sort of correspondence, phone call, letter, email, anything from law enforcement agents. You know, we, like you, like you said, we had operated for 10 years, or nearly 10 years. We were operating under Obama's administration, we are operating under Trump's first administration, and we were operating under Biden's administration. And it was under Biden's administration that suddenly something changed, right? Something that we didn't change. We were doing the same stuff, right? We were building the same type of tools. We didn't change architecture. We never took custody. We, you know, there were certain red lines that we had internally, like, we don't want to take custody and we don't want to become a financial institution. We don't want to be a bank. Right. We want to be software. So nothing on our end change. Something changed in the Department of Justice, something changed in the administration, Biden's administration, and that culminated on April 24, 2024, with 50 armed FBI agents, armored vehicles, drones, the whole nine yards, raiding my property, simultaneously raiding Bill while he was in Portugal, simultaneously seizing our, our servers, which housed our code repositories and, you know, our email server and wallet server. Anything we had was seized all in one operation. So this was like a big, you know, a big thing. And to your point, all they really had to do was either call me or call my call. Samurai's lawyer. We had a lawyer who was known, right? It wasn't like some hidden guy. He was out there and known. All they had to do was contact him and say, we think your client's breaking the law, or we're investigating your client and we want him to self surrender. And I would have, I'm not a lawbreaker, I'm not a fugitive. You know, I would have gone and surrendered and started the legal process. We didn't have to have a militarized raid.
- [13:50]
B
Sorry, did you say 55 0?
- [13:52]
A
Like 5 0? Yeah. I mean, it was a swarm.
- [13:58]
B
I'm sorry. But just like, as a taxpayer, that Just feels like a gross misuse of taxpayer resources to set like this. They weren't, you know, it's like, I don't know that they think they were trying to raid Ruby Ridge or something and, you know, take out another set of.
- [14:13]
A
It was crazy. I mean, and like, the, the armored vehicle, what was that for? I live in a small rural town. You know, like, there's. What's the armored vehicle for? And what. Why do you need the drones and, you know, all the guns pointing at me and my wife? I have no criminal history. I have no history of violence. The crimes I'm accused of are white collar crimes with no victim. So what's. What's all of this show about? And. And that's really what it was. It was a show. It was theatrics.
- [14:44]
B
I mean, it's just. It's just really gross, to be honest with you. Like, that's just. It's a disgusting way to treat a law abiding citizen, because I think that is what you are ultimately is a law abiding citizen who created a product that people really liked. Again, to emphasize this for people, you guys didn't have control of any user funds like, you were not. And maybe, maybe it's worthwhile to just explain the difference between how you guys architected your solution at Samurai and what people may think of as typical, you know, mixing services. Because I think a lot of that often got lost in some of the mainstream media coverage of this and everything else. It was all lumped together. So can you, can you give us the breakdown of what was the differentiator there for you guys?
- [15:26]
A
Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. So let's start by describing a traditional bitcoin mixer and what the purpose of that bitcoin mixing is and how they do it. Right? So the purpose of a bitcoin mixer is to break the link between this bitcoin and this bitcoin, right? It's the same bitcoin, but this one, you don't want the history attached to it. So it's breaking the links of the past history from the future activity of a bitcoin. That's why people mix, right? So, for example, you get. You have this bitcoin and the person who had it before you did something bad with it, and you don't want to be associated with that bad behavior, right? So you mix that bitcoin so that when you get it back, that bad behavior, that history of bad behavior is gone, right? That's why people would mix how they would mix traditionally Was I have this bitcoin and I send it to the mixer. It leaves my wallet and enters the wallet of the mixer. And I am hoping that the mixer is legitimate and will send me that, a bitcoin back. That's unconnected, right? So there's a key aspect that's happening here. I have the bitcoin, then I don't have the bitcoin, someone else has the bitcoin and then hopefully someone else sends me back the bitcoin. That's a traditional mixer. So the, the key aspect of that is I'm giving up custody and control. I'm giving that custody and control to someone else. What we were able to do in Samurai Wallet was entirely what we call non custodial, meaning the user never gives up custody of their bitcoin. They have a bitcoin and they go through a process that's really not even called mixing. It's just kind of a term people use in a general, like, colloquial sense. But it's called. It's really a collaborative transaction. By joining other people who want the same benefit, want to break the past history from the future activity. By joining in a, in a transaction together, you effectively get the same outcome, right? You get privacy, you get confusion on the blockchain that stops you from being able to determine what the past history was. But in our solution, you never had to give up custody. So in the traditional solution, I send the bitcoin out, now I don't have it. In this solution and samurai solution, I have the bitcoin in this hand and I move it to this hand. It's always been on me. It's always been in my custody and my control. It's never left my wallet. It goes from one address I control in my wallet to another address I control in my wallet. That's a big piece of the puzzle. It's an important piece of the puzzle. We thought that was what made Samurai Wallet lawful, right? We, this is what the regulator said was important, you know, and we thought we were in the clear. And we were in the clear for 10, almost 10 years, until suddenly we weren't.
- [18:42]
B
I think it's worthwhile too, to maybe talk about said regulator, because in fact, it's not just that you guys thought you were in the clear. The regulator in question, FinCEN, actually confirmed you guys were in the clear. You were not operating a, quote, unlicensed money transmitter business. This was, of course, this fact was hidden from you guys for how long do they sit on that? Six months or something? Can you A year. You talk about that a little. Because this, when I heard this, I was like, you've got to be kidding me. I mean, how is this not somehow grounds for dismissal? I'm not a lawyer, but, like, it is. This just seemed insane to me.
- [19:14]
A
It certainly is grounds for dismissal. And, you know. But yeah, so let's get into that, right? So the regulator in charge of money transmission and combating illicit finance is a, it's called FinCEN, the financial crime Enforcement Network. It's a part of the Treasury Department of the United States. This is their, this is their sole responsibility, money transmission and combating illicit finance. FinCEN is one of the only regulators that gave real common sense guidance early on in Bitcoin, right? They were tasked to determine how Bitcoin fits into anti money laundering and money transmission activities in 2013. This is early stuff. And they have common sense response. They say, in 2013, in order to be a money transmitter, as defined by us, as defined by FinCEN, you have to have custody and control of the funds, right? Because how can you transmit something you've never had? How can you, you know, it's common sense. So every, everyone in the space in 2013, lawyers in the space, builders in the space, all understood that in order to be a money service business, you have to take custody. And if you become a money service business, you have rules to follow. You have the bank secrecy act to follow. You have to do anti money laundering checks. You have to do know your customer checks. Kyc know your customer checks. So, for example, an exchange like Kraken or Coinbase, they take custody. They are clearly a money transmitter. They are clearly a money service business. They have to do all of the things that a money service business has to do. In 2019, they again give guidance. They say, yes, we were right the first time. In order to be a money service business, in order to be a money transmitter, you have to actually have the money to transmit. But they added something in 2019. They added the concept of an anonymity service provider or an anonymity software provider, right? And they said in black and white, if you are an anonymity software provider, such as a tumbler or a mixer, you are not a money transmitter unless you take custody of the funds. It couldn't be more clear. So we launched Whirlpool, our CoinJoin implementation in 2019, after this guidance had come out, making it explicit we weren't breaking the law and we thought we were on the right side of things. We had a lawyer who thought we were on the right side of things. The entire industry thought we were on the right side of things, even if they didn't like coin mixing, right? And there's plenty of people in the industry who didn't like coin mixing, said, oh, you're, you're going to be mixing your coins with criminals or you're going to be doing, you know, whatever. But none of them said what that was doing was illegal because the guidance was so clear. So fast forward April 2024, we get the raid, we get charged with unlicensed money transmission and money laundering. Those are the two charges, conspiracy to commit those crimes. And in my head I'm thinking at first, like, oh, they must have made a mistake. They must think we're a custodial mixer. You know, this will be easily resolved. Then I find out, oh, they know you're not custodial. They put it in the indictment. They are non custodial. And so I'm like, okay, that's weird. I guess we're going to have to fight this out in court. And we go through a year of discovery process a year for the government to give us their evidence they have against us. And your listeners may not know this, but in a criminal trial, the government is required to hand over all evidence, even if it's evidence that is good for you. Right. So if it's called exculpatory evidence, they have to give it to you without you asking because you may not know what to ask for. Right? So this is a, this is called the Brady Rule in criminal procedure that the government has to give you this stuff. Well, the government didn't give us something and we found out about it. And when we found out about it, we asked them specifically to give it to us. So we found out that the government, six months before indicting us and raiding us, six months before, they had actually gone to the regulator and they asked the regulator, is Samurai Wallet doing something illegal? Are they a money service business? Are they transmitting without a license? And FinCEN responded, no, they don't take custody. So we don't consider them a money transmitter. The government had this information six months before indicting us. And instead of, you know, doing the honorable thing and saying, oh, I guess, you know, the regulator in charge of money transmission says they're not doing anything wrong, let's leave it there. They charge us anyway with unlicensed money transmission. And then they hid this email from us for a year, which is a Brady violation. So, yeah, that was, that's just one small thing of this whole case that.
