TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #742: Why Privacy Is Non-Negotiable with Lauren Rodriguez

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

Marty sits down with Lauren Rodriguez to discuss the persecution of her husband Keonne over Samurai Wallet, the criminalization of open-source code and financial privacy, and the urgent fight to free political prisoners in the war on crypto. Lauren on X: https://x.com/leamuirleyn FREE SAMOURAI: https://billandkeonne.org/ STACK SATS hat: https://tftcmerch.io/ Our newsletter: https://www.tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ TFTC Elite (Ad-free & Discord): https://www.tftc.io/#/portal/signup/ Discord: https://discord.gg/yHGkvYxdqT Opportunity Cost Extension: https://www.opportunitycost.app/ Shoutout to our sponsors: Bitkey https://bitkey.world/ Aven https://www.aven.com/bitcoin CrowdHealth https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/tftc Unchained https://unchained.com/tftc/ Salt of the Earth: https://drinksote.com/tftc Join the TFTC Movement: Main YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TFTC21/videos Clips YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUQcW3jxfQfEUS8kqR5pJtQ Website https://tftc.io/ Newsletter tftc.io/bitcoin-brief/ Twitter https://twitter.com/tftc21 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tftc.io/ Nostr https://primal.net/tftc Follow Marty Bent: Twitter https://twitter.com/martybent Nostr https://primal.net/martybent Newsletter https://tftc.io/martys-bent/ Podcast https://www.tftc.io/tag/podcasts/

you've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free if you talk about a fed just gone nuts all all the central banks going nuts so it's all acting like safe haven i believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency bitcoin wins in the world of fiat currencies bitcoin is the victor i mean And that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, you probably should be. Lauren, I wish I didn't have to have you on the show. We were just talking before we hit record.

And I spent some time with you and Keone over the years. And it's it was clear to me that you guys liked staying out of the limelight and just putting your heads down and working on on Samurai Wallet. And you've been thrust into into the public eye as you are forced to fight for the freedom of your husband. And I've been thinking about this interview for a few days now. it's like where to start and i guess the best place to start is how are you how has this whole process been for you hi well first thank you for having me on marty um as you said we have known each other for for a while so you know it's nice to be speaking to you know kind of a friend in that sense but yeah i'd rather not be here i'd rather not be in this position um it's hard

And it's hard to wake up and not have my husband here and not have, you know, the person I would turn to to ask advice on kind of these speaking matters or what to say or how to, you know, keep fighting for him. And I can't ask him. I can't turn to him. I can't message him. I have to wait for, you know, when he can call from prison. And that's a difficult position to be in. But I'm also grateful that people like you are allowing me a platform to talk about the real injustices of this case and the fact that we're still here and still fighting. So, so his kind of memory and, you know, the, him as a person isn't, isn't dying on the outside that people can know that, that this is still going on. So thank you. No need to thank me. And we've been in this battle together for many years before even the case began, because I think what Tony, Bill, and others who are being persecuted right now really fought for is something that I deeply believe is a human right, which is the right to privacy, and in this case, financial privacy. I think Matt O'Dell says it best, you can't have freedom without financial privacy. It is a prerequisite.

If you want to build wealth, you need to be able to do that in a way that protects your privacy. And that's why we supported Samurai Wallet on Rabbit Hole Recap via 1031 for many years, because it's something we truly believe in. it's crazy that we live in a time where it is looked at as something that that is dirty that you shouldn't want to find and as we accelerate toward the ai future where it seems like the digital panopticon can get even stronger it's incredibly scary that you have freedom fighters fighting for the right to privacy being thrown in a cage and so much of this is just you know obviously it's been ramping up and and as you you know so

rightly pointed to the the potential with ai but a lot of this came about in the 90s and then the early 2000s with the patriot act like this in our lifetime has massively ramped up this attack on on privacy and you know you said you can't have you can't have freedom and liberty without without privacy financial privacy and you know that also goes to speech you know speech transactions who you interact with via your your money is is a form of speech and so it just affects so much of the founding principles of this country and yes was this is was this a topic that uh you and Keone bonded over or was this something that you came to learn just via osmosis by hanging out with him I was definitely in the libertarian leanings uh when we met but he's you know

brilliant and and I definitely have learned a lot from him over the years um yeah but I think I I had that kind of I think that's something that bonded us initially that we had those similar sentiments yeah how um how is he doing it's it's hard i mean thankfully he's safe he's not in a like dangerous place but at the same time it's prison he doesn't deserve to be there it's unjust like yesterday so the way prison works is you have a certain amount of minutes uh in a month and that's that's capped so you kind of have to budget those and kind of say okay so we're going to call for this this many minutes a day so so that we can talk and usually we have a 6 6 a.m call and that didn't come and by like 10 30 i was getting really anxious because it you know

it's been hours so i called the prison and they give some nondescript bop answer that yeah he's there and he's well not sure what that means but uh and then it was hours later and and then finally he was able to call and there was a there had been a system-wide outage for the emails and in the phone system but my mind obviously goes to okay well as the time ticked on you know worse and worst case scenarios is he injured do they not know he's injured is you know did something have like so while it is safe and thankfully he's he's fine and it was just a technical issue those feelings are are always on my mind um it's also for for his side for someone who was building something that he loved and believed in for you know a decade and really putting his

you know heart into it you know way more than 40 hours a week right like this that's what he breathed was was building samurai wallet and and kind of what was the ethos behind that and then so to have that stripped away as well it's it's very difficult for i think anyone who is a contributing member of society to be thrown into a cage which really you're you know boredom boredom is what gets you the monotony of day to day and and just trying to you know when hours stretch in and they feel like a week like it just really kind of grinds you down so while he's fine it's it's and you know he'll get through it it's still not a good place yeah there's still prison yeah i mean and you're in a prison of your own right even though you're out here it's uh i mean

like you just described you don't have your husband there to answer questions and that can be a mental prison like you said the worry that you had when you didn't get the 6 a.m call and That's like the most disheartening thing about all this is the collateral damage for you and everybody else, the chilling effect that spread across the industry. And when you get down to the brass tacks of it, I mean, it seems clear to me that what the DOJ was charging Tony and Bill for was not legitimate. I mean, as defined by FinCEN when they went to ask for an opinion, what was it, three or six months before they actually charged them? Six, six months. And yeah, and that's right. The regulator who's under Treasury, who's mandated by Congress to actually enforce these laws. And there's just so many. And that's, you know, that's a Fifth Amendment violation right there.

Right. And you can't just change. You're not supposed to just be able to change the law or interpretation of the law and charge people without any kind of notice. But that's exactly what they did in this case. And just kind of time after time, how much the system has failed in our case. And again, it's, you know, as much as like, obviously, you know, I care because it happened to me, it has opened my eyes to that this is kind of prolific in, in our system, unfortunately, that especially in kind of these white collar cases, there are some that I'm that I'm sure just but a lot of them are these, these twisting effects. And, you know, the way the U.S. law is written is it's supposed to be that if there is any ambiguity in the law, it's supposed to go to the side of the defendants. So, you know, if let's say and I don't think it was, I think it was clear cut, you know, when the regulator themselves are saying, as you said, you know, that they did not break a law. But let's say there's somehow ambiguity in that. It should still sided with the with us. And it didn't. And, you know, every step of the way, the particularly our judge, like just not not even hearing arguments on it, just just denying all all motions. And it's just it's really. It's hard to come to terms with, because in my opinion, you know, we no longer live in a free society.

if this is if this is the case if they can on on a doj's on a on a prosecutor's whim just decide that the law that you've been operating under for 10 years is is doesn't matter anymore and they're going to charge you and ruin your life anyways and ruin your loved ones lives yeah that was i mean talk about keone last fall that was the crazy thing the sdny particularly seems to have a particular perspective on um what they what laws there what statutes they can abuse in terms of not playing by the book and i think that that was the other um interesting details the judges switch midway through the trial right and um you attempted to say okay we got a new judge let's let's provide uh let's try to have a conversation they completely stonewalled you

Yeah. Yeah. It was actually just so our first judge we had for over a year and the way he operated his court is he wanted all these big motions and to have one at the same time and then have one large hearing would have been our first real large hearing in front of him where the motions would be argued and then he would take his time and decide on it. So we had presented, I think there's probably over six different motions to him. And then three days before we were supposed to appear in front of him is when we got the change of judge. So she only had three days to review pages and pages of documents, get familiar with the case, get familiar with obviously a complex topic such as Bitcoin and CoinJoin. And, you know, these these judges are supposed to be experts in the law. They can't be experts in everything kind of case that comes before them. But apparently she thought that that she was enough. And, you know, I would say there is bias, but, you know, that's my opinion. And I mean, I imagine there are people who are listening to this who are unfamiliar with the samurai case. I think maybe now it's important since we're alluding to particular details of the case and the charges, maybe from your perspective, explaining exactly what happened in terms of what they were charged with and where the judge, Bella Fallon, and her ruling and her view of what actually what Samurai Wallet actually was at the end of the day.

Yeah. So again, Samurai Wallet was a non-custodial open source Bitcoin wallet, like any other wallet. What differentiated them was they had some added, again, non-custodial, but privacy features built on top. um they operated for 10 years and and we're developing this and we're operating under guidance put out by the financial crimes enforcement network finson who's as we said earlier the regulator in charge of uh msb money service business and money laundering like they they kind of anything to do with with finances they're the regulator that that implements those regulations and laws. And so they're following guidance and building their tools and going around, you know, continuing on for 10 years. And on April 24, 2024, we were raided in a simultaneous raid at our home here in Pennsylvania, as well as Bill's home in Portugal

