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–Samourai Wallet developers arrested and accused of conspiracy to commit money laundering and operating w/o money transmission license (1)

–Roger Ver arrested and accused of tax fraud (2)

–Binance's CZ will do a 4-month jail stint for a lax AML program (3)

–Tornado Cash developers on trial in the US for "facilitating" money laundering (4)

–Another Tornado cash developer awaiting sentencing of up to 5 years in Dutch prison for money laundering (5)

-An alleged founder (not proven) of Bitcoin Fog mixer found guilty on money laundering charges (6)

-Privacy services now shutting down completely or cutting off access to US users for fear of future prosecutions (7)

-Silvergate and Signature Bank face liquidity crises and bank runs when various government agencies begin probing around their AML programs and connections to the cryptocurrency industry (8)

-New US legislation aimed at surveilling crypto transactions and lowering the bar for Suspicious Activity Reports (down to $2,000 for bitcoin and crypto)(9)

What binds all of these accusations, cases, and prosecutions that have flooded out in a manner of months and even weeks?

They all deal, in some way, with the next-generation of cryptographically secure money outside of government control.

Beyond Operation Chokepoint, the significant amount of government resources dedicated to sinking businesses and criminalizing otherwise decent individuals offering tools for citizens to use peer-to-peer digital cash demonstrates there are powerful forces at work here to quash the parallel crypto economy.

The undoing of FTX and SBF came not at the hand of his future jailers, but rather the journalistic work of a few sleuths who caught on to the actual scam that is easily one of the largest crimes of our time. All the the while, SBF and his platform were the toast of the town: Silicon Valley, Washington, and among New York financiers. His crimes compare in absolutely no way to any of the previous cases mentioned here.

For the independent developers, financial entrepreneurs, and activists mentioned above, they empowered people to handle better versions of code and money.

As national debts balloon, and governments offer no solutions on fixing their fiscal positions, they weaponize different agencies and law enforcement to stamp out the system they cannot control.

Cynics might say this is just an effort to squeeze the population and innovative industries out of the need to fiscally sustain government largess. Or perhaps cutting off the ability for an alternative monetary system to develop that would endanger the Central Bank fiat monetary system.

What is overwhelmingly true, however, is that financial freedom is at stake more than ever. And that goes hand in hand with economic freedom.

Will we allow this to continue? Or will be resist the anti-progress kinetic forces that are denying us the ability to freely associate and exchange value how we see fit?

There has to be true moral clarity on what is at stake here, and how we can steer the forces that wish to deny us financial and technological autonomy.

I know what side I'll be on.

(1)

“Senders send messages stamped with Bitcoin ecash to Nostr relays. The Nostr relays collect the Bitcoin ecash, then deliver messages to receivers.”