- [24:32]
B
Is messed up just listening to that. I don't see how anybody could listen to what you just said and think that somehow justice has been served. This seems like a gross miscarriage of justice. This seems honestly just like predatory. It seems like this was targeted. It seems like whether they were trying to make an example out of you guys because you were clearly non custodial. Clearly, like they literally had the information that the regulator in charge of this, who they were going to try and charge you underneath, basically said, no, these guys are good. And yet somehow they still went forward with this. I can't understand how that was greenlit all the way down. I mean, like, how does that even happen? How does that happen that you go to the regulator in charge of regulating the people you're trying to prosecute and they say, nope, they're good, they're not breaking any laws, and then you go and charge them with that anyway? It just, it literally, I'm, my, my mind is just like, is blown by this because it's just, it's just fucking insane, frankly.
- [25:39]
A
Yes, our, our jaws dropped when we, when we found this information out. Right. And the reason you have this reaction, which is a normal reaction to have, is because you think the justice system has anything to do with justice, but it doesn't. The justice system has nothing to do with justice, has nothing to do with truth. We like to think that the prosecutor, the prosecutor's office is a noble office, and the role of the prosecutor is to find out the truth. But that is not the case. The prosecutor's only role is to take down the person that they put the target on. No matter what. No matter what. Even if the person is innocent, that is inconsequential to the prosecutor. The prosecutor says, we painted you with the target, therefore you're guilty and we're taking you down. Even if we have to stretch the truth, even if we have to hide exculpatory information, even if FinCEN, who's in charge of money transmission, says you're good. What does FinCEN know? They're not the Department of Justice. We are. And that's, that's just. And it's not even unique to my case, you know, I wish it was. This has happened in almost every federal criminal trial, every especially white collar. And if you talk, I've talked to so many people who have been impacted by the Justice Department in this country. You know, they reach out to me and they tell me, like, this happened to me too. I know what you're talking about. You know, and it's it's comforting to actually speak to these people because thank God you haven't been impacted by the Department of Justice, and I hope you never are. You couldn't possibly know. So when we're talking, this is shocking to you, but when I talk to someone else who's been through this, it's not shocking. It's like a therapy session where we, we are telling each other, you know, what they did to us and we, you understand it on a, on a truly human level because it's the same story over and over again. The Justice Department is not about justice. It's not about truth. And, you know, I'm hoping that I can get that message across doing all of these interviews because it's, it's, you know, it's really not a bitcoin related thing. The, the, the, the prosecution in this case obviously was about bitcoin and, and stifling a, an innovation and privacy they really didn't like. But besides that, it, the same strategy, lie in the indictment. Stretch the truth, take things out of context, you know, hide information. And it just happens all the time in this country.
- [28:15]
B
I mean, it's like, should make any, any reasonable person's blood boil to hear this. And it's, honestly, it's, it's even more sad that like, you talk to people who have gone through this and they're like, oh, yeah, that, that, that sounds about right. Like, dear Lord, like, the problem being so widespread that this is just par for the course is disgusting to me. And I would ask like, again, I'll pause for a second just to say, if anybody happens to be listening to this, who happens to have any connections, any way to get the ear of anybody even remotely close to Trump. All it takes is the right phone call, the right text, the right conversation, and you might be able to change a couple of people's lives. Bill and Keones, who are currently waiting to go to prison. So I would just ask people like, share this message, Share, share anything that K is posting. Share this stream if you feel like it, get the message out there. And if you have any personal contacts, please use them because this is, I, I, I'm, if you're like me, you're growing more and more enraged the more you hear about this, because it's just, it's just fucking insane. And maybe it's worthwhile going a little bit like, why was this, why was this indictment brought under the Southern District of New York? Can you explain that? Because you guys weren't a New York company. You weren't operating in New York. How? How does that even happen? How does the Southern District of New York seem to weasel its way into every really weird case out there? What if you could lower your tax bill and stack Bitcoin at the same time? Well, by mining Bitcoin with Blockware you can New tax guidelines from the big beautiful bill allow American miners to write off 100% of the cost of of their mining hardware in a single tax year. That is right, a 100% write off. So if you have $100,000 in capital gains or income, you can purchase $100,000 worth of miners and offset it entirely. Blockware's mining as a service enables you to start mining right now without lifting a finger. Blockware handles everything from securing the miners to sourcing low cost power to configuring the mining pool. They do it all. You get to stack Bitcoin at a discount every single day while also saving big come tax season. Get started today by going to mining.blockware solutions.com TitCoin Again, that's mining.blockware solutions.com titcoin Use the code TitCoin to get $100 off your first miner when using the Blockware Marketplace. Of course, none of this is tax advice from me. Go speak with the team at Blockware to learn more. One more time. That is mining.blockwaresolutions.com TitCoin Wish you could access cash without selling your Bitcoin? LEDN makes that possible. The global leader in Bitcoin backed lending, LEDN has issued over $10 billion in loans since 2018 and has a perfect record of protecting client assets. Why is a leaden loan different? Well, with custody loans, collateral is not lent out to generate interest, no credit checks, no monthly payments, apply in minutes and repay whenever you want with zero penalties and proof of reserves. Reports verified by a top accounting firm are published every six months. LEDN gives Bitcoin holders a secure, transparent way to unlock liquidity without selling. Learn more@leden IO Walker that's L E D N dot I O forward slash Walker hey everyone, quick word from my sponsor Blockstream. Right now through the end of 2025 they are running their biggest sale yet, 21% off every blockstream Jade Hardware Wallet. No code needed. This is the lowest price you'll see all year on the most trusted Bitcoin only hardware wallet on the planet. Bitcoiners will always tell you not your keys, not your coins because they've seen exchange after exchange fail over the years and rug people of their funds. Having a hardware Wallet means you never have to worry about that happening to you. Blockstream Jade is the simplest, most secure way to protect your bitcoin. Whether you're brand new or a hardcore stacker. Its sleek low profile design, full color display and dead simple setup lets you secure your sats in minutes. As your stack grows, Jade scales with you. Air gapped setup, fully functional QR mode with the build in camera, native multi sig support and tons more advanced features. Head to store.blockstream.com right now. The 21% holiday discount is live now through December 31st and you can use coupon code walker for an additional 10% off. Stock is limited at these prices and once they're gone, they are gone. Secure your wealth today before the next leg up. Grab your jade today@store.blockstream.com and rest easy like Satoshi intended. Now back to the show.