as a simultaneous, like international coordinated raid, the millions of dollars they must have put into that when they could have just again messaged our our attorney and said hey we want to talk to you this was our first interaction they never kind of sent letters saying what information do you have can you help us don't destroy evidence like there's all kinds of procedural things that they would usually do especially if it was an entity that was supposed to be regulated like a bank or something they don't just you know raid their ceo's house and so that's that's where it's where it started and we we found out that they were charging with conspiracy two conspiracy counts one conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter business and conspiracy to

money launder and you know a lot of much smarter people than i have have gone into this and kind of explained why these really has no standing. Um, but basically it didn't matter. Um, when the, when they get you in their sights, they're, they go full steam ahead. And, you know, it didn't matter that, as you said, six months prior to indictment, they asked the regulator, whether we were in violation of these, whether Samurai is in violation of these regulations and laws. And they said, no, they brought charges anyways. And, you know, this, these cases kind of go back to the 90s, we had the Bernstein, who that went to the Supreme Court and determined that code is speech, the code you put out a speech. And then in a more recent case about a month ago, another Supreme Court ruling where an ISP was found not liable for copyright infringement committed by their users, even though they knew that these users were violating copyright laws. So, the fact that, I mean, to me, that's applicable to this, right? You're saying that the tools put out, the code written, that users did things, and it was a small percentage of users that claim we never actually got far enough to try to analyze to see if their numbers were accurate.

But by the government's own numbers, they were only claiming, I think, under 10% of users as having funds from ill-gotten gains. And we're not and never were in support of criminality or scams, but that's just a fact of any open technology, the internet, messaging apps, Bitcoin as a whole. unfortunately if a tool works criminals will use it and um kind of lost my train of thought but that's like that's what they were alleging that that they knowing that criminals could potentially use the tool was enough to to come to charge them with a crime even though they had never had any interaction there was never communication with any criminals obviously because they wouldn't have charged conspiracy charges at that point they said the conspiracy began when they created when they decide to to code the wallet to create the wallet so it really is an attack on code and

therefore speech yeah and i mean just the nature of it all it's very enraging when you think about the simultaneous no-knock raids, like literally showing up with military-grade equipment when they could have easily reached out to your lawyers to say, we don't like what you're doing, like we need you to answer some questions. And then you think about just the two-tiered justice system that exists when you think about the big banks and all the fraud that they've knowingly enabled. I mean, we can talk about Jeffrey Epstein and Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan and the fact that when it gets found out that they were knowingly aiding and abetting that um that

particular individual and they get slapped on the wrist with a fine that is just the cost of doing business when people like kiyone and bill were not doing anything close to that in terms of coordination with actual criminals on top of that they you know had oxt which i think a lot of people forget which was a platform um for average people to to be able to use the the powerful tools that someone like chain analysis has and there were many times where they helped bitcoiners who had been you know robbed or scammed to help trace their funds at no cost to the user just because it's the right thing to do so these aren't in no way were they encouraging or you know crime they were trying to help victims of crime and again just another tool that was taken off the board

for average people for victims and it was stripped away and taken down along with the rest of the the servers ox2 was a great tool i remember um back in like 20 I think I am Laurent. I think it was before, um, before, uh, Samurai acquired OXT, but I remember hopping in there at Laurent and doing an analysis on the, uh, the dust spamming attacks that led up to, uh, led up to the fork wars in 2017. It was just like an incredible tool how, how detailed it got. But I think the, um, the fact that they, they came down with the hammer because i mean the the no knock raids really gets to me personally because it's

like number one you didn't have to use that much force you have to i mean sure you were scared shitless while it was going on um middle of the night and it's very clearly a bully tactic to to say hey we can't have this like we can't have individuals um using these these tools to attain privacy we need all the information we need to be able to tag and bag every every single person as they're transacting online which is a very very scary thought that that is the the position of of the government or department of justice at the very least is that um no common man like you can't you can't do that you can't have privacy you need everything and then you think of all the waste uh and overt fraud that exists in the government and it's it's

exhausting at a certain point it's like hey i'm just trying to to live my life to save um and spend in a money that that i deem to be superior to to the dollar and for that thought crime of thinking that I should be able to use this alternative currency and payments rail and not only that, but do so privacy privately. It's frustrating for those of us who are freedom oriented, knowing that just by trying to get a little a little taste of freedom in our financial lives that they will come down with the force of uh of guns and military equipment to send a message to the rest so rich right originally they they came after bitcoin and they they didn't like bitcoin you know back and back and we can kind of call back to there and then and then they can i

think they came around and realized like you're saying that that bitcoin without privacy is the perfect panopticon and so how can they use that to their advantage and that's to scare development because it wasn't just about us although you know it was and they took samurai off the board uh from people to to be able to gain some privacy but you have legal protections in the legacy system or you're you know supposed to where people can't just look into your bank account they're supposed to get a you know warrant or there's there's some third-party doctrines that that kind of ease that but there's restrictions when bitcoin you don't have that and it with samurai you got just that transactional privacy back to protect yourself to protect your loved ones

