Samourai Wallet seized by the feds

[Hazink]

It is possible that Sparrow will be the next target. Only what the government will look for is allegation.

Look for an allegation you said? They will make one; if the government is after you, they don't need any strong allegation against you; they make one that they can use against you; they make the law to suit them; they interpret the law to be in their favour; and they turn whatever they don't like to be against the law that they can use against you as long as they want; all they need is the perfect time to strike once they get it, that's all.

[DaveF]

Well, it's a fact that this kind of news is never good for the community. And it is regrettable that we are reaching this type of situation that the authorities have been promoting.

But we also have to note that they were the ones who put themselves in the sights of the authorities:


They invited Russians who were being penalized by the authorities because of the war to use their services to evade the sanctions. Without a doubt, it was a matter of time before the authorities caught up.

That was not one of their better moves. There is a difference between doing something that may be illegal or at least used for illegal things and broadcasting the fact that they want you to use their product to do illegal things.

-Dave

[riverdip]

if they can scare theymos into removing mixers, they can do anything !

[SamReomo]

Feds are against everything that we do as crypto users and whatever makes them suspicious of privacy, they will just stop that thing.

It's the first time I'm hearing that feds have seized a wallet which is somewhat insane but it was expected by many users.

I believe that in near future we may see feds seizing many swap platforms as those are allowing rug-pulls or you can say rug-pulls are operating on those platforms by scamsters.

[FinneysTrueVision]

The “land of the free” is a complete fallacy. A US-led global order has increasingly diminished freedom around the world. They went with the North Korean hackers excuse this time — no matter how minimal their involvement, there is always some convenient bad guy for them to justify wider surveillance, more regulation, and restricting how people are allowed to live their lives. You can’t use certain apps or technology because of vague “CCP spying reasons” or “it’s Kremlin propaganda”, yet Israel is allowed to spy on U.S. citizens and influence politics without media conglomerates and congressional representatives raising any concerns.

The reasons given for why they targeted Samourai are obviously BS. Any tool which enables users to transact outside their financial panopticon will be seen as a threat that cannot be allowed to exist. Whirlpool doesn't meet the legal criteria for being a money transmitting business. It’s simply a protocol for collaborative transactions. Arresting the Samourai developers is as absurd as arresting the Telegram or Session developers because those apps are used by pedophiles, drug dealers and hackers.

It might be argued that Samourai didn’t do enough to discourage illicit activity and were almost encouraging of it. If that was the case, they should be allowed to walk away with a fine, as is the normal standard when banks and corporations are implicated in money laundering.

[Despairo]

Theymos forbid centralized mixers to be promoted in this forum.

Government 1 - 0 Privacy

SEC seize Samourai wallet that has a privacy tools.

Government 2 - 0 Privacy

What's next? No KYC P2P, unregulated casinos or non custodial wallet (without privacy tools)?

I'm really shocked if the Feds now seized a non custodial wallet, Samourai asked FINCEN to withdraw few things on their proposal about CVC mixing, instead of respond it and enlighten to Samourai's developers, the Feds choose to seize everything.

[GreatArkansas]

Jeez! This is really scary right now.  These governments are really into it and no one is excuse.
Samourai's wallet is growing wallet this happened. They are really into mixing services. I'm curious if someone really affected here like their funds got locked because there are ways to withdraw your funds from Samourai wallet, I hope some will be able to do it.

[Despairo]

I'm curious if someone really affected here like their funds got locked because there are ways to withdraw your funds from Samourai wallet, I hope some will be able to do it.

I'm Samourai's user.

I can still open the wallet, view my seed phrase and any other features. I faced endless loading in my wallet and every time I click "Send" button, the software crashes. Technically the funds got locked only if I use Samourai, when I import my seed phrase to other wallet e.g. Electrum, Bluewallet, now I can access my coins.

Even though I know I've back up my seed phrase, but I'm still scared when I see this news lol.

[Darker45]

Feds are against everything that we do as crypto users and whatever makes them suspicious of privacy, they will just stop that thing.

It's the first time I'm hearing that feds have seized a wallet which is somewhat insane but it was expected by many users.

