> still stings bc samourai was the privacy sharp-end in folks’ pockets

Honestly, this part is not really true, firstly using Samourai rendered your coins non fungible at most exchanges and got your accounts cancelled. XMR atomic swaps are a much better solution.

But regardless, the statements in the indictment were fucking damning, even for appeals. If you want to make a crypto privacy tool you should take a lesson from the Monero developers — focus on talk of fungibility. Don’t say “we happily enable drug dealers and terrorists!” You need to focus on “wow of course nobody supports evil criminals, but it hurts vendors to have coins not cashable and exchange accounts cancelled because they accidentally take a tainted payment. Our currency is about fungibility and nothing else, and we just want to enable normal people to use it as if it were dollars.”

Even if Samourai was the best in class in terms of privacy technology (it is absolutely not) they were at that point exactly the last people that should take the issues in question to appeal. They went above and beyond in tainting any hope of the case getting a fair hearing. I personally hoped that they would plea out.