unfortunately we see at year on year a ramp up of of attacks on people to because something gets leaked and or traced that they they might be a large holder of bitcoin and it's just like it was really just providing tools to give basic levels of privacy and they've scared i think the market away from from working on that which was the desired outcome um and it it is it's just has it's has so many implications for each and every person each and every user of bitcoin uh it's scariest thing to think about oh it is i mean just look what's going on with the five dollar wrench attacks in france not only france i mean france gets gets uh is drawing the focus of many people because the numbers are astounding and it's

due to the lack of of privacy the french citizens have particularly as it pertains to bitcoin ownership they're forced to declare it to the government on their tax forms and then those tax forms are public. And so you have a list for criminals who are willing to break the law to physically harm people to steal their Bitcoin. You basically just hand them over a list of targets that they can begin to pick off. And it's insane that this is not recognized by the government as a physical security issue um and i think to your point about um what samurai wallet built with coin join ricochet stowaway all these different tools that made it easier to transact privately i mean this is a physical security risk because if you're going to be using bitcoin as money and

you're interacting with a bunch of random people as you go throughout your day to buy things like they shouldn't know they shouldn't be able to receive a UTXO and then basically derive how much Bitcoin you have simply because you're going to buy a sandwich or a grill, whatever it may be. Uh, it's, it, this is like a common sense. Like there's no reason that when I go to interact with a merchant that they should know how much money is in my bank account. It's exactly that. Yeah, you're exactly right. And that's, and that's when coming after you know samurai and and then the repercussions of other companies pulling out of offering their services to americans and then you know has the implications of the wider world right what what

policy is set here dictates to other countries as well and there's a lot of people in other countries that you know you mentioned france but there's dictatorships that their ability to transact privately in Bitcoin is literally a life or death for these freedom fighters. And so it has global implications. So freaks, this rip of TFTC was brought to you by our good friends at BitKey. BitKey makes Bitcoin easy to use and hard to lose. It is a hardware wallet that natively embeds into a two or three multi-sig. You have one key on the hardware wallet, one key on your mobile device, and Block stores

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networks seems to be increasing privacy and the advancements are certainly moving forward and they seem to be relatively under the radar so i'm actually personally pretty bullish on private bitcoin usage from a tech perspective but do you think we're in a sort of quiet lull where the state is just like okay we've got a couple examples on the board we'll lay low and then come now with the hammer later or do you think we're actually making progress on getting the message out there that privacy is a human right and we should be able to use these these technologies privately i think it's a real risk i think every builder in the space specifically you know you're saying these and they're you know all very very smart options these layer twos and different

things but the actual coders are at risk the precedent the sets that is if you're working on something that they don't like and a customer user of your software could do something with it that we deem is you know bad that we will come after you you are liable for the actions of your users this has implications for miners for you know lightning node channel operators for e-cash whatever they're called operators mint operator yeah it really does and you know again outside of even outside of of the bitcoin space which obviously that's what we care about but i think a lot of us probably are using some kind of um secured messaging app and all of these Because also, if you're writing code, if someone's using your messaging software to plan a bank heist, you're now part of that conspiracy by providing them software. That's what this says.

And so as much as I'm hopeful, and it's great to see that there are so many, you know, you and Matt had mentioned in one of the panels at the conference about how percentage wise between kind of cypherpunks and, you know, say suits, their percentage might be higher, but the overall number of people working on kind of cypherpunk technology is up. and that's that's so great but i do worry that they're you know they can come and bring these same theories these same charges again and there might be you know someone else's wife and and you might have to develop you know be interviewing someone else's wife in a couple years when they decide that okay they you know these bitcoiners are still a nuisance let's let's show let's show them a little force again yeah no that's something that everybody's listening should be aware of too because i mean it you may be in a lull in terms of indictments and charges being brought against developers in the space but if you

actually pay attention to what the administration is putting out there whatsoever not even the administration but what's being put in the genius act clarity act and i think I think the smoking gun in terms of the long-term trajectory of where just the government, I won't pick on an administration, but I just think the federal government in general wants to go. But if you look at the crypto brief that was released last July, I mean, they explicitly say that they want to expand the Patriot Act to include digital currencies, which would preclude that open source software developers try to embed KYC AML compliance into their projects, which is number one, a non-starter. Number two, technically infeasible. If it's open source software, anybody could fork it and take out the KYC AML compliance. Not to mention pointless, as we've seen, you know, since the Patriot Act was introduced that, you know, criminals will find a way and it's only hurts law abiding, you know, your average citizen. And those are the only people that are hurt, the people that are willing to follow these laws and give their selfies with their IDs and then to have that data stolen. Yeah. And then on top of that, the physical risks, not only the data stolen, but the data used to locate you in meat space and hold you at gunpoint to steal your Bitcoin.

