This piece is featured within the print version of Bitcoin Journal, The Freedom Issue. We’re sharing it right here as a pattern of the concepts explored all through the total problem.
On November 3, 2025, the liberty for builders to construct monetary privateness software program is on trial.
Samourai Pockets was a Bitcoin privateness pockets developed by Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill. It included specialised privateness instruments that blended the cash of pockets customers in ways in which required no third-party custody. The service’s servers helped coordinate “mixing” — strategies to hide the origin of cash and provide customers a point of ahead privateness.
Rodriguez and Hill had been arrested on April 24, 2024, on two fees: conspiracy to function an unlicensed cash transmitting enterprise and conspiracy to commit cash laundering.
The U.S. Division of Justice (DoJ) accused the Samurai Pockets builders of facilitating over $2 billion in illegal transactions by their cryptocurrency mixing service between 2015 and February 2024. Moreover, the DoJ alleges that the builders helped launder greater than $100 million in legal proceeds from unlawful darkish internet markets, reminiscent of Silk Street and Hydra Market, in addition to different hacking and fraud schemes.
The case of United States v. Rodriguez and Hill threatens the established precedents of code as speech on two main fronts.
The primary regards the “$2 billion in illegal transactions” accusation. The prosecution implies that software program that aids or facilitates the motion of cash in any method is indistinguishable from cash transmission and that it requires a cash transmitter license, even when that software program by no means holds custody of consumer funds. That is fully at odds with the dynamic that had beforehand been established by FinCEN’s 2019 steerage and different legacy monetary rules.
The second implication is that software program that defends the privateness of communications or switch of worth will not be protected speech beneath the US’ First Modification.
America has a protracted and distinctive custom of defending freedom of speech.
Over time, many court docket circumstances have strengthened these values, creating precedents that allow builders create nice software program and share it on-line. That sort of software program has made the US the technological epicenter of the world, from AI to cryptographic finance; the liberty to construct software program at this time is crucial to the financial success of the nation.
Texas v. Johnson (1989), for instance, established that burning the U.S. flag in protest was certainly protected speech though the “speech” on this case was “useful”, i.e., expressed within the destruction of the flag.
Within the Nineties, with the rise of the web, landmark circumstances like Bernstein v. United States (1996-1999) established that discussions about cryptography — particularly the sharing of supply code involving cryptographic algorithms — was not a “munition” ruled and controlled by the Arms Export Management Act and the Worldwide Site visitors in Arms Rules. Quite the opposite, the publication of supply code explaining how cryptography labored was expressive speech and thus absolutely protected beneath the First Modification.
The Bernstein case marked a crucial victory for the Cypherpunks of the ’90s, whose contributions to open supply software program laid the foundations for Bitcoin: Most of the applied sciences that Satoshi Nakamoto utilized in its development had been certainly invented within the web boards of the time. It was there that the Cypherpunks mentioned the applying of cryptography to the protection of freedom of speech, digital privateness, and civil rights.
Within the Common Metropolis Studios v. Corley (2001) case, nevertheless, one thing shifted barely. Jon Lech Johansen, a Norwegian teenager, wrote software program that jail-broke copyrighted motion pictures from software program locks positioned there by Common Studios, making motion pictures playable in Linux methods. Eric Corley, a U.S. journalist, revealed the software program on-line, which led to an enormous lawsuit spearheaded by Common Studios.
This landmark case turned on the query of whether or not one thing is speech or conduct within the realm of software program. It established that when speech within the type of software program gained “perform”, such because the breaking of a DVD encryption lock, it immediately grew to become a software and will turn out to be topic to regulation.
Whereas Corley’s free speech protections had been ultimately reaffirmed within the Second Circuit Court docket of Appeals, the excellence between supply code publications as a type of expression and useful software program as a software that may be regulated was established.
Regardless of the rulings — Corley even eliminated the copy of the DeCSS piracy software program from his web site — the injury was performed. Web civil disobedience unfold the software program far and broad, and the piracy wars of the 2000s raged on for years. They demonstrated not simply the boundaries of free speech protections but in addition the boundaries of making an attempt to implement digital censorship.
Info merely desires to be free.
The Samourai case might face the same problem, and it’s unclear whether or not “code is speech” generally is a ample protection for Rodriguez and Hill.
A controversial challenge that created as many loyal superusers because it did haters and critics is now on the entrance strains of the Biden-era lawfare, and the precept that code is speech seems to be at stake as soon as once more.
Because of this, it has pressured critics — myself included — to rise to the protection of a pockets that, whereas fairly profitable in its adoption, made many design selections that had been questionable and for which they could be judged harshly within the coming months.
One potential weak level of their protection is their alleged enabling of sanctioned events to “launder cash” by their coin-mixing service. The U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) went so far as to embed a screenshot of the Samourai pockets account welcoming sanctioned oligarchs:
Coin mixers are akin to the digital personal networks (VPNs) utilized by law-abiding residents and criminals alike. For privateness to exist, one should be capable of disguise in a crowd, their selections and private info shielded from prying eyes, and to be revealed or judged after due course of.
With that, the Samourai Pockets founders didn’t make themselves a troublesome goal. If the allegations by the prosecution are true, they usually knowingly helped costume up wolves in sheep’s clothes, then they seemingly must pay a value for violating sanctions doctrines. A deeply chilling authorized precedent might then be set, shaping the way forward for digital finance and straight harming the proliferation of such know-how in the US.
Nonetheless, there could also be hope within the change to a extra crypto-friendly administration beneath the management of President Trump.
Throughout his keynote speech on the Bitcoin Convention in Nashville in 2024, Trump made a promise, one which he nonetheless has the chance to maintain.
He promised to “defend the suitable to self custody”.
With out monetary privateness, self custody is dramatically weakened, as seen by the rising wave of bodily assaults on Bitcoiners in recent times. The freedom beforehand loved by software program builders to construct self-custodial Bitcoin instruments like Samourai Pockets, is on trial.
The U.S. authorities has, for essentially the most half, realized to not assault an already hardened authorized precedent like freedom of expression. Nonetheless, by going after the builders and maintainers of Samourai Pockets straight, the DoJ had a web adverse impact on monetary privateness within the U.S., and it unfold a chilling impact amongst Bitcoin software program builders.
Instantly following the arrest of Rodriguez and Hill, Phoenix Pockets, arguably one of the best self-custodial Lightning pockets within the business, exited the U.S. app shops — a call made to guard their enterprise from a U.S. authorities that appeared hostile to Bitcoin self-custody software program. (As of April 2025, Phoenix is as soon as extra out there within the U.S.) Wasabi Pockets, one other monetary privateness software program firm, stopped providing its noncustodial mixing providers to the general public. And wallets like Blink from El Salvador geofenced American customers from their app fully.
If Trump goes to actually defend the suitable to self custody, and cease the eventual deployment of a central financial institution digital foreign money (CBDC) in the US (one other election promise), he must tackle the necessity for monetary privateness within the digital period and reverse the injustices set in course by the Biden administration.
In a method or one other, these circumstances will go away a mark on his presidential legacy.
The Biden administration continued to sue, scrutinize, and debank the crypto business — a coverage that began beneath Obama with Operation Choke Level and in the end resulted in Silicon Valley CEOs dropping entry to their financial institution accounts altogether.
A pointy instance of permissioned monetary rails being abused was additionally witnessed in Canada in 2022 when the financial institution accounts of truckers and donors had been frozen throughout the Freedom Convoy COVID protests in Ottawa, following the invocation of the Emergencies Act by then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Moreover, high U.S. officers from the Treasury have said that central financial institution digital currencies (CBDCs) would wish to have robust id monitoring, even whereas “balancing shopper privateness”, placing at a trade-off that’s sacrificing consumer privateness altogether:
“The Report notes that ‘a CBDC system might improve the quantity of knowledge generated on customers and transactions,’ which might pose ‘privateness and cyber safety dangers, however … provide alternatives for correct … supervision and regulation enforcement efforts.’”
Among the many beliefs of justice and equity laid out by the Structure is one the place the privateness of the person is granted by default, the place there’s a presumption of innocence, and the prosecution should show the accused’s guilt past an affordable doubt.
The Fourth Modification rights of harmless Individuals who had been utilizing Samourai Pockets specifically are beneath assault by the sort of lawfare seen within the Samourai case:
“The suitable of the individuals to be safe of their individuals, homes, papers, and results, in opposition to unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall problem, however upon possible trigger, supported by Oath or affirmation, and significantly describing the place to be searched, and the individuals or issues to be seized.”
Our houses are not simply fabricated from brick and stone, and our phrases not contained inside these 4 partitions. They’re usually digitized and transmitted, and so is the worth they maintain and transfer. Like money in a sealed envelope, the usage of monetary privateness software program naturally suits the protections of the Fourth Modification, particularly when no custody of funds is ever taken by the infrastructure facilitating its transit.
But the few instruments that defend this default entry to privateness have been systematically attacked and undermined within the digital age, akin to the federal government suing envelope producers as cash launderers for obfuscating the contents of an individual’s exchanges.
It’s really a lot worse. Whereas builders of privateness software program like Samourai Pockets are harassed, legacy monetary establishments, of their try and be compliant with KYC and AML rules — the identical class of rules used to prosecute Samourai Pockets at this time — are pressured to collect extreme personal info from their prospects so as to report something “suspicious” to the authorities.
These KYC knowledge vaults are commonly hacked. Certainly, it’s not possible to maintain them safe as they develop in dimension and turn out to be targets for cybercriminals, which exposes on a regular basis individuals to organized crime within the type of id theft and fraud. By 2012 within the U.S, id fraud price greater than all different types of theft mixed, reaching over $21 billion, and this determine rose to $52 billion by the 2020s.