- [33:08]
A
Well, they sure do. They sure do. They have a reputation for it. Yeah. No, we had no infrastructure in New York City. We had no infrastructure, no employees in New York City. I hadn't been to New York City in a very long time, had never worked in New York City building. Samurai Wallet didn't write one line of code for Samurai Wallet in New York City. So yeah, how do they have jurisdiction over this case? Well, we know exactly how they did it. So they send some poor slub FBI agent out into the street of Manhattan to pull out his cell phone, install Samurai Wallet on it, make a transaction with it and then they say we have jurisdiction now because a crime occurred. The, the. So I have to, I have to back up.
- [33:50]
B
Wait, did they actually do this? Like this is confirmed?
- [33:53]
A
Yeah, yeah, this is confirmed. So the government's theory is that one Samurai is a financial institution. Right? That's, that's where everything starts. Samurai Wallet is not just software. It's not just non custodial software. It's a financial institution. And as a financial institution, Samurai Wallet has an obligation to do anti money laundering and know your customer checks. Right. I'm sure some of your listeners have installed a self custodial wallet. Maybe Blue Wallet, maybe Sparrow, maybe Edge Wallet. You know, something like that. None of those wallets ask for ID or you're, or your, you know, register with us or your email. None of them. Because it makes no sense. It's just a piece of software letting you manage your private keys. That's what a wallet is. Right. But the Southern district of New York said Samurai Wallet isn't just a wallet, it's a financial institution. Like an exchange, like Coinbase, like Your bank. And because it's a financial institution and they aren't collecting KYC and AML information just by depositing bitcoin into the wallet. This FBI agent, just by him doing that, a crime had been committed by us because we didn't ask him for his ID and we didn't ask him for his, his, his identity, his, his AML and KYC information. So that was the crime, underlying crime that gave them the jurisdiction to prosecute us.
- [35:23]
B
Is that not like, I mean, maybe. And again, I'm just growing more enraged by the second here because if this happened with, to you guys, certainly this is common practice for them broadly if they want to be able to try a case in their jurisdiction. But if that's the case, I mean you're just literally, you guys have been operating, we're operating for almost 10 years again like over nine years. And then in order to, for they wanted to clearly make something happen. So they get an FBI agent to go and download your wallet, make a transaction in New York, which just, it just sounds so incredibly stupid. Like that, just like that just sounds so idiotic that that's like, well we've got them now boys. Like look, I got, I mean what, what are you even doing? Like you have nothing better to do than to try and go after open source developers who are creating non custodial software? I mean that is just insane. Like there are actual criminals out there, violent criminals. And instead of going after those people, you're spending your time trying to literally find the justification to try a couple of open source developers in New York who have no relation to it whatsoever. I mean that's just fucking nuts, man. Like I was there ever at any thought, is there any way for you guys to push back against that or. Sorry. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.
- [36:39]
A
No, no, I, I was just saying you, you start to unravel how the whole system works because they do this all the time. They, they, they get the jurisdiction. Like with Bitcoin they just had to do something a little different, right? They had to have some schlub come down stairs, stand in the street and download the app. But normally like for normal wire, like wire fraud and stuff like that, their justification is, hey man, this is Manhattan. This is New York City. All the wires come through our banks, right? So they'll grab somebody in Arizona who's never been to Manhattan because the parent bank of that, he used to, you know, send a check or do a deposit was, has their, their companies in Manhattan. So that's how they do it for traditional things. So for, for Bitcoin, they just said, well, how do we do that? Okay, we'll just send someone downstairs and download the app and make a transaction. So yeah, it's, it's again, to reiterate what I just said, it's not about justice. It's not about truth. It's about getting the guy that they put the target on.
- [37:39]
B
I mean, this just leaves me a little bit speechless because it's just so insane. I can only imagine for you guys actually living through this and being like, what the fuck is going on here? This doesn't make any sense. Okay, so you guys don't hear anything. Basically, you're, you're operating this very well loved and used and appreciated service for almost a decade. You then get your doors kicked down by a great use of taxpayer dollars. They send in 50 agents and for some reason an armored vehicle and drones, which I'm not sure why those are even, even necessary. I hope they had a pack of attack dogs with them too. A bunch of German Shepherds just to round the thing out. Okay, so they do that. You guys then are realizing that you are in the shit essentially. But I mean, I assume again you, you mentioned like, okay, we thought, look, this must have been a mistake, whatever. At what point did you realize, okay, they're gonna, like, they're gonna keep going with this? Like, was there a point where you said, oh, for some reason, like, you realized that this was just a screwed up situation, that they were basically prosecuting unfairly? Like when, when was like the, the oh shit moment?
- [38:51]
A
So the, the first oh shit moment was when I got home that night after arrest. Right? Because when I learned what the charges were, I was still in the holding cell or in the holding facility of the jail. I was shackled and I was, I was taken to the court appointed attorney who was there to represent me in getting bail and getting home that night. Right? Because I wasn't arrested in New York, because I not in New York. I was arrested in the Western district of Pennsylvania. They don't know who I am. They have no charges against me there. They don't really care about me and they have no reason to keep me around. So they wanted me out of their, their possession on all bail. So when I was sitting there talking to the court appointed attorney, she's the one who told me what the charges were. We were separated by glass, so I couldn't like, read the indictment myself. She told me what the charges were. And that's when I was thinking, oh, this must be a mistake. You know, they think we're operating like we're custodial. But the, the point of that whole meeting wasn't to go through the charges because she wasn't going to defend me. It was to, hey, let's get you out on, on bail. And she was successful. She did a great job. You know, I've talked about it on another podcast, but the overwhelming feeling of relief when you meet the court appointed attorney for the first time, right? Because for the last five or six hours, everyone has been against you. Everyone's treating you like a criminal. You're standing there in shackles. You know, you're, you're scum of the earth to every one of these people. And she's the first person you see who's on your side, right? Doesn't look at you that way, wants to help you. And it's like an overwhelming feeling. So I was, she did great. She got me bail. That night when I got home, she, she gave me a copy of the indictment and I read, I sat down and read it. That's when I knew that, oh, they know exactly how it works. They just don't care. They know exactly. And they, you know, they know we're non custodial, but they're going like, they're contorting themselves to explain how we're a financial institution, right? And they're certainly contorting themselves to, to describe how we solicited crime, right? So like I'm reading this in the indictment and I'm going, okay, this isn't a misunderstanding. This is a hatchet job and we're going to have to really defend ourselves here.
- [41:23]
B
Okay? And I mean this, the other thing here is obviously being prosecuted in this way. I assume that you guys have just been like bleeding money on lawyer fees and everything else because that's the other thing, right? They're just, they're essentially, they're trying to put you in as vulnerable a position as possible with the ultimate goal of forcing you to take a plea deal. Can you talk a little bit about the, the initial terms that they offered you? Because I think a lot of people saw, oh, the Samurai, the Samurai developers, they took a, you know, a plea deal. They look, they, they pled guilty and that's, you know, that's what gets the, it's like, that's what gets the headlines, right, is oh, you know, they pled and it's like, well, yeah, but then you should have the context of what you guys were threatened with, essentially. Can you talk about that a little bit?