And it's not only Bitcoin, I mean, credit fraud, all that, steal your credit card information and put you into insane amounts of debt and force you to go through the legal system to try to prove that, hey, this wasn't me that spent this money. It is completely ineffective. I think the data as of five years ago, I think it's the last time I checked, but I think if you're looking at, if you're trying to be objective of the adequacy of KYC AML compliance laws, I think something like 0.01% of money that was deemed to be laundered was actually prevented by these KYC AML regulations. And so, and that's what I worry about is like how much of a sunk cost, it is a massive sunk cost fallacy because we're what, when was the Patriot Act passed? 2002 to 2003. We're 24 to 23 years into this and it's just become the water we swim in is that we're all expected to just comply and give up all this information. And time and time again, literally every week now, there's another hack of a database that leaks sensitive personal identifying information to the dark web and just increases the physical attack surface of everybody that is interacting with products and services that demand this data. yeah this is something that you know kioni and bill were so passionate about and so you know again their life work that they put in to try to try to help people and protect people from from this that was a big reason it wasn't you know that as much of the reasons they didn't

take kyc was and they built their software so that they weren't required to by the regulation They stayed within those bounds was so that they wouldn't have that data for someone to steal. They didn't want to have that responsibility because it's a grave responsibility that I think a lot of these companies don't take seriously enough. And because, you know, you seem you get data breaches and it's kind of sorry, you know, sorry this happened to you. Good luck. And there's still people getting, you know, emails and getting scammed from from data breaches that were. almost 10 years ago yeah and it's yeah no it's like what now we're gonna now you got marty jones coming out like what does the government exist like what is it supposed to exist to do at the end of the day it's supposed to be as the the founding

fathers laid out supposed to be a very small surface area just a a an agreement between the states and the federal government okay we'll protect you uh at the end of the day the brass tacks it's like hey we will um provide protection for the states when need be and help coordinate interstate commerce and they're not i think it's become abundantly clear at least in our lives as millennials that uh a lot of the actions that the government takes makes our our lives worse off whether it's taxation you look at health care regulation i think it's become pretty clear I hear that the American Care Act has increased health care costs significantly if you look at where tax money is being funneled to these Medicaid and Medicare projects that are just being raided by overt fraudsters who don't seem to be getting reprimanded for that. And then obviously you have the money printing aspect where people, for most people, 99% of people, I would say, are just regular common man people who just want to work a job, build a family, live somewhat comfortably.

And the government in its current form seems to make that harder and harder to do. They want more of your money. They want more of your liberty. and it just forces you to ask the question like what are we even doing here why does this thing exist and going back to like it's just the water we swim in when do people sort of come to the surface and say hey i don't i don't like this water it's pretty filthy um we need to we need to change something here and i i really hope and i think that people are starting to kind of wake up to that at least you know what you said like the fraud that we've seen being exposed by

of citizen journalists, um, the American, you know, from the American government or how they haven't been holding up their end of the bargain, we'll say for, you know, not doing the responses that they should, or that they're expected to. And, you know, it goes back to the old saying, uh, one of the scariest phrases you can hear is I'm, I'm from the government and I'm here to help. um and that's you know in our in our case right they part of the end result of this is is there was a forfeiture of the website and the app and and stuff but the government then allowed the website to lapse and some scammers reset up the samurai website probably to to try to commit some kind of scam on on innocent people and it's that was the government's that was forfeited to them

that was their property to protect and protect the american people and people at large right that's that's why they took over had it remained and had it not been forfeited i'm sure you know we could have kept it up and it wouldn't have been offering anything but at least it wouldn't have fallen into the hands of scammers and that's just like another way that there were no victims in this crime in this case they never pointed to any victims because what they were saying it was a compliance violations um but there were real potential victims as a result of actions that the doj took that's comedically poetic that i mean they're i mean from a dollar amount i think i mean who knows exactly how much money flows through that but to be very clear like even if

it was a dollar like more people were harmed directly or scammed directly from uh the doj lapsing there then then uh kianni and bill actually running the service itself it's laughable and it is funny because i don't know if you can tell but a bit of apprehension in my voice right now because it's like in the back of my mind i'm like i don't want to piss the government off by saying all this stuff and it is that chilling effect that exists it's like the the act of even highlighting these very clear and absurd realities just it the chilling effect is real where it's like oh am i going to be put on a list now for for saying that i don't like this And I'm probably already on all the lists, but

still, it's like, yeah, the self-censoring is is real. And that's again, going back to the point of like, what are we doing here? What is the water that we're swimming in? I think anybody listening, it's important to ask that question. Like, should we be afraid to even talk about this? Because not that I'm afraid, but I'm a bit apprehensive to really go full

bore into the one I'm thinking right now. I mean, so much of what they used in the case as quote unquote evidence against, again, conspiracy charges. So they were trying to, the government pulled out posts, public posts and other comments taken out of context. But it was, it was all speech that they had, you know, typed or written. And most of it was, was twisted in some way to say something that really wasn't the intent. And if you knew either of the guys or interacted with them, you could see where they were being facetious or humorous or whatever. But it's true. And people say, well, they shouldn't have said that.

Well, okay. They are operating within the bounds, again, of the laws and regulations. Had they not been, I'm sure they would have been watching what they say. If you're a criminal and doing criminal things, you would not be going around and, you know, trying to say things that might be, as you said, challenging. You'd probably watch what you say. But unfortunately, I think this case shows that everyone needs to kind of be watching what they say because they could take something you said in a chat 10 years ago to a buddy and use it to throw you in jail. It's not freaks. This rip is brought to you by good friends at CrowdHealth.