Your first statement explains your second statement. Samourai may be a wallet but it's designed in such a way as to strongly support privacy and anonymity. It is even labelled as a cryptocurrency mixer by the DOJ. It's not that it's a mere wallet. The point is that it has been used to make illegal transactions and even launder money. And it is made possible by its very design. The government doesn't like that as it weakens its "ability of law enforcement to trace the proceeds of criminal activity."

And you don't taunt these powerful guys.

I believe that in near future we may see feds seizing many swap platforms as those are allowing rug-pulls or you can say rug-pulls are operating on those platforms by scamsters.

It seems to me that the authorities are more focused on running after crypto services which offer privacy and anonymity. They seem to be nonchalant over scammers, which the market has a lot. Incidentally, Do Kwon is now a free man.

[alani123]

They invited Russians who were being penalized by the authorities because of the war to use their services to evade the sanctions. Without a doubt, it was a matter of time before the authorities caught up.

Anyone that has ever been on the twitters will know that Samurai was very popular there. Yes their main account was cocky but on the other hand, if you said anything non positive about the wallet, myriads of fan accounts would swarm at you seeking to inflict harm at you and your image for simply criticizing samurai and/or supporting one of their rivals.

If not suspicious, to me it's certainly odd that a purported privacy solution for Bitcoin transactions would have so vocal supporters in public. I always pondered as to why. Why be so public in the first place? What did they have to gain as a FOSS tool from attracting users through viral campaigns and attacking their competitors?

[barto123]

money laundering = moving your money privately
tax evasion = doing the right thing & not complying with criminals, keeping the fruits of your labor. not allowing pedos to extort you.

it's word magic, a spell that has been placed on the population

it's all a scam folks

if you think this system has any legitimacy left, you're brainwashed

government is slavery using lies, deception, psychological abuse over generations

samourai was bitcoin's best hope for privacy

they're coming for privacy in 2024 as the agenda progresses fast, time to switch to privacy by default - monero

[Die_empty]

They invited Russians who were being penalized by the authorities because of the war to use their services to evade the sanctions. Without a doubt, it was a matter of time before the authorities caught up.

How would they openly advertise such information knowing fully well that the US is doing everything possible to reduce the financial transaction of Russians? Maybe they were blinded by financial gains since Russians would find this service very helpful. I am also having some doubts if the Twitter account that made such an advert was really operated by Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill. It is sad to see that any action by privacy service providers is now connected to money laundering and illegal dark web marketplace by the government.

Even though I know I've back up my seed phrase, but I'm still scared when I see this news lol.

Such news is a source of concern because nobody knows the next wallet that will be attacked. The government wouldn't stop until they make privacy a scarce commodity.

[Z390]

But they were greedy to clamp down Binance which was alleged for money laundering, bank fraud, sanctions violation and others. Binance paid 4 billion and still existing.

Binance pleaded guilty to all of the charges that was filed against them, the same as their former ceo CZ who also pleaded guilty. So i reckon that in their own case they knew they were doing so many things wrong.

R.I.P. Samourai.

Too bad that another privacy solution has been brought down, the U.S. government wants to make it very difficult for people to use Bitcoin without exposing data that they can be tracked with. It is sad, but the fight for privacy is looking like a fight that we cannot win.

Privacy is a fight that we can never win.

Unless you are a selfish person, even if this privacy thing is good for your daily use, have you ever thought about putting yourself in a shoe of a ruler? Will you want such to exist in your country without worries about someone funding terrorists and they are untraceable? You won't be able to sleep peacefully.

We can't say because privacy is good for us that everyone in the world will use it right, samourai wallet is a dangerous piece of technology if it gets into the wrong hands, so I like the fact that they made it stop, o my God knows how many bad people have use its features for their own reasons.

In a world where no one is completely clean it will be a disaster to have a way to move funds untraceable, even this day's people do bad things and they feel like it's good, a world without law is called lawless, and that's more like a hell on earth.

Bitcoin works best and live this long because its not a privacy coin out of thr box, it would have been long gone if it was.