- [42:06]
A
Yeah, sure. So the first part of the question is the final bail conditions. So the bail conditions were a million dollars secured by my wife's property and my father's Property and his 401k. And then it was also home incarceration, which means you can't leave the four walls of the house except to go to court. And the third condition was I'm not allowed to speak to Bill, can't speak to my co defendant in the case without lawyers present. Speaking of lawyers present, as you made reference to, lawyers are expensive generally, but in Manhattan, they are the most expensive in the country. You know, we're talking on the low end, fifteen hundred dollars an hour, and on the higher end, four thousand dollars an hour easily. Right. And you just don't have one attorney working for you. You have one main attorney and then a couple associates, a couple paralegals, all in that range. So the amount of money you're spending to defend yourself is astronomical. So if I wanted to talk to Bill, my lawyer has to be there. Okay, that's two, $2,000 an hour. His lawyer has to be there. That's $2,000 an hour. That's a $4,000 an hour conversation. Right. So we're not talking that much. We can't, it's, it's not practical. So, yeah, the, the lawyer fees are, are very difficult to deal with, and they're made even more difficult by the other bail condition, which is you are, you cannot make any cryptocurrency transactions, directly or indirectly. So no transactions at all. I can't speak fully for Bill, but I think he's probably similar situation as me. I didn't have Fiat. I didn't have cash. I had a very small amount. My entire net worth was in bitcoin and it had been since 2012. Right. And that doesn't mean I had a lot of bitcoin. Right. Just because I was early into Bitcoin doesn't mean I'm just one of these crypto whales, right. I had to spend bitcoin. I had to invest my bitcoin into the building, the business, you know, so I wasn't sitting on a lot, but I was sitting on enough to get started with a legal team. And I wasn't able to use it. Right. We had to, it had to be state, so we had to find a lawyer who would, who understood Bitcoin, who would accept Bitcoin, and who would accept Bitcoin eventually. Right. Because couldn't pay him yet. So it was a, it was a very big challenge. We did find a A lawyer at a great firm, and he was a great lawyer. He did a great job for us. Very happy with him. And, you know, he took a chance on us. He still really hasn't been paid fully yet. And I'm, I'm about two and a half million dollars in legal debt and about a million. 1.3 million in debt to friends and family who have loaned me money to, you know, pay for some of these legal bills. So, I mean, financial ruin is, is, is not even saying enough. It's completely destroyed. My entire financial life is destroyed.
- [45:28]
B
Man. I just want to say again, like, I'm. I'm so sorry this is happening to you guys, because it's just, it's just fucked up. And for anybody who does want to join, if you're watching this live, you can just go right now to billandkeone.org so B I L L A N D K E o n n e dot org and there's a link to both the. The change.org petition and also to donate. Unfortunately, again, you can't donate in bitcoin, which I'm sure a lot of bitcoiners were. Did they give a reason for that? Because that just seems like, just like an extra, like, let's just stick an extra knife in what is even.
- [46:02]
A
They didn't give.
- [46:03]
B
I don't get in.
- [46:04]
A
They didn't give any reason. They don't have to, you know, they just, they just make the, the rule. The judge says it and you have to live with it. Right? Because if you, if you don't live with it and you, you know, make a transaction and defy a court order, that's another charge. That's obstruction of justice. So. And it's actually considered bail jumping. Even if you don't leave and, you know, try to flee. If you violate a bail condition, that's bail jumping and that's like another five years or something like that. So not even worth thinking about violating that condition. That's why we don't have a cryptocurrency option on there currently.
- [46:41]
B
So, so just kind of getting into. You set the stage for it a little bit now. But the actual. What they tried to slap you with, essentially to say, this is what we're going to hit you with. Can you, can you go into those details a little bit?
- [46:53]
A
Yeah, so let's, let's get into that. The plate aspect of things. Because it's still, at this point, even with these challenges, we are fighting this, right? These charges are nonsense and we need to get the, these facts in front of the jury so the jury can see how nonsense this is, right? Excuse me. So we're still in that. That state of mind, and we find out about the FinCEN thing, right? This, this Brady information that the government didn't hand over. This is a big deal, and we want to talk to the judge about it, right? And the judge can do a lot of things with that information. The judge could dismiss the whole thing if he found that it. This was, you know, a willful act by the prosecution to withhold this Brady material, this Brady information. So we had a motion in front of the court to the judge. We also had a motion to the judge to dismiss the indictment as a matter of law, right? And we write. You write a large motion, like 25 pages, and you, you explain to the judge that even if everything the government is saying about us is true, that he should still dismiss the charges because they don't hold water. They don't hold up to the law that they're claiming to. And so we had that. We had the, the Brady motion. We had various other motions and of the court, and we were told to come argue our motions on a certain date. Now, two days before that date, suddenly we get a new judge. And you don't understand how unusual this is. Normally you get a judge and that judge is with you through the whole case. And even if you find, like, you're found guilty and you go to jail and there's some sort of issue while you're at jail and you need to see the judge again, you're seeing the same judge. That judge is your judge. So it's very rare to get a new judge and we get a new judge. No one says why. It's not like the old judge is sick because he's still there and still hearing other cases. So we have a new judge and the new judge we have. It's not a great. It's not great for us, right? The new judge has a reputation. Judge Coates, her name is, Has a reputation. She's very pro prosecutor. She was herself a prosecutor, and not only just any prosecutor, she was the top prosecutor in the Southern District of New York Criminal Division, which is the same division that's charging us. Not great. She also has a reputation for giving the max sentence possible on the crime, right? So a lot of judges will show leniency if they believe that the defendant is remorseful. For example, a lot of judges look at all the facts and aspects of the case, and maybe they go, well, 25 years really isn't appropriate. So maybe I'll give you 11 or something like that. Right? Not this judge. If this judge can do 25 years, that's what she's doing. So all of these are not great for us, you know, to say the least. But we're still in the mind that we gotta fight this because at trial it's not really about the judge, it's about the jury. We need to get the jury on our side and we feel like we have a pretty strong case. So now it's, it's time to meet our new judge and argue our motions again. I just have to reiterate. Motion to dismiss the indictment, major motion in any criminal trial, and motion to, to basically compel the government to tell us what the heck was going on and why they didn't give us that FinCEN letter. Right. The, the fact that they didn't give it to us is not in question. That is proved they didn't give it to us. Right. So we just want to know why. Who made the decision not to give it to us and is there anything else they're not giving us? That's what we wanted to find out. We get in front of the judge, we're supposed to argue these motions. She gets on the bench, starts, you know, the proceedings, and she says, I've read the motions. She's again ready, reiterating. She's been the judge in this case for two days, okay? And she has other cases, so maybe she spent an hour or two reading our emotions and getting caught up with a year's worth of pre trial preparation. She goes, I've read the emotions. They're all denied. That was it. No argument. She didn't let us say our piece or the government say their piece. No argument whatsoever. Motions denied. She didn't write a opinion. She didn't say an opinion. Normally if a judge denies or grants a motion, they write an opinion, and if they don't write it, they give a verbal opinion and give you some insight into their mind as to why they granted the motion or denied it. Say, I don't think it met the law, or I think it did meet the law. Whatever the case is, she didn't do any of that. It was just a one word denied. That was the point of the oh shit moment. That right there, I look to my lawyer and I go, we're gonna get railroaded here. There's no way we're getting a fair trial here. She's gonna make sure the jury can't do anything but convict us. And when that happens, she's giving us 25 years. So at that point is when mindset shifted from, let's fight this, let's go to the jury. You know, they're going to hear about the FinCEN letter, they're going to hear about our lawyer's advice. They're going to hear all the facts to, oh, she's not going to let us bring up fincen. She's not going to let us do an advice of counsel defense. She's going to make sure, you know, the jury has no true grasp of all of the information that's in this case. So that's when we started to think a deal is probably the best option here.
- [52:47]
B
Okay. Again, this just continues to get more insane. And so did they ever give a reason for the first judge needing to step aside? I mean, was there like a serious illness or something like that or. Because otherwise why would you, why would you do that?
- [53:02]
A
Correct. It's so rare in the federal system for that to happen. And we know the judge wasn't ill because he was still hearing other cases. He was still on the docket. So there no one explained it to us. Our lawyers didn't know, you know, who knows what happened? There's just no way to know. And you, everything that happened in the courtroom or in the, behind the courtroom, in the judge's chambers, you don't know. That's all honor system stuff. Right. So the government, the prosecutors are not supposed to talk with a judge without the defense there. Right. That's a rule. But it happens all the time. Right. And the only way you would find out about it is if someone spills the beans. So it's all honor system. So who knows what happened and who spoke to who? Maybe a clerk in the old judge's office talked to a clerk in the prosecutor's office and said, hey, Judge Berman's thinking of dismissing and who knows what chain of events that marks. So it's just, that's all speculation. We just, and there's no way of knowing. But what we do know is a change of judge mid case after a year of, you know, pretrial stuff is highly unusual. It just doesn't often happen.
- [54:21]
B
And I mean, again, this is just another one of those things where it, you know, this is again, just speculation, of course, because I don't want to get hauled into the Southern District of New York myself. But all this just seems really fishy. Like it can't help but seem really, it can't help but seem extremely targeted and, you know, personal while also being extremely impersonal of course, it just, none of this actually adds up or passes basic, like, basic muster when it comes to just, is this a logical chain of events here that you would expect to see, like, just time after time here? And then, so then when they actually, like, what was the. Can you maybe frame the plea deal versus what would have been the worst case had this judge, in fact, you know, not allowed all this, this evidence to be submitted, not allowed you guys to bring up these different things to the jury? What was the worst case that you guys were looking at versus what you were ended up being forced to accept for the plea deal?
- [55:18]
A
Right, right. Yeah, I'll definitely get there. So we have this experience, right, where we're in this courtroom. I realize what's going on here. First time we've ever been in front of this judge. We've been going through this case over a year at this point, and we've never heard a deal offer from the government. We've never asked them for a deal. Like two days after this appearance, the government comes and offers us a deal. Right. We didn't go to them. They came to us. There's some, some lawyer on Twitter who's armchair quarterbacking this whole case, who thinks he has some inside information that we went to them, that didn't happen. Government came to us, said, do you want to do a deal now? Basically. Right? So, yeah. So here was what they. Here's, here's the offer. You plead to money transmission, conspiracy to commit money transmission, which is a five year statutory maximum sentence, and will drop conspiracy to commit money laundering, which is a 20 year sentence if you don't take that deal. We will ask the judge for the full 25 years if you get convicted. In addition to that, if you don't take the deal, if you get convicted, not only will you spend 25 years in federal prison, but when you're out, you'll be responsible for paying $237 million in restitution to the government, which is essentially saying, we're giving you a life sentence. Right. You won't have to spend your whole life in the prison, but when you get out, you still owe us $237 million. And you can't travel, you can't go anywhere, you can't do anything until that's taken care of. So it was, that was tough, right? And then part of the deal was, instead of 237 million, you can just pay us 6.3 million. And if you pay us the 6.3 million, then we'll consider the 237 million, fully paid.
- [57:27]
B
How did they arrive at these numbers?
- [57:29]
A
Ah, yes, I'm glad you asked. So there were several numbers that the government was working with, and these are found in the indictment. I don't know if they're accurate or true because a lot of what was in the indictment wasn't accurate and wasn't true. So I have to assume just for this conversation, that the numbers are true. So let's just do that. So the first number the government threw out is $2 billion. That number is the total, they say, that went through my software, that went through Bill and my software. They call it unlawful because their contention is that we were supposed to KYC and AML all of this money that came in and we didn't. So all the money's unlawful. Right, two. $2 billion worth of Bitcoin, all unlawful. Then the second number they're working with is 237 million. This is the number they say of the 2 billion. This 237 million were the actual proceeds of crime, some type of crime, whether it be, you know, guns, drugs, hacking, whatever went through the software. And then the third number is 6.3 million. This is the number the government says we earned in fees over 10 years for running Samurai Wallet. So if we didn't take the deal, they're basically saying you're responsible for paying back to, or paying to the government 237 million in restitution, because that's the number that was illicit. And the deal was instead of paying 237 million, that was illicit, you only have to pay us what you earned over 10 years of running Samurai Wallet, which was $6.3 million. That's where they got those numbers from.
- [59:27]
B
So again, just kind of like absurdities here in that, I mean, even the 6.3 number, that's like, that's a lot of money. And again, their whole assumption here is that everything you guys did, every just the act of doing it, was all completely illegal, even though it wasn't. Again, even though, Again, just to clarify, even though this is all based on just incorrect premises from the start. Okay, but going with what they said then, I mean, this is just. Is that even the precedence? In other. Because we know that, for example, JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, every major bank in the world, you name one of them, they've paid hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in fines for money laundering, for drug cartels, for dictators, for all sorts of things. For Jeffrey Epstein, for example, I think JPMorgan Chase settled for 100 and something million for that one. Presumably the amount of money laundered was far larger than that. But is that, Are they even applying the same standard to you guys that they would apply to a financial institution, which again, they're trying to claim you are? So one would think they apply the same standard.
- [60:36]
A
Yeah. So, I mean, I think the way they thought about it is like, let's say we were an actual financial institution. Let's say they were right about that and we were one because we took custody, right? So their line of thinking is, well, you have 237 million that you're not supposed to have, right? Because that's illicit. So give it.
- [60:55]
B
Even though you never had it. Of course.
- [60:57]
A
But we didn't have it, right? So like hsbc, when they launder a billion dollars for the cartels, they had it because they are a financial institution. They had the billion dollars. So the government goes in, finds out. They don't raid the CEO of hsbc, by the way, right? They called his lawyer and say, hey, we figured out what you guys are up to. You're bad boys, you know, like, we're going to come and get our fine. They don't. No one goes to jail in that situation, right? But they do. They go and say, you laundered $1 billion, so you owe us $1 billion. And you have $1 billion because you laundered it, right? It was in your possession. Give it to us now. In our case, they knew we never had $237 million. There was never a time that we had that money because we never took anyone's money, right? We never transmitted their money. We never laundered their money because we never had their money. So the government knew that and they didn't care. And it was just a tactic to really screw us in the event that we go to trial and risk the 25 years. As if risking the 25 years was not enough, right. They had to add an additional thing and say, well, if you, you go to trial, you, and you do lose, you're going away for 25 years. And then if you get out, right? Bill would be in his 90s by the time 25 years was over. If you get out alive, you still owe us $287 million. That's never going to be paid. I'm not going to be able to earn $287 million in this lifetime of mine. Sorry. Like, that's just not going to happen. They know it. They, they knew we never had it. So then they offer the reasonable thing Right. The reasonable thing, which is, well, you just pay us the 6 million that you earned over the course of 10 years. I know it sounds like a lot, but in the grant, that's not profit, that's just revenue. Right. We still had overhead, we had people to pay, we had whatever. So we obviously took the deal because the alternative was 25 years, $287 million and almost guaranteed conviction. Right. Why fight a fight that is so obviously skewed against you, you know, where you're just not going to win that fight?
- [63:17]
B
I mean, it's how kind of them to only, you know, slap you with the total or the total gross revenue of your business over that time. That's just how gracious, you know, of them. I mean, it's right. Again, this is, this is all just, just patently absurd to me. And the fact that they were, they knew exactly what they were doing, of course, with the giving you that really mass, 25 years plus an unfathomably large amount of money that nobody is obviously going to be able to pay, you're like, that is a life sentence, as you said. And for Bill, like quite literally. So given that he would be, you know, in his 90s, they know that that is such an insane stick to hold up that you're going to take the relative carrot instead, which is, okay, still go to prison, still pay millions of dollars for again, something that was not unlawful in the eyes of the regulator who was in charge of regulating this. I mean, it's like it just, all of it just seems so predatory and so targeted. I think that's what is just mind blowing about this case. Is it just. This is not how justice in America is supposed to work. This is not how a country that is, that has the rule of law is supposed to treat its citizens. And not just any citizen, but you guys were entrepreneurs and builders, developers, you were building tools that Americans and people all over the world, but like we're talking about America here that Americans wanted and needed and loved to use like this. This is basic. This. You built a, a freedom loving tool. You built a tool that is in line with the American ethos. That, and then to take that and to punish you guys for it in the most grotesque way with all of these other massive question marks and red flags that are on the prosecution side. To me it's like this, this is why I think people need to make as much noise about this as possible. Because if they can get away with this, if they can get away with doing this to you and Bill, they're not, they're not gonna stop. And again, I would pause for a second, say to anybody who has, is listening and has any way to get in touch with anyone even remotely close to President Trump, do so, like, he's certainly throwing some pardons around now. And if he wants America to truly be the bitcoin and crypto capital of the world, that will never happen. If we are throwing developers in jail when they haven't actually broken any laws, that's never going to happen. You can't have it both ways. And maybe another thing worth noting on here, because there were some changes made during the Trump administration, Right. Like that with the Blanche memo and things. Can you talk about that a little bit? Because that's another piece to this where it's like, what's going on here? Why is this being ignored?
- [66:07]
A
Yeah. So, I mean, like, the Trump administration, one talked a good game during the campaign season, but also started to deliver on their promises when he got elected, which is pretty unusual for a politician. And it's nice to see. Right. So he, I think President Trump truly wants America to be the crypto capital. I, I believe he does. And one of the things that his deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, did shortly after inauguration is write a memoir. We call it the Blanche Memo. It's also known as Ending regulation by prosecution memo. Right. Which is exactly what's happening in this case. And it could not have been more clear. Todd Blanche said the Department of Justice should not be charging the builders of software for the acts of their end users. And they specifically call out tumblers and mixers. And again, they focus on custody. You know, if they don't take custody, they're non custodial, or I think they use the term self hosted or something along those lines. But they mean non custodial. They're not money transmitters, and they shouldn't be charged with 1960 charges, which is what I was charged with, 1960. So we saw this. We're like, this is great. This is exactly what we were hoping for from the Trump administration. And they're delivering on it. And, you know, I think that Todd Blanche and that Main justice in D.C. under, under President Trump, is trying to do the right thing. But what they don't understand is they have the Southern District of New York, which has a nickname, by the way, the Sovereign District of New York, because they don't think that they answer to anybody. Right. They don't care what the, the Attorney General has to say or what the deputy Attorney general has to say. They're the, you know, Premier attorney's office in the country. They're Manhattan, they can do what they want. And that's. They did, they ignored the Blanche memo. They, the way they got around it was changing the charge from a 1960 B1B, which B1B is unlicensed money transmission, to B1C, which wasn't talked about explicitly in the Blanche memo. He only talked about B1B to B1C, which is knowing that the sum proceeds that went through the money transmission business were connected to crime. Right, but it still assumes that you're a money transmitting business. It still assumes that part. Right. So the fact that they didn't originally charge this, but the fact that I knew it was possible for criminals to use the free and open source software I created, just like criminals can use Signal or Tor or VPN or whatever type of software, but because I knew it was possible for them to use it, now I was guilty of B1C. And that's how they got around respecting the Blanche memo. They, you know, they, they're brilliant lawyers, don't get me wrong. These guys in the Southern District of New York all went to, like, you know, Harvard and Yale, the best law schools. So they do crafty things and you have to kind of be impressed by it. Right? Here's their boss, the deputy Attorney general, and they're outmaneuvering him with legal tricks. This is what they do. So they disrespected the Blanche memo, they disrespected Trump's, you know, whole pledge about stopping these type of prosecutions and making bitcoin or crypto, you know, United States crypto capital. And they're just doing their own thing. So I really don't fault the administration. I lay fault with the Southern District of New York. It needs to be cleaned out. You know, and one thing we talked about a little earlier in this, in this broadcast is how I, I will speak with people who have been impacted by the Justice Department. And we understand each other, right? We know what each other have, have gone through. I think one of the most powerful things in our case in trying to get a pardon from President Trump is he also has experience with the justice system. He also has been impacted by the Southern District of New York. So he knows this type of information coming that I'm telling you today that you're surprised by would not surprise the President. He's seen it firsthand. So all we need to do is, is get it in front of him, because if it's in front of him, he will, he will recognize it. He will see it and he is a fair minded person who wants to see justice. And I think a pardon would be not only possible, but likely. We just have to get it in front of him.
- [70:55]
B
Yeah, I mean, and, and again, I think that's a, it's an important clarification there that this is, you know, at this time, this isn't a failing of the administration specifically. It's like, you know, think what you will of Trump. You can have plenty of problems with it.
- [71:10]
A
Exactly.
- [71:10]
B
He, he did keep his promise about freeing Ross.
- [71:12]
A
Right.
- [71:13]
B
Like credit where credit is. I fully believe you should call out politicians when they do dumb stuff and you should say, you did a good job when you do, when they do good stuff.
- [71:20]
A
Like, that was a good thing.
- [71:22]
B
That was, that was an amazing, an amazing thing. Justice was, was righted there, you know, justice was, I mean, you can't, can't go back, can't erase the time that he spent rotting in prison. But he's back with his family now and that, that is what matters. And for you and Bill, it's like, we have the opportunity, President Trump has the opportunity to write this ship before you guys spend time in prison that you should not be spending there. Like, and I think that's a, it's a very important point there that he's been, he knows what lawfare is.
- [71:57]
A
Right.
- [71:57]
B
He knows what it's like to be targeted. Everything you've said tonight about this case, everything that you've said, it all feels targeted. It all feels like prosecutors going above and beyond to find ways to skirt around the existing rules and law structures. And like you said, they're very clever, clearly. They're clearly excellent, excellent lawyers. I don't necessarily mean that as a compliment in this case because them being excellent lawyers involves them basically carrying out a miscarriage of justice. So, like, and it just, it's like, what are you doing then? What, what's your, what's your reason for existing? Is your reason for existing to put people behind bars who are trying to make tools that are pro American? Because that's just up.
- [72:41]
A
That is the reason to be. That is how they advance in the office. That's how they, once they're done being a prosecutor, they go on the campaign to be governor or a state senator or a representative, and they said, hey, I had a 98% conviction rating. I put away the bad guys. So, yeah, they don't, they don't get promoted and advance in the office unless they're putting people behind bars. So the incentive isn't like, I Said to find truth, the incentive is to put people behind bars.
- [73:11]
B
And. And it's like, clearly, they.
- [73:13]
A
They are.
- [73:13]
B
They are good at doing that. I wish they would spend more time trying to put actual violent criminals behind bars.
- [73:19]
A
Yes, that would.
- [73:20]
B
That. That would be nice.
- [73:22]
A
Of all of the crime that I allegedly laundered, all the proceeds of crime for all these bad criminals, not one of these criminals was apprehended. Not one. Right. They said there was drug traffickers, there was weapons traffickers. They said there was, you know, child sex material, there was hit men. There was all of these terrible things that I do not like. And as an American, I would want my law enforcement, my FBI to stop those things. But not one of those things. Not one of the people that perpetrated those crimes was brought to trial. Not one of them. I was and Bill was. And not one of those people, in any evidence that the government has or showed, had any conversation with me or Bill. Right. We never talked to these people, had no idea who they were or that they were using whirlpool. So it's a farce, right? You hit the nail on the head. You want crime, actual crime to be stopped. You want actual criminals to be punished. So do I. And that's not what they're doing.
- [74:31]
B
I mean, it's. Again, it's just insane to me. And I mean, so there were. They. They did not bring. Obviously, they couldn't get anyone to go on this, you know, go on the stand as a witness and say, yep, I. I talked to Billion Keone and the update. I said, I want to launder some bitcoin. And they said, yep, sounds good. Launder that bitcoin with us. Like, didn't happen. They didn't have any of that? No, no. No victims were named. This is like, ringing similar to Ross's trial where no victims were named. Right, but you guys had none. None either. Right. So no victims.