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getting a part in right now i think there's been a lot of momentum i've been talking a lot with some people who are working on it and i think we're definitely getting some attention there definitely needs to be more attention i think that's part of the reason i'm bringing you on is to draw more attention to this because it is a grave injustice and any day, any minute that Keone and Bill and others that are in a similar situation

for writing open source software, they're sitting in a cage, they need to get out immediately. Yeah, it's hard. I didn't think it would take this long. I'll say maybe that's naive, but, you know, we saw we saw what the Bitcoin community can do when the now president of the United States got on stage at the Bitcoin conference in 2024 and announced he's going to free Ross. Yes, and he did. There's 35 to 70 billion estimated voting age adults within the United States who own Bitcoin. That is a huge voting block. And as we just saw this past week, they're here and they want something from Bitcoiners.

They want your votes. They want your donations. They're, you know, they're coming to the conferences. they're talking about it on you know the floor of congress about bitcoin and the momentum and the fact that we were able to get something done and get ross free which i'm so thankful for i think if we you know let them know that this is this is another cause we don't want to see bitcoin developers in sitting in prison for non-custodial open source software and that they need to just make this right too and you know fix this injustice and i think it's a powerful enough group to get that done yeah i think it certainly is too and that's again reiterate i think it would be naive of anybody listening out there who's looking at the

proliferation of technologies like ecash arc spark lightning their interoperability and the advancements that are being made to think that we are in the clear i think without um freeing the political prisoners that Keone and Bill and others. And then not only that, but writing, we need to write into law. Like if you're a developer, it's the precedent is there. Like you said earlier, in the nineties during the PGP wars, we got it dated by the Supreme court, the code of speech.

This is no different, which is one of the most frustrating things is we already have the precedent it's there um the the ability to write software issue it on github in an open source manner should be a non-starter like pretty black and white it is legal go to speech um and if we don't free the political prisoners and then enshrine again unfortunately it seems like we have to do it again enshrine the the right to to develop and program um computer software in a way that that is deemed speech that every american citizen and hopefully um everyone on the planet should have the right to uh we're we're living with this false sense of confidence i think do not um do not rest on

laurels here because i think the uh depending on who's who's in office at any given point in time the the tenor can switch rather quickly and until we get the the political prisoners released and enshrined into law that it is okay to write code that allows people to to use bitcoin in particular ways that were not out of the clear um not only that maybe in a more dangerous position than And anybody realizes because maybe they're just waiting in the in the in the tall grass or for people to to build up enough of a of a privacy infrastructure to come down with a with a sledgehammer and say, no, you're not doing this. Yeah, unfortunately, we still have people like Senator Elizabeth Warren, who she despises everything. And we have judges, there's a judge within the Southern District of New York, not our judge, but another one, one of her colleagues that, you know, made a statement shortly after our case that said, he's Judge Radkoff said, he saw no point for of cryptocurrencies other than for crime and scams. So these are the people that are kind of lording over us until, like you said, if we need to get some actual protections, even, you know, and this was supposed to be an uplifting speech given by our acting Attorney General Todd Blanche at the Bitcoin conference, but about how it should be safe to develop. You should feel comfortable developing within the United States.

But he said, you know, there was one little part that he said about knowing that you can't something along the lines of develop knowing that criminals could are using your software. Well, anyone, again, as we touched on earlier, anyone developing any kind of software knows that criminals, if it's open source, if you don't have a closed, I don't know, if you can't download it from anywhere, you're distributing software or making software available or writing software with the knowledge that someone could take your software and use it in a way that you never intended. so yeah i completely agree that we need to to keep pushing to have some protections to free the political prisoners left over from from the war on crypto um and you know it's not really over until they're free and then going further and getting some real protections so that people can develop within the united states and make it you know as president trump said the he wants it to be the crypto capital of the world well you know there's going to be a real flight of development talent if these things aren't fixed yeah like what if somebody kidnapped somebody

and somebody else and they tortured them by uh playing a song on loop for for 120 hours for for an extended period of time and they use spotify to play that song to torture somebody like is spotify liable for for that torture mechanism like is that that's a tool of torture right there for for some should have known they should have known that if someone's playing a song for 120 hours that yeah it should have flagged on their back end i guess yeah no i mean just to highlight the absurdity of this all i mean if you extend the logic that is being used in in the case of bitcoin privacy tools open source privacy tools i mean i think if you stretch the the uh interpretation of the law far enough like by i guess reductive reasoning he'd say well

yeah spotify should have known that people are using um coco melon songs to torture people for 120 hours a week uh but that let's see uh again it's the absurdity of it all what can anybody listening do to help your efforts and the efforts of others looking to not only free the political prisoners but also make sure that nobody else becomes a political prisoner in the future? So first for us, please go to billandkeone.org. That's B-I-L-L-A-N-D-K-E-O-N-N-E.org. There you can find links to sign our petition calling for a presidential pardon, as well as links to donate. Unfortunately, you know, I hate to do this. This is not something I don't think anyone likes to do but we are you know millions two million dollars in debt legal fees and to try