[apogio]

Privacy is a fight that we can never win.

I get the point, but please remember what we are here for.
We are here for Bitcoin.
What is bitcoin? A peer to peer electronic cash system.
Who invented it? Someone who won maintaining their privacy.

Privacy is extraordinarily difficult to achieve and you only achieve a percent of it.
Privacy is also extraordinarily easy to be lost and you lose 100% of it.

But we can win... I hope!

[NotATether]

Wait until you see Kruw circlejerking in this thread if he hasn't done so already elsewhere


serious:

OK guys, now you see they are not just targeting mixers anymore, they are targeting any service that offers coinjoin. So I don't want to hear any of this "mixing is money laundering for criminals" talk, because clearly that's not the only talk of the day.

Samourai wallet operated a centralized coordinator and everyone who still had their funds inside said coordinator at the time it was shut down (if it had even been shut down) lost money.  This is why decentralized coordinators like JoinMarket should be studied more carefully. Because it cannot be shut down by anyone even if they wanted it to be.

Many western governments appear to be having a grudge against privacy these past few months. I wonder why is that?

And why do JPmorgan and Citi still get to launder funds for criminals without any action?

Even though I know I've back up my seed phrase, but I'm still scared when I see this news lol.

Such news is a source of concern because nobody knows the next wallet that will be attacked. The government wouldn't stop until they make privacy a scarce commodity.

Wasabi.....

[davis196]

Another privacy enhancing tool goes down the road. Apparently, the governments use everything in their disposal to undermine the users' privacy. Samourai team had recently announced that they were developing a decentralized version of whirlpool, using the Soroban network. It could be the case that they foresaw their own disappearance.

Was Samourai wallet a "privacy enhancing tool" or was it a money laundering tool? Or maybe it was both?
It's funny how some people start whining about "the government taking away our privacy" every time some crypto mixing service gets banned/shut down for doing illegal stuff. I guess that some people think that the ability to conduct money laundering schemes and other illegal activities online is an integral part of their online privacy. Just get a Monero wallet and start using Monero. Why do we have to care about coinjoin/mixing services?

[NotATether]

Why do we have to care about coinjoin/mixing services?

Because your bitcoins are being traced by arbitrary analysis companies as we speak, in order to find any taint on them which any cooperating exchange will then freeze as soon as you make a deposit, without you even knowing about said taint.

[mindrust]

Why do we have to care about coinjoin/mixing services?

Because your bitcoins are being traced by arbitrary analysis companies as we speak, in order to find any taint on them which any cooperating exchange will then freeze as soon as you make a deposit, without you even knowing about said taint.

Do you think coin mixing is the answer to this problem? If you use mixers, then the exchanges will freeze your funds again because now your coins are coming from a mixer.

[NotATether]

Why do we have to care about coinjoin/mixing services?

Because your bitcoins are being traced by arbitrary analysis companies as we speak, in order to find any taint on them which any cooperating exchange will then freeze as soon as you make a deposit, without you even knowing about said taint.

Do you think coin mixing is the answer to this problem? If you use mixers, then the exchanges will freeze your funds again because now your coins are coming from a mixer.

Decentralized coinjoin when done with enough participants and UTXOs offers much stronger guarantees than a mixer ever could, and since all mixers addresses are being tracked by chain analysis, it is not useful when you want to send the result to an exchange.

This is almost what Samourai was doing, minus the "decentralized" part since all their coinjoin transactions were coming from their own server. But if you have the ability to set up decentralized coinjoins with a reserve of something like 1BTC then it becomes near impossible to track the ins and outs of them all - especially if dozens of people with 1BTC start their own coinjoin coordinators.

[hugeblack]

I can still access https://docs.samourai.io/
Privacy app developers should remain anonymous.

But we also have to note that they were the ones who put themselves in the sights of the authorities:

I think this was a stupid move, especially since domain and servers were in Iceland, which gave governments a compelling reason to look behind them.


I wonder if they had cooperated with Chainalysis or any blockchain analysis service, would the same charges have been brought against them? Or is the definition of privacy limited to those who appear to government agencies?