- [75:02]
A
No victims.
- [75:03]
B
Like, no witnesses to the alleged crimes. Correct.
- [75:06]
A
And they had all of our electronics. I mean, I truly believe, again, that because the indictment was so light, like, normally when you get an indictment, they go all out. Right. They're going to show they put all their best evidence in there because they're trying to get you indicted. And every lawyer we spoke to was like, this is a really light indictment, you know, so the. What I think what they were trying to do was they looked at us and they said, these guys have to be guilty. There's no other way we can look. They have to be guilty. We may not have the smoking gun Right now. But once we get all of their devices, all of their electronics, and we go through them, we'll find the smoking gun because they're obviously guilty. And that never happened. They had all of our electronics. They went through everything. They looked at all our messages. They have one message from me in 2018 to a friend. This is before whirlpool even exists, by the way, right? We haven't even built coinjoin stuff yet. And I'm talking to a friend of mine who I went to elementary school with. He's not a criminal. He's just some guy I know, right? And I told him in like 2015 or something, I said, hey, you should buy some bitcoin, right? And he's not a technical guy. He's very not technical, in fact. And he's asking me these questions like, well, what is a bitcoin and how does it work? And, you know, what is an input? What does this mean? What does that mean? And I'm getting kind of frustrated at this point, and I really don't want to keep this conversation going anymore because I'm getting annoyed. And he finally asked, well, what is coin mixing again? Whirlpool doesn't exist. And what is coin mixing is, it's money laundering for bitcoin. I said that to him. This is the big bombshell evidence in the government's indictment. This is, it's money laundering for bitcoin. They give that one sentence, but what they don't give is the several sentences afterwards where I'm explaining that why someone would want to use coin mixing, right? Because he shows some interest. So I'm like, okay, maybe I'll give you a little bit more than a flippant one word answer. So I explained, well, if you want to protect yourself from criminals and people who want to harm you because they can see everything you're doing on the blockchain, you would use something like coin mixing, right? So I actually further explain what I meant. And they don't put that part in there, right? They put, it's money laundering for bitcoin. Keoni knew what he was building. It was. So this is what I mean, you know, when I know the context of things. You don't. And no one else does, but I do. And they're using this, this evidence, quote unquote, without any context to, you know, illustrate my intent. That that piece right there, what I just described, was their worst. Was the worst evidence for us. That was their big bombshell. And it was like, it's easily explained. It's not that big of a deal. And, and again, it was in 2018 before even Whirlpool even existed.
- [78:07]
B
And again, it's like context matters, right?
- [78:09]
A
Like, absolutely.
- [78:10]
B
Sure. You could go through my text and find some flippant things that I said in a couple group chats where it would like, you take that out of context and it would probably look really bad for me. In context, it may still look bad, but in this case I think it's very clear. Like what you said was like, yeah, you're giving him a flippant answer. Then it's like, okay, like, let me, let me go a little deeper for this guy. You know, he's an elementary school friend. But I mean, again, can I just get back to the fundamental idea that, that from the start this case was just predicated on bullshit. Like, this was just from the very beginning. This was not. This case should never have been brought. Right. This should never. And once it was brought, it should have been dismissed. Like, you guys wrote and maintained software, right? It allowed you to construct collaborative bitcoin transactions. You never controlled the funds, you never held the keys. Users are initiating this on their own. They're not having to reach out to you guys to do it.
- [79:10]
A
Right.
- [79:11]
B
You guys aren't in communication with the users.
- [79:13]
A
Correct.
- [79:14]
B
And again, you're, you're non custodial like that. And that has like been a big thing for, for FinCEN, right. This is like the core, like the boundary basically for, for this is like, is it custodial or non custodial? And if it's non custodial, okay, that's a different ballgame. And to me, this just sets such a absolutely horrific precedents moving forward to say, Yep, okay. Oh, you know, non custodial devs, you're in our sites too, in the Southern district of New York. Like clearly, maybe not everywhere else, but certainly seems like there. And, and what does that mean? So I, I would just, again, I want to. I'm going to keep beating this drum because Bitcoiners, I think we like, we cannot be complacent here. We cannot fall into this trap of. Well, you know, it's, it doesn't affect me right now, so I'm just not going to worry about it like this. We need to be engaged on this. We need to stand up on this. And because this is. If we don't now, you may not have the same opportunity later. This is a case where it's pretty clear, I think, to anybody who is thinking about this neutrally and logically and isn't a motivated prosecutor that this is not how justice is supposed to be served in America. This is not. And so, again, I would say, guys, make noise out there and make your voices heard and try to do whatever you can to share this message and sign the petition. Again, BillInKione.org, donate if you can. And because this is just. This is wrong, in my opinion. This is wrong. This is not something that should happen in the United States of America. It is happening, though. It's very real. It's happening to you guys right now. The clock is ticking for you guys, and it's like, we, we need to keep pushing on this. And I know a lot of people are. I know a lot of people have been out there pushing really hard because they, they know, like, what you guys stand for, and they are also not complete. You know, they're not corrupt prosecutors. Not saying these particular prosecutors are corrupt. I'm just saying if there were corrupt prosecutors.
- [81:16]
A
Now you're starting to think, like, what am I saying? What prosecutor is going to hear what I'm saying and take it out of context? Right, right.
- [81:23]
B
I don't know who these prosecutors are, so I'm not, of course not talking about them. I'm talking about theoretical prosecutors who may or may not be. Be corrupt and be, you know, carrying out justice in a very corrupt way. Not these ones, of course. Not at all them, really. Like, I mean, like, how, how are. I mean, I guess you don't know how Bill's holding up because again, you guys aren't allowed to talk without it's costing you $4,000 an hour, which is, again, just insane. How are you holding up? I mean, are, are you still. There's been a lot of noise about this. Like, there has been a, A, A kind of a ground swell of people coming, Coming to bat for you guys. Are, are you still feeling like. I hope you still have some, Some hope? Like, you seem like you're. You still have some hope. I'm honestly amazed like, you are. You're holding up incredibly well under the circumstances. Like, hats off to you, man. I cannot imagine.
- [82:12]
A
Yeah, no, thank you. I mean, I, I think. I don't know if it's hope or if it's. Like I said earlier, if we manage to get it in front of the President, which is difficult. He's the President of the United States. Right. Like, it's hard to get his attention. But if we do manage, if we make enough noise or the right people hear this and the right people share it and right people see it, I think we have a good chance, right? I think we have a good chance. So it's not hope in that sense. It's knowing that the President, again, is just a fundamentally fair guy. Like, you can hate his policies, you can hate his politics, you can hate the way he speaks to people. All of that really is irrelevant. He's a fundamentally fair minded person, I think. And getting. And he understands the lawfare, he understands that intimately. So getting the information in front of him is the hard part. But once it's in front of him, I think it's pretty likely he takes care of it and brings justice to me and Bill. So there is, I guess, some hope there. But besides that, I mean, I'm just, you know, it's a. It's a played out expression, but it really is. It is what it is. Like that's. There's nothing I can do at this point other than what I'm doing. And that that means just talking right now and getting the story out there so that when I'm in the cell, laying in bed at night thinking to myself, did I do everything I could have done? Did I speak to everyone I could have spoke to? Did I walk through every door that was open to me? I can say yes, right? I did everything I could. So, yeah, I mean, I'm holding up okay. I'm holding up well. So is Bill. The last time I saw him at court, he was in good spirits. He thought we made the right choice in taking the deal as well, you know, so he's not living it with what if, or guilt or anything like that, as far as I could tell. So, you know, I think we're both very similar types of people and we're gonna do the time that we have to do and we're gonna, you know, just make it work. And we're not gonna sit there going, oh, this is just not fair, or whatever, because what's the point of doing that? What's the point of, you know, commiserating on what you can't change? So just doing what we can do, dealing with it, and then we'll be back soon enough. Five years or whatever, maybe a little bit less for good time. And I hope that the industry, the bitcoin industry is strong and isn't completely captured. That's kind of what I'm interested to see. What happens in five years? Is bitcoin just another Wall street asset? Is it essentially owned by BlackRock, or is it what I originally got into bitcoin for? Is there still a hint of censorship, resistance? In the air. And I think there will be. I hope there will be, but we'll see.