to kind of continue raising awareness it it does take money that's just kind of the bottom line of that uh but you know further than that if you have connections or ideas or you know something please reach out to me i would love to just speak with you um you can find me on on x is probably the best place or contact me there's an email address at the bottom of that website uh and then you know further like if this is something that resonates with you like your voice is not too small you know you can you can post about you can speak about it you can let your families know you can contact your representatives and say hey you know you want something for me we have midterms coming up and these politicians are out there looking for something from you

it's okay to ask them for something back and that's to to lend their voice as well to calling for an end of this you know this war on crypto and free the political prisoners yeah how does so just thinking about it i was doing this um last week at the conference for bitcoin de minimis block spun up this website to easily go to and find your representative and send them a message about that in the case of pardons is it just as impactful obviously they're not passing a law but if we get enough things to different representatives across the country um then they shoot it up the ladder to the president like hey a lot of my constituents are very worried about this particular this particular um these particular prisoners and would like to

see them released is is it basically just a social pressure campaign that eventually You had a tipping point where it's like, OK, there's there's enough of a critical mass. It seems pretty clear that these guys were wrongly charged and thrown in prison. I think it is. You know, the President Trump is he's dealt with this office that came after us, like the Southern District of New York came after him and his family. I think he if he was actually presented with the case in front of him, like would definitely see the merits of it and understand it. So I think he is a fair guy. But it's a matter of he is the president. There's a lot going on. So it needs to be raised to a level where he, you know, it's on his agenda by whoever that is. You know, I'm sure he has a lot of people working for him saying this is something that matters. So that's why, although it is just with, you know, the one person, President of the United States, Donald Trump, to grant the pardon, as you said, I think it is kind of the pressure and the calls to action that this is something, you know, we care about and we're not just going to sit silently and, you know, oh, you did one thing for us. you're talking about the minimus and other things right like kind of there's been a lot of promises

a lot of i think proposed to laws uh but you know what have you done for bitcoin lately and you know to me it's lacking but i would concur yeah focus is not where i would like it to be um in the last just to wrap up there's going to be a ton of people out there say uh privacy isn't worth it or privacy isn't necessary if you have if you're looking for privacy or doing something nefarious and i have no sympathy for developers who are writing tools what what would your message be to the um i guess the naysayers out there, the people who don't understand what Samurai Wallet was or why privacy is important in the first place? First, privacy is important to everyone, whether you recognize it or not.

Privacy is allowing you as a person, you get to decide. It's not hiding things, but you just get to decide what information you share. It's back to the classic examples why we have blinds on our windows and locks on our doors. If you come over my house, I might invite you into my living room, but I might not have you upstairs into the bedrooms. And you're definitely not looking through my underwear drawer. That's privacy. I don't have anything to hide in there. But you know, I'd rather not have people that I don't know that well in those private spaces. So this is our finances, as we as we said at the beginning of this are indicative of our speech, who you transact with who you donate money to what organizations you support what causes you know

it's just all of this is indicative to speech and it's a freedom if you don't have financial privacy you can't have financial freedom and you know the way it is today you need finances there's very few people who can go you know live off grid and be completely private that way they you know we have to interact and have a medium of exchange with people and that's what hopefully bitcoin will be you know going forward and but you need privacy for that so that's the first thing and and why you should care maybe you don't you know at this point right we're feeling kind of good and in the western world but as we saw with covid and with the trucker convoy in canada that can switch where they will cut off your right to interact, to transact.

And when you need privacy, you want tools to be there. You might not think you need it now, but there may be a point in time where you need it. And if they've thrown all the privacy developers in prison, it's a lot easier to take away the rest of your rights, just like with guns, right? It's the same kind of the same arguments they use in these cases against us. Well, there's this small percentage of bad actors using this tool.

Same thing they use to try to take away Second Amendment rights. And in the countries that we've seen where they do have taken away their rights to bear arms, other freedoms follow shortly after. So, you know, it's just really slippery slope. It's kind of, you know, I guess I wish there was another term, but it's something that we need to stay on top of and not let it to continue to be eroded as it has been. Yeah, that's what I worry about, the complacency. I mean, going back to the Patriot Act, we're 23, 24 years into it now, and that's what I worry about, the frogs boiling in water. If we don't stand up for this, I think Bitcoiners and obviously your husband

and Bill being the shining examples of this, of recognizing the slippery slope and this frog boiling in water effect that we're all being subjected to with the KYC and AML compliance and the financial surveillance that has been erected around us over the 21st century. If we do not push the tide in the other direction and use the tools that give us the ability to do that, which Bitcoin, I believe, is the strongest tool to do that, you don't have to ask permission. You can build on the protocol and the protocol is being built on top of it without needing to to go to the government and get a license or um ask permission to open a bank account you can simply download software and access this network and it is an

