Samourai Wallet seized by the feds

[joker_josue]

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.

This is the point.

There is a lot of talk about maintaining the privacy of money, transactions, etc. But then you try to use centralized services for this purpose. It's almost impossible to keep something private, at least for a long time, when using centralized services. One cannot want privacy and then use centralized services.

Solutions to obtain privacy must be increasingly decentralized, as this is the only way to maintain privacy and avoid these types of situations. Developers, instead of wasting time trying to bring GIFs into the Bitcoin blockchain, should look for decentralized solutions within the blockchain that would improve users' privacy.

In short, you want privacy but use centralized services, it's halfway to losing that privacy.

[NotATether]

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

https://blog.samourai.is is also accessible.

Although the main domain redirects to samouraiwallet.com which has already been seized.

It appears that their onionsite http://72typmu5edrjmcdkzuzmv2i4zqru7rjlrcxwtod4nu6qtfsqegngzead.onion/ is also down. Maybe it was hosted on the same server as clearnet.

[darkv0rt3x]

Bitcointalk people were already forseing this when they forbid conjoin campaigns in te forum...

It's nervewrecking that states and governments are trying to attack and estroy everything that may give us any privacy and/or control!

[mindrust]

Does it still sound like a conspiracy theory?

Privacy will be gone completely in a few years. We will be sharing our cars and homes with strangers. I already share my country with millions of illegals thanks to the US politics in the Middle East. Make a google search and see which country hosts the most refugees(!).

The US has been taking thousands from the Mexican border.

These things happen because of the evil globalist fucks like Klaus Schwab.

[NotATether]

[ img width=700]https://talkimg.com/images/2024/04/25/raZA1.jpeg[/img]

Does it still sound like a conspiracy theory?

Privacy will be gone completely in a few years. We will be sharing our cars and homes with strangers. I already share my country with millions of illegals thanks to the US politics in the Middle East. Make a google search and see which country hosts the most refugees(!).

The US has been taking thousands from the Mexican border.

These things happen because of the evil globalist fucks like Klaus Schwab.

Well as someone with a family full of conspiracy theorists who somehow came to the conclusion that covid was created by WEF, this is actually a very real and serious threat to Bitcoin, what they are doing right now. And I'm sure that there are some WEF-affiliated people in governments, the IMF, World Bank and others and also rich people who attend Davos meetings who give donations to said people.

I'm sure you remember when they tried to outlaw strong encryption and then people were printing the PGP source code on t-shirts, mugs and so on.

We need to channel that resistance because ultimately, code is free speech protected by the first amendment. You can't be held criminally liable just for writing it.

[mindrust]

[ img width=700]https://talkimg.com/images/2024/04/25/raZA1.jpeg[/img]

Does it still sound like a conspiracy theory?

Privacy will be gone completely in a few years. We will be sharing our cars and homes with strangers. I already share my country with millions of illegals thanks to the US politics in the Middle East. Make a google search and see which country hosts the most refugees(!).

The US has been taking thousands from the Mexican border.

These things happen because of the evil globalist fucks like Klaus Schwab.

… And I'm sure that there are some WEF-affiliated people in governments, the IMF, World Bank and others and also rich people who attend Davos meetings who give donations to said people.

You think there are some?

They are running the banks, businesses, countries. See which companies are WEF members. Do you want me to do the research for you? Here it comes:

https://www.weforum.org/partners/

When I take a look at the list, I see it is harder find a non-WEF affiliated business.

It is time to wake the fuck up.

[ABCbits]

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.

And it's just one of some controversial things they did on social media. I remember they also picking fight with Wasabi Wallet, criticize few Bitcoin mining pool, criticize law on few country and others.

--snip--
Just get a Monero wallet and start using Monero. Why do we have to care about coinjoin/mixing services?

Because Bitcoin is accepted on more places (when compared with Monero)?

[Z-tight]

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.

Funds cannot be locked or confiscated in a self custodial wallet, as long as you have correctly backed up your seed phrase, you can import your wallet into another software and gain access to your funds.

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.

We should also ban the internet, because bad people use it to scam and hurt others, and we can also go ahead to ban banks and cash, because people use it to launder money and store illicit funds. BTC and privacy solutions are tools, just like every other tool out there, and it should not be banned because some bad people use them.

[Lucius]

This is just a logical continuation of what has been happening for some time, and it is no secret that mixing is a big thorn in Big Brother's side. Therefore, I don't understand why anyone who provides such services still hasn't realized that it shouldn't be done right in front of them, regardless of what someone says that it doesn't really matter where you are if "they" want to find you.

Given that I see that the Russians are mentioned in the context of this story, will the feds do something about the USDT issue, given that there are allegedly serious indications that the Russians are avoiding sanctions in this way?

[Kruw]

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

What is that is that supposed to mean?...

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 wrong. Coinjoins are non custodial, funds are not "inside" the coordinator, users control their keys at all times, so no one lost money.

[dkbit98]

Does it still sound like a conspiracy theory?

Probably yes to most of the people who experimented with latest safe and effective revolutionary government ''cure''  
As we move towards 2030 expect to see more crazy things worldwide.

These things happen because of the evil globalist fucks like Klaus Schwab.

Nice guy.
As if someone is joking with us and telling us that villains from James Bond movies actually exist.

Interesting tweet (or whatever it's called now) was made by Edward Snowden related with Samourai Wallet seizure:


https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/1783222542464884911

Make money private by default = Monero.
Just sayin.

[Yamane_Keto]

What was seized? domain name and centralized Whirlpool coordinator? They already had plans to shut it down and if more continue to update to Samourai Wallet 0.99.98i_dexwp or any fork of that wallet, they will be able to use Soroban without any problem.

What happened is that Founders And CEO Of Cryptocurrency Mixing Service Arrested And Charged. The authorities may have found the data of the centralized Whirlpool coordinator, but this should not affect Samourai wallet.

[Kruw]

Make money private by default = Monero.
Just sayin.

You don't need shitcoins for privacy. Wasabi Wallet, BTCPay Server's coinjoin plugin, and Trezor's coinjoin account all provide privacy by default for Bitcoin.

[DaveF]

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?

Looking through some of the samourai devs other posts & comments around the net they really seemed to going past 'anonymize your coins' and pushing the 'if you have funds from places you should not have funds from use our services'

It's a blow to privacy but, and I think this is universal to governments and police forces around the world, if you keep poking them, they are going to come after you.

Would this have happened no matter what? Probably.
Are they going to have more legal trouble because of how they went about it? Definitely.

Just my view.

-Dave

[nutildah]

Coinjoins aren't custodial, so there's no funds they can seize. The Feds are only able to access the data of Samourai's users since their wallet was designed to collect xpub addresses and IP addresses by default.

As if it wasn't possible to use it over Tor since 2019, or a VPN. Taking shots at your competitor even after they have been extinguished -- the kind of class I would expect from you.

Besides, nobody cares so long as you weren't sending money to North Korea-related or other watchlist addresses.

[Kruw]

As if it wasn't possible to use it over Tor since 2019, or a VPN.

I know. Samourai deleted the issue I opened in their Gitlab to have this information hidden from them by default: https://web.archive.org/web/20230417145554/https://code.samourai.io/wallet/samourai-wallet-android