This surveillance infrastructure is doing profound and irreversible hurt to U.S. residents and the legacy monetary system as an entire.
It’s however offered as the required evil that stops cash laundering by cartels and ends terrorist financing by way of sanctions by mechanisms just like the OFAC record. And but it’s these similar banks who’re commonly busted laundering tons of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} for cartels, like TD Financial institution final yr, which needed to pay a document tremendous to U.S. regulators of $3 billion. It was accused of failing to surveil $18 trillion in transactions, of which near $700 million was allegedly moved by drug cartels. Regardless of all of the rules and compliance, it seems it was the banks that had been doing the majority of the cash laundering.
On the subject of sanctions, in the meantime, Russia has acquired the worst lot of U.S. sanctions in latest reminiscence, maybe in historical past, together with freezing its international treasury reserves. Regardless of that, Russia has run over main territories in Ukraine throughout the invasion and managed to outlive lengthy sufficient to be in a really robust negotiating place on the opposite facet of the battle — successfully marking the top of the sanctions international coverage regime. It’s no coincidence that the Trump administration is so centered on tariffs, overseeing the circulation of products throughout borders as an alternative of the circulation of cash.
Additionally, allow us to not overlook that in relation to terrorist financing, it was the CIA that funded and educated the Afghan Mujaheddin within the ’80s, coaching guerrilla operatives like Osama bin Laden, who in a while helped create Al Qaeda and carried out 9/11.
None of those crimes had been performed by Bitcoin or Bitcoiners. However the penalties of those legal guidelines weigh closely on civilian populations. And the exponential progress of id theft, the demoralizing ironies of the warfare on money, the micromanagement overhead of the general public’s funds, and the chilling impact on privacy-oriented software program builders are the direct consequence of the KYC panopticon being constructed throughout us.
All these insurance policies will be summed up as flash factors within the warfare on money, a broad coverage technique of the pre-Trump period, that I imagine was meant to set a basis for the deployment of CBDCs, a state monstrosity that Trump particularly promised to guard us from.
The largest concern I had with the Samourai Pockets’s cellular app was its backend design. Formidable and commendable because it was to try to convey cutting-edge, self-custodial coin mixing to the lots, so as to obtain it, Samourai Pockets made some questionable compromises — compromises which rivals and critics doubted had been well worth the upside and which will be judged within the trial as properly. The obvious drawback was the way in which the cellular shopper was stated to deal with the xpubs of their customers.
Xpubs are essential cryptographic info in Bitcoin and crypto wallets. Much like IP addresses on this planet of VPNs, xpubs signify a key piece of figuring out info for Bitcoin customers. Anybody who has your xpub can deterministically recreate all public addresses you ever had or ever can have in that pockets, permitting them to know precisely what public Bitcoin addresses are inside your management and which funds have moved by them.
Within the advertising and marketing and debates about VPNs — that are in some sense the early internet’s equal to Bitcoin mixers — IP addresses, and whether or not a service can or can’t maintain IP logs, is crucial to their credibility amongst a savvy consumer base. Companies usually boast about their processes and procedures round not preserving their customers’ IP addresses, which, if shut down — as Samourai Pockets has been — might find yourself within the arms of prosecutors, compromising the shopping historical past of their customers.
Within the case of Samourai Pockets and xpubs, the same rule of thumb ought to apply. Web customers all through the many years have found that paranoia in regards to the high quality of the instruments and implementations pays off in the long run. This lesson has been realized the onerous method as VPN providers and privacy-oriented e mail suppliers have been hacked or seized by authorities prosecutors. If there’s consumer knowledge collected, the service can turn out to be a juicy goal.
We don’t but know what knowledge Samourai Pockets had within the 17 terabytes confiscated by the U.S. authorities. Most of it’s seemingly on-chain evaluation performed by their analysis arm OXT. But when consumer knowledge was saved, then the privateness of a lot of these customers is likely to be in danger as properly.
It’s fascinating that the way forward for software program builders and their freedom to construct personal self-custody software program might be judged and formed in an age the place Michael Saylor argues that the coin is not a foreign money and Trump, the self-branded crypto president, guarantees to guard your self-custody rights.
As Rodriguez and Hill stand trial, these wrapping themselves within the orange flag and people who can affect public coverage about monetary privateness may even be on trial within the court docket of public opinion; historical past might be their choose.
For us plebs who can’t affect public coverage straight and may solely choose the instruments we use on their benefit, there’s a ethical to this story. Compromising on privateness for comfort — to keep away from the educational curve in any other case required — doesn’t come with out threat.
And on a protracted sufficient timeframe, solely the paranoid crypto-anarchists survive.
This piece is featured within the print version of Bitcoin Journal, The Freedom Issue. We’re sharing it right here as a pattern of the concepts explored all through the total problem.
