Joerg Platzer

Samourai Wallet developer Keonne Rodriguez (@keonne) moved prisons, which means he has a new mailing address. We updated his latest letter to include it. Please make sure to respect the mailing guidelines so your mail can be delivered. therage.co/letter-8-notes-fr…

I don’t think we are ready for the level of cooked Bitcoin is going to be going forward. The United States is asking non-custodial service operators and neutral network participants to act on behalf of US law enforcement – specifically, to block any transaction related to the NK hacking group Trader Traitor. If any transaction related to NK makes it into a block, or is executed via a non-custodial service you control, it seems you should expect to find yourself in the middle of a criminal indictment in the future. The implications of this would be disastrous – and a lot easier to enforce should Roman Storm lose his re-trial this coming April, which will decide whether non-custodial service operators can be held liable for what others do with their software.

Keonne found out that is grandmother died while he was cramped up in prison, stuck in a cell for 23h a day. Please read his newest letter.

Remember when they told you digital ID would be voluntary

A lot of people seem to have the hope that Trump will pardon the Samourai Wallet developers. While waiting for the Storm verdict, I took some time to read through the White House Digital Asset Report to see what this administration thinks of financial privacy, and my guys - if you still believe that the Trump WH is in *any* capacity friendly to these undertakings, you are in for a very rude awakening. Effectively, the White House urges FinCEN to deem *all* privacy measures in digital assets a “primary money laundering concern” under the PATRIOT Act. This includes: -> single use addresses, wallets and accounts -> swapping between networks & chains -> mixers, obviously -> “pooling” or “aggregating” cryptocurrencies from multiple wallets Many will now say: oh, but there’s so much good language in the report as well, like the protection of self-custody. That’s true, but the protection of self-custody is contingent on the *lawful exchange* of assets between users. That’s why the White House additionally urges Congress to ***expand the PATRIOT Act*** and ***amend the BSA to cover “DeFi” services***. To ensure compliance in “DeFi,” the White House suggests the implementation of digital identities, that would tie all of your transaction history to your name, so that “DeFi” services have the power to approve transactions. Even when implemented with ZKProofs, as the White House suggests, this would effectively turn a permissionless system into a permissioned one. I know we live in the age of celebrating all the Bitcoin wins, but sometimes things that glitter are just a massive pile of sh*t, my dudes.