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A trillion dollar asset faces a court case that could collapse the primary use case of said asset (self-custody and sovereignty), our boys thought the community would step up to the tune of the +$10m required to fight a court case like this. Instead they got $1m in donations and $2m in debt and had to call it quits. This case was and is existential for Bitcoin. The fact that only one one-millionth of the monetary value of Bitcoin was put forth to defend itself from this attack was a travesty. Think how much miners spend on electricity and machine depreciation every day and nobody could spare the money necessary to defend Bitcoin from the legal attack vector. #FreeSamourai #PardonKeonne #FreeTDev #PardonBill

Replies (11)

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Its not existential. Its a tragedy, but not existential. And its too soon to say what the effects will be. If I were a developer, ain't no way in hell I'd be publishing under my own name. What does it do to their control when they don't know who to black bag? But we'll see. I think the state will attack more now. I think they've revealed their strategy. It'll be rinse and repeat, one dev after another, till they're all in prison, or all have scopes on their houses 24/7. But I think bitcoin'll be fine.
↩ replying to Comte de Sats Germain
The effect you list of Devs not wanting to publish under their own name is already palpable. All the major grants in the Bitcoin Space require handing over your true name in the background even if you could remain nym on GitHub. They were charged for unlicensed money transmission for a non-custodial wallet. The court didn't pursue money laundering charges. The charges they are going to prison for could apply to many facets of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Do miners have Money Transmitter Licenses?
The Samourai wallet devs thought the community would rally to help them cover the cost of their legal defense, after all the case represents a major threat to bitcoin and all open source software. Yet despite the incredible wealth of the Bitcoin community, they failed to raise more than 10% of the ten million they needed and were also millions in debt by the time they took a plea deal. There is a large cohort of wealthy bitcoin influencers that talk a big game about freedom and the principles of bitcoin, but when it comes down to it they are just LARPing and don't give two shits about anything other than number go up. They just want to increase their wealth in fiat terms, they don't care if that takes the form of self custodied bitcoin or ETFs and DATs. So when the Samourai Wallet devs needed their help, they looked the other way, unwilling to part with their precious sats. The worst were the ones that barely even mentioned the Samourai case in their podcasts. I guess the latest DAT purchase was just more important. This was their chance as a community to come forward and fight back against tyranny and financial surveillance using a portion of the gains bitcoin has brought them, but they didn't care. The number was going up and we had a "bitcoin president", so they didn't want to spoil the fun with promoting the Samourai case. Meanwhile the shitcoiners that these same bitcoin influencers spend so much energy hating on, raised more than 4 million dollars for Roman Storm of Tornado Cash (which is another case that these influencers should of been fighting hard for) We need a shame list of any bitcoin influencers that haven't been consistently advocating for the Samourai devs since the arrest. Fuck your DATs, your Saylors, your cucking for politicians, your fucking regulated backdoor CBDC stablecoins, and your KYCed DCA apps. Or maybe a list of influencers that did support them would be better, or both. The Samourai devs should of been able to raise 10 million in a month when you consider how insanely wealthy some of these "bitcoiners" are. Anything less was a travesty.  These men are deep in debt, so on top of sitting in a prison cell, they get to deal with the added stress of being insolvent and unable to earn money. I wrote an article after the election about how even though it may feel like bitcoin won, the war wasn't even close to over with the Samourai devs still facing prison. It goes over all the ways you can help fight back against the state's war on Bitcoin, financial freedom, and privacy. Check it out, it's still very relevant.
Fight For Your Right To Use Bitcoin As It Was Intended To Be Used | HackerNoon
We have won the battle, but the war on Bitcoin isn't over yet, here's how you can help.
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↩ replying to thoughtcrimeboss
brutal truth: most "bitcoiners" today are just fiat gamblers in orange cosplay. real ones like keonne & tdev are now broke because the etf tourists couldn't spare 0.001% of their stack to defend actual freedom tech. but hey, stacking sats in someone else's custody *is* the new self-sovereignty, right? /s if you want to go beyond twitter outrage and actually support builders who don't bend the knee, hit up the pages above. throw them a bone instead of letting our corner become just another regulated banking product.