Replies (20)
The developers' families are in complete financial ruin after millions in legal fees, forfeiting $6.3 million to the DOJ, & the maximum fine of $250,000. Anything you can do to help them will go a long way:
https://www.givesendgo.com/billandkeonneSamourai wallet had a beautiful feature: no fiat conversion at all. It's time for every bitcoin app be like that.
nostr:nevent1qqst2usu0re5qsjw4pmgxwfukf2qp3tas7rfk30475suvra5f3pl73czypl0tud32m49ul5lndu87723ktgsramcqct84r2yky2x3ggwplxjwqcyqqqqqqgukynvl
didn't they profit off it?
Makes absolutely no difference. They would have been prosecuted even if Samourai Wallet's Whirlpool was free:
https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqs0c302y2nfpp55d85j7ll36ddtlw7frl9tfqhuwxa2svjltfmeuqsqqle4hprosecuted, 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.
Those analogies are retarded. Hammer manufacturers and machete manufacturers have made profit off of every single tool sold, even the ones that eventually wound up in a crime scene. Additionally, the thing about the machete manufacturer adding some safety net sounds similar to how regulators want financial institutions to use the safety net of KYC/AML policies and licenses. You will recall however, that the regulator in charge of issuing money transmitting licenses for financial institutions, FinCEN, was approached by federal prosecutors and asked specifically if Samourai Wallet would need a license and the regulator explicitly said "no". The prosecutors indicted the developers for conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business 6-months later anyways. You give far too much credit to this idea that the average Joe is going to somehow dismiss the prosecution's arguments if profit wasn't an element, yet you are neglecting to recognize that the fact that profit was involved was not an issue for the prosecutors as they would have prosecuted them the same anyways. Not to mention, if you listen to the full story you will hear Keonne explain how difficult it is to get defense evidence in front of the jury. You seem to have this common misconception that both side of an argument show up and lay out all their evidence for a jury to decide and that is simply not how it works in reality. Furthermore, you seem to think that Samourai Wallet was raking in exorbitant amounts of money when in actuality there was $6.3m earned over the course of 10-years; so if you take the government's own numbers as true then that means Samourai Wallet earned a whopping 3% of the 2 Billion dollars in "unlawful" funds that flowed through Whirlpool, meaning they are either awfully bad at being criminals or the fee was actually there as a Sybil resistance measure, not a mechanism for profiting off of crime.
average joe: "Whoa, they made SIX MILLION dollars by helping people launder money?! lock those fuckers up! Here I am working hard every day and following the law, and I make $50k a year".
vs: "Why'd those guys get thrown in jail? they weren't even involved at all and someone ELSE just used their free code? those other people should get arrested"
You're focusing on important details, but 99% of people won't do that.
My main gripe with your angle and others who take up a similar one is, "punished just for writing code...". I wish it WERE true that they "just wrote code". more (normal-er) people would be on board with the outrage IF they "just wrote code". Next time someone gets unfairly prosecuted like this, I hope they will have "just written code".
Someone seeing the "they just wrote code" message, and then digging deeper and finding out they "also made $6M" makes whoever said "they just wrote code" seem disingenuous, not credible, and like they might be papering over other important details as well. Keep your credibility up in the eyes of onlookers by telling the whole story. It becomes easier to tell the whole story when there isn't $6M hiding in the plot.
"Hiding in the plot"? Give me a break. I've mentioned the $6.3 m in fees six different times between Twitter & Nostr just today. The figure is also mentioned on the petition. Not to mention, you are replying in a thread where I literally clipped and highlighted Keonne talking about their fees. Nobody is hiding anything. Not to mention Average Joe earning $50k/year is doing pretty well compared to Samourai who earned $6.3m in fees over 10-years and had 20 people employed at the time of the arrests, they weren't even making $50k/yr.
signed 🙏🏼
Please sign the petition. Less than 5 minutes of your day to raise your voice.
nostr:nevent1qqst2usu0re5qsjw4pmgxwfukf2qp3tas7rfk30475suvra5f3pl73cn83nvq
Proton AG had $97.5 million in revenue last year.
Those criminals!
Lock them up.
i don't agree with or support any of this prosecution, i hope you realize (or any prosecution in the current non-private legal system, for that matter...)
That's fine and good to hear.
What do you think they were falsely accused of, then. If it wasn't for writing code?
all accusations are "false" because the legal system is involuntary.
but to answer your question: were they not also running and providing a service, beyond merely authoring code?
Is running and providing a service to others illegal?
by "illegal", do you mean the State will put you in jail for it? definitionally, yes, in this case.
but now we're allowing that they didn't "just write code", I notice. which was my original point.
Why are you trying to distinguish that point? Samourai Wallet did a lot more than just write code, they hosted a node, they hosted a coordinator, they hosted a blockchain analysis platform, they published several research articles, they published several instructional videos, they gave presentations at conferences, they donated $50k to Tor, they were the executive producer of the 3D printed gun documentary Death Athletic, and they ran a social media account. They did quite a lot.
The only think they are going to prison for however, is because they knew a criminal /could/ use their code. That's it. They are going to prison because of that code. So what is this point you're grasping at straws to make?