incredible tool to push back against the encroaching the surveillance state that that is only getting stronger as time goes on and if we don't act intentionally and with a sense of urgency. We could wake up in the not too long future and find that we've lost all of it and getting it back at that point will be a much harder task than it is today. And so I think whether or not you're recognizing it or you're simply somebody who goes about their day, You go to your nine-to-five job, you work at your desk, you come home, you do homework with the kids, maybe you open a beer, you watch a basketball game, and you think, ah, I don't need any of this, I'm fine, I'm not operating outside the lines of what the government deems is appropriate. uh like you said uh that can switch on a dime and if the panopticon is uh sufficiently robust and resilient uh you could wake up one day and say hey you know what we're gonna need you to

stay in your house uh or for a while and you can't go to your job anymore and oh by the way if you do want to go outside you need to um get this injection i mean it's already happened uh i think a lot of people woke up during that but again going back to how the state or these forces who knows if it's the state itself or um or the conglomerate of of super national powers that really have control but what doesn't really matter at the end of the day um they are slowly but surely taking ground establishing precedent lulling people into a false sense of security and then um waiting a couple years and then taking some more ground establishing more precedent and you may not feel it's worthwhile to speak out or to act in a way that pushes back against this but

i would just caution that um you may want to start thinking about it so when the kind of reporting laws so when third party reporting laws when banks had to start reporting on suspicious activity it it was $10,000. And that the reason they said that that was because this was such a high number, it would be it would stick out. Well, when they wrote that law, you know, in today's money, that's nearly $70,000. So just by the devaluing of the currency and not ever readdressing that number, they and so many laws that they do this, right, they start with we're just going to tax the billionaires and then it just happens that it just spreads and it gathers so many more people within their their nets if you will and that's exactly what what you're

warning about there that you know this complacency can lead to where everyone is affected yeah i mean that's a conversation for another day but uh repealing the bank secrecy act is uh something that should be another priority of big winners uh but i don't think we have enough time to tackle that that in depth um not a person first yeah let's do that and then take that ground and then start fighting back and that getting rid of the patriot act and the bank secrecy act i think should be your top priorities uphill sounds crazy when we were doing like right when samurai was to development and you know early bitcoiners in general i think it was so much about let's root around the state let's we're gonna kind of follow they're putting out these laws okay we're gonna do

something different but in our case i think it's perfect example that the state's not gonna leave you alone if you're doing something that's actually affecting them they're not going to just ignore you and let you you know continue on with your your little bitcoin like if you are actually affecting the state they're gonna and affecting their control they are going to come after you so just you know as a warning like this this isn't this isn't over no and for the girl dads out there listening like well i'm never going to do that it could come down to like hey you want to send your kids to private school you know we could wake up 15 years around they got private schools banned you have to send them to our public indoctrination camps there's countries

that are trying to try to shut off homeschooling so yeah i mean that's that's very real yeah lauren uh you're incredibly strong incredibly brave uh i know it's been difficult for you to be forced to um be out here and doing this i know uh for sure that you would rather be doing anything but this, but I highly commend you for, for doing it. And I think, um, it's good to know that you're strong women and strong wives out there that love their, their husbands and the ideals that they fought for enough to get out there. Cause I know, I know many, many others would, would crumble under the pressure. And so I just want to again, commend you because I think you're incredibly strong and it's incredibly important what you're doing. Thank you. You know, Keone actually said

before he went in that even though knowing that if there wasn't someone speaking that he would, all the momentum he had gained in that last little bit where he could speak for himself would be lost. But he said, like, I didn't have to do this. I didn't have to come and kind of put myself out there because it is, it is a vulnerable position to be in to, to speak about things that are that are personal that I care about that affect you know us in a very real way and um but I couldn't not I knew that if the positions were reversed and there's so many times that I've you know told him I wish I wish they were because I think you know he would have just been so much better at this than I am um but I know he wouldn't it wouldn't have stopped wouldn't

have given you know given up anything to to see me released if if i was in unjustly so you know i couldn't not it's it's he's my best friend and my husband and you know it's partner and everything so thank you freaks go to bill and kioni.org support the efforts reach out to your representatives and make some noise, eat the noise up. That's the one thing. We had a lot of momentum at the end of last year leading up to the beginning of this year, and I think it fell off a bit,

but we need to get back on the train and make sure that this injustice is wrong is righted, if you will. And we'll keep pushing on our end here. If there's anything we can do, Lauren, please let us know, And I'm optimistic. He's going to get out. Bill's going to get out. Then we're going to reset and then begin taking the ground that we need to take to make sure that this never happens again. Thank you. Marty, for some political office, is that what you're saying? No, no, no, no, no, maybe, probably not too much, too much social media baggage that that's a pull up in a, in point of office.

If I've, sorry, sorry. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on. Thank you. Peace and love freaks. Thank you for listening to this episode of TFTC. if you've made it this far. I imagine you got some value out of the episode. If so, please share it

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