Makes absolutely no difference. They would have been prosecuted even if Samourai Wallet's Whirlpool was free:

econoalchemist

"Samourai earned fees, therefore they were a business and how they wound up on the wrong end of a conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmi...

prosecuted, maybe, but that doesn't mean the verdict would be the same. not to mention the general public sentiment. getting prosecuted for merely providing free public service code would look a lot more egregious to a naive public than making a ton of money providing anonimyzing service for "criminals to use". i'n not saying this is good or right, just pointing out the major difference in optics for the outside observer. "your honor, i made zero dollars on this. in fact, i gave away free labor. please prosecute the people who used this for 'bad stuff' instead" and then "straight to jail" would be such a more significant scenario for public perception. its like the "you wouldn't prosecute the hammer manufacturer for a random act of terrorism committed with a hammer". ...except imagine the hammer company made a few bucks every time someone at the Louvre got their head whacked in... public opinion would see those very differently, naturally.

imagine you're Joe Normie There's a machette company that has a mechanism where they get $1 every time you hit something with the machette you bought from them. the government says "we have this device you can add to the blade where if it hits a tree, you still get $1, but if it hits flesh, the blade goes dull and you get $0". please install it. machette company declines. a couple people get attacked and killed with machettes, the knife company makes some money. in court, the gov't says, "look at this, Joe Normie, we asked them to install this device which would have kept those people safe. they didn't install it, those people are dead AND they made a profit on the act!" Joe is siding with the prosecutors before the machette company even draws breath to explain how such a device would backfire when trying to defend oneself against wild boars in the jungle, not to mention make the cost of machette production prohibitive and deprive the world of effective brush clearing devices. point is, this is all hard enough to win public opinion on in the best case. it's nearly impossible when enormous profits are involved.