- [85:10]
B
I say amen to that. I'm also curious, and somebody had asked this on Noster when they saw I'd be talking to you just about the license that the code is currently published under, because I think there are probably some people out there who in Defiance want to maybe spin up instances of. Of this very same, you know, software like, much like was done in the kind of by the early cypherpunks, right. With just, you know, even publishing. Publishing encryption in books on T shirts and things like that. Like, is there. What. What's it currently. What license is it under? Is it under an MIT open license? Or can people like, is it fully available still?
- [85:50]
A
Yeah, it's fully open source. It's a fully open source license. There's already been a fork and there's already. It's called Ashigaru and they've already restarted Whirlpool. Right. So there's a group of people who are brave enough to do that and have learned from our experiences and are doing things slightly differently in terms of their anonymity with knowledge now that doesn't. The government doesn't care if what you're doing is legal or not. If they want you, they'll get you, so they're doing that. So, yes, to answer that particular question, it's. It's licensed under the gpl. So I don't know exactly which version of the GPL or, or not. But what that means is anyone can copy the code, modify the code for profit or for altruism, whatever you want to do. The only restriction is whatever you do also has to be open source. You also have to keep that open source license in place so that anyone else can take what you've done and remix it and do whatever they want to do with it.
- [86:55]
B
I mean, that. That is awesome. And like, that's one of the reasons open source software is so incredibly powerful. And again, yes, one, one of the reasons, I mean, I can only imagine perhaps one of the reasons that you guys were kind of targeted in the first place is because, look, not only were you guys, did you run this software yourselves, but you made this software available for anyone else to run. And that is the beautiful thing though is like, the genie's out of the bottle with this.
- [87:22]
A
Yes.
- [87:22]
B
And people need to keep standing up and actually like, they need to remember that the government does not give you your freedoms. The government can only take them away. We have to take our freedoms as individuals and we, we need to fucking take them together and we need to stand up and, and make a stand for Kyoni and Bill right now. But also like run open source code. And you know what? Because if we don't, and if we don't take a stand now and if we don't actually use these tools that are available now, if we don't make our voices heard wherever we can, then I don't know what's coming to us is not going to be good. But we won't have done anything to stop it. So like I, again, I would just have a call to action for people like make your voice heard. But you know, and vote, vote with your feet by using these tools. Write open source code. If you're a builder yourself, like publish it, put it out there so that this can't be stopped. But Gary, I know I've taken already a good amount of your time. I want to maybe just give you an opportunity for anything else you want to say or maybe, you know, if, if somehow someone from the Trump administration or, or President Trump himself somehow gets shown a clip of this, is there something you would say to him directly or to the administration or just, you know, broadly, is there, is there a core to the message that you want to put out there?
- [88:45]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think I've said it, you know, through here and I truly, I truly believe it. You know, again, the President has been through this. He has been targeted by not only a weaponized Justice Department, but by a weaponized Southern District of New York. So he is intimately familiar with the same Department of Justice that started our prosecution. They also prosecuted and persecuted him. So he knows he's, you know, a fair minded guy and I know that he would do the right thing in pardoning Bill and myself if this came to his attention. So, you know, I really don't have to sell it that hard because again, it speaks for itself. It really does. You see all of the inconsistencies in this case. You see the Brady violations, you see the Clinton appointed judge who is essentially acting as a prosecutor on the bench. You see a prosecution that never an indictment that never should have, you know, seen the light of day. Right. I guarantee you they didn't bring up that FinCEN letter in the, in the grand jury proceedings because what grand jury would indict on a charge of unlicensed money transmission when the regulator says in black and white ink, they don't need a license, never would happen. Even in Manhattan, that never would happen. So they definitely didn't bring that evidence to the grand jury. And they're supposed to. So he, you know, they would see all of these issues in this case very blatantly, and I think they would do the right thing. So all I would ask is for everyone who's listening now to go to billinkione.org sign the petition, donate if you can. And if. And share this podcast, share the stream, share what's going on, because people need to know the truth about the Justice Department, the truth about the Southern District of New York, and to President Trump, whose whole, at least in the first term, whole thing was drained. The swamp. The swamp is the Southern District of New York. This is the swamp. Please, Mr. President, drain it. Get rid of these people, because if you do not get rid of them, they will come after you and they will come after your family. You're not going to be the president forever. And when you're not the president and you don't have that power, they're going to come after you without question. So get. Take care of it now before it's too late.
- [91:12]
B
I truly hope that Trump somehow is able to see this message. And if enough people make enough noise, it's amazing what a group of motivated bitcoiners can do. I just want to say thank you to you guys. You are the tip of the spear, really. And I think right now it's up to the rest of us bitcoiners to be the shield, because you guys were out there at the forefront, you were pushing boundaries, and you were doing it all legally. Is the other thing like. And this, this is what we should, we should celebrate people who build technology, open source technology in America that is beneficial for Americans and that do so in a way that completely respects our existing laws. That's not something you want to punish. If you do that, you will drive any and all builders worth a damn offshore into much less friendly jurisdictions. Although clearly the Southern District of New York is not a very friendly one. And. And you will completely strangle any form of innovation that is going to happen here in America. And we will be left as citizens with a, I don't know, a totalitarian financial panopticon out of our nightmares. And none of us want that. This is the United States of fucking America. We need to be protecting people who actively go out there and build tools that make our lives as Americans better. That's what you and Bill did. Thank you guys for doing that. And again, billandkiane.org you can go to. Again, donate there. I'll link this in the show notes for Anybody who's listening to this, after the live stream, share this website. You can sign the petition there, make noise, you know, scream, pardon, samurai from the mountaintops. Do whatever you can. Your voice can make a difference. And so that's my call to bitcoiners. Don't be complacent. Don't think that this, it doesn't affect you. If they come for one of us, they will eventually come for all of us. And we need these tools, we need privacy preserving tools to be able to actually have a chance at a free future. And again, thank you guys for building those tools for almost a decade prior to having your doors kicked in and your life's made a living hell. I really have faith in this and I'm going to continue using whatever platform I have to try and make noise as well. And yeah, I'm wishing you guys the absolute best and I hope that we can have a conversation again without this specter hanging over you. When you have received a pardon. That's we're gonna, we're gonna manifest that into existence and we're gonna make it happen. Not with the woo woo manifesting, but like by actually doing shit.
- [93:47]
A
So right.
- [93:48]
B
We're pulling for you guys, man.
- [93:50]
A
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on and give, giving me a chance to tell the story. Appreciate it.
- [93:56]
B
Absolutely. We'll go ahead and cut this out here. Thank you to everybody who tuned in again. Billandkione.org please go there, sign the petition, donate if you can. Share it if you can. Sharing, it's free. Take a couple minutes of your time and go do that. Thanks everyone. And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin Talk episode of the Bitcoin Podcast. Remember to subscribe to this podcast wherever you're watching or listening and share it with your friends, family and strangers on the Internet. Find me on noster@primal.net walker and this podcast@primal.netcoin on X, YouTube and Rumble. Just search at Walker America and find this podcast on X and Instagram at tcoin Podcast, Head to the Show Notes to grab sponsor links. Head to substack.com walkeramerica to get episodes emailed to you and head to bitcoinpodcast.net for everything else. Bitcoin is scarce, but podcasts are abundant. So thank you for spending your scarce time listening to the Bitcoin podcast podcast. Until next time, stay free.