We Must Uphold the Right to Transactional Privacy by Appealing to Our Representatives to Drop the Charges Against Samourai Wallet Developers

I’ve spoken with a number of politicians in the past few weeks. They all see bitcoin as a store of value and believe that U.S. citizens have the right to hold their private keys.

I’ve spoken with a number of politicians in the past few weeks. They all see bitcoin (BTC) as a store of value and believe that U.S. citizens have the right to hold their own private keys.

I can’t say that it doesn’t feel good to hear U.S. elected officials express these views and even propose bills that would codify pro-bitcoin legislation into law. It’s surely refreshing, especially after the political antagonism that Bitcoiners and the bitcoin industry endured in the past few years.

With that said, there is still work to be done, and much of that work involves advocating to preserve our right to transact with bitcoin privately.

One of the best privacy-preserving tools we have at the bitcoin base layer are bitcoin mixers, which help users to anonymize their transactions.

And one of the most well-known mixers was Samourai Wallet, which enabled users to mix their bitcoin in a noncustodial fashion. That is, the developers and maintainers of the wallet never touched users’ private keys.

This software was shut down early last year, though, when the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) pressed charges against the Samourai developers including conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business and conspiracy to commit money laundering charges. (The developers of Tornado Cash, open-source mixing software deployed on Ethereum, are also facing similar charges.)

Some politicians, including Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) have come out in support of the Samourai developers, drafting a letter to the former U.S. Attorney General, the Honorable Merrick Garland, in which they outlined that the developers clearly did not operate a money transmitting business as per the definition of such a business in FinCEN guidance from 2019. (With that said, Senator Lummis has also coauthored a bill in which she calls for the U.S. Treasury to “conduct a study on combatting anonymous crypto asset transactions like asset mixers,” but I digress.)

Mixers are incredibly important for human rights activists who need to maintain their anonymity when sending and receiving funds as well as to everyday people who value transactional privacy.

Therefore, we need to bring this issue to the attention of politicians, as many are unfamiliar with it, so to hopefully have more of them come out in defense of the Samourai developers and to see the importance of preserving U.S. citizens’ right to use mixers.

For this reason, I’m asking you to use the letter template published by my colleague Shinobi at the end of this piece to write your representatives.

Just as we’ve rallied to Free Ross and to protect the right to self custody, we must rally in support of transactional privacy.

This is something that I, the political correspondent for this publication, cannot do alone. I need your help. So, please heed this call to action and inform your representatives about this matter so that by the time I have a conversation with them about it, they have some understanding of the issue.