Greetings bitcoiners!
Our next meetup is a monthly coffee event, which we're holding the fourth Sunday of every month at varying locations. This month is at Denim Coffee in downtown Mechanicsburg. With Square's new seamless integration of bitcoin payments into their terminals, Denim is now accepting bitcoin! Check out btcmap.org for other Square businesses also accepting bitcoin. Come join us on Sun, Dec 28th, at 1pm!
This week, the first of the two Samourai wallet developers will be reporting to prison to begin serving his 5 year sentence.
Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill are the brains and brawn behind Samourai wallet, a mobile bitcoin wallet that bitcoiners have been using for a decade. Like other self-custody wallet software, such as Sparrow, Blue Wallet, and Nunchuk, Samourai doesn't take custody of funds. A key feature of such software is that the bitcoin remains in your own custody the whole time. The developers have no involvement, nor do they have even the ability to be involved, with whatever transactions the wallet makes. A difference between Samourai and these other wallets: their developers had a penchant for writing spicy tweets. It's the persona that the developers maintained online, and the notoriety they achieved among the community, that made them targets.
People who champion the promotion of bitcoin's NGU (number go up) property tend to be very well-known, even outside the bitcoin space. Champions of promoting bitcoin's other wonderful property, FGU (freedom go up), tend to not be as well-known. The Samourai devs can be thought of as the tip of the spear, so to speak, of the FGU crowd within bitcoin. Bitcoin is for anyone, of course, and there are many others who also promote FGU; Samourai were among the loudest of the bitcoiner voices who publicly advocated for privacy being a fundamental human right, and made privacy tools within bitcoin easier to use and more accessible.
Calling Samourai money transmitters is like calling Hallmark money transmitters because they make cards and envelopes that people use to send cash, and every $5 that a grandparent sends to their grandkids is unlawful. Would the justice system go after Microsoft if they learned that a drug dealer had used Excel? Keonne, who actually lives in Western PA, has been on several podcasts recently. Coin Stories, TFTC, and The Bitcoin Way are a few that have interviewed him. I really want to believe that our justice system operates in good faith, and would never crucify someone based on political convenience or an incentive to bolster one's portfolio of prosecutions, even when evidence points to the accused being innocent of the crimes of which they've been charged. This sequence of events makes me think otherwise though. Don't take my word for it...please listen and decide for yourself.
Keonne Rodriguez on Coin Stories: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHzYteijFFM
TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast: #692: Free Samourai with Keonne Rodriguez https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tales-from-the-crypt
Both Bill and Keonne plead guilty to one of the two charges, with the other being dropped as part of the deal. The details of why they thought a plea deal was in their best interest is explained in the pods. At this stage of the game, a presidential pardon is their only shot. There's a link to a petition on https://billandkeonne.org if you're interested.
The intent of putting these people in a pillory for all to see is to make an example of them. They want people to be fearful about developing software that increases privacy, using such software, or more broadly, living their life in a way which every detail of their lives isn't exposed for all to see. Something tells me that the prosecutors of this case, as well as the judge, have curtains or blinds on their windows. There's even a chance that they close the door when they're in the bathroom. Why? Because privacy is a fundamental human right.
Keep stacking sats, keep stacking skills.
Hope to see you on Sunday, Dec 28th, at Denim Coffee in Mechanicsburg!
Bitcoin in the Burg
1. Provide value to others
2. Spend less than you earn
3. Save in a money that can't be printed by someone else for free