Keep calm and HODL #Bitcoin.

Everyone seems to be overreacting to the Samourai arrests, the FBI PSA, and Phoenix leaving the US. Here's my attempt to break it down.

Samourai

You have to unpack all of the different elements. Could this be a state attack on self-custody and privacy? Maybe. Probably not.

There are a few components here that need to be evaluated on their own.

1⃣ Samourai was a self-custodial wallet

2⃣ Samourai was a mixer

3⃣ Samourai was providing normal people with privacy

4⃣ Samourai were knowingly marketing the service to criminals and flaunting that fact

Reading the charges, it seems like #4 is pretty cut and dry for this case. Their getting arrested for #4, doesn't automatically mean #1, #2, #3 are under siege as well. If Samourai was a taco stand laundering money and bragging about it, I'm sure they would be taken down too.

They may be accused of running a money transmitter now, but that may or may not stick. We'll find out in the trial.

All that said, we should always be vigilant to attempts to erode privacy and the ability to self-custody. It just does not seem that this fight is *that* fight.

FBI PSA

Seems pretty normal that the FBI would advise people to use compliant services, and the entire announcement seems to revolve around potential disruptions due to Samourai being taken down, and potentially others in the future. Given they took action, they have to post some bulletin about it.

Remember that when people lose funds or have funds stolen from them, they do go to the FBI for help. From their point of view, the best thing for people to do is use compliant services where they can potentially help.

The announcement concludes saying that services that purposely break the law will be investigated - so again we go back to #4 above. This is nothing new, and self-custody is not being criminalized.

Phoenix Leaving

Anti Money Laundering laws are an attack on property rights.

TLDR: Unless AML regulations can be refuted and abolished, property rights cannot exist and we are back to legalized slavery.

Property rights rests on the bedrock of logic that John Locke formulated in 1690 with his publication Two Treatises of Government.

Locke's ideas were instrumental in the rejection and abolishment of human slavery. He postulated that every human is born free and is a sovereign person who owns themselves and the fruits of their labor.

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"Every man has a "property" in his own "person". This nobody has any right to but himself. The "labour" of his body and the "work" of his hands, we may say, are properly his."

(Book II, Chapter 5.27, page 130)

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Following this reasoning, slavery becomes a violation of property rights: we can't own another human being since every person is born sovereign. We have no right to what another person earns with their labor. Only voluntary contracts that are mutually beneficial are valid arrangements.

The problem of AML regulations becomes obvious at this point.

First of all, AML reverses the burden of evidence and postulates guilt until proven innocence. Your money is assumed to be laundered - and thereby illegal - until proven otherwise.

This flips the whole Western conception of legal proceedings on its head; the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law.

Instead, AML assumes criminal activity as the standard, with no requirement of the government to spend resources to prove a committed crime in a court of law backed by evidence beyond all reasonable doubt.

Under AML, in order to abolish your property rights, the government only needs to raise the bar for what constitutes accepted evidence to prove the history of your earnings. This sets absolute surveillance as the standard.

If the government want to strip you of your property under AML, all that is needed is for the government to reject the history of your property as invalid or inconclusive.

In the case of a banking service that you used in the past, if it no longer exists, or if it no longer have your records, or if you are unable to gain access to those records, your property is confiscated under AML.

AML regulations abolish the right of the individual to own the fruits of their labor, by empowering a third party to determine if your property is valid, without any burden of evidence.

If the validity of your money can be rejected at any point by a third party, your property rights have been abolished, ipso facto.

Returning to John Locke:

".. for nobody can desire to have me in his absolute power unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom -- i.e. make me a slave." (Book II, Chapter 3.18)

".. and hence it is that he who attempts to get another man under his power does thereby put himself into a state of war with him." (Book II, Chapter 3.17)

Since AML regulations require absolute surveillance and the individual is at the complete mercy of the third party that determines the validity of their money at any given time, the statements of Locke ring uncannily true.

Locking the fruits of a person's labor under someone else's full power and control, transforms the working individual into nothing more than a slave, chained the whims and conditions of the controller.

The situation under AML regulations is captured in this statement:

"I have altered the deal. Pray that I don't alter it any further"

Following Locke, we don't have to accept a dystopian future without individual rights and property rights, ruled by neo-feudalism.

This is why Bitcoin is a return to the ideas of John Locke.

On a Bitcoin standard there is no third party that validates your transactions. The money you have earned is yours without restriction. Your money cannot be invalidated. Your transactions cannot be stopped.

Under a Bitcoin standard, criminals will have to be found guilty in a court of law, based on evidence.

Bitcoin is a return to justice and property rights for all.

Further on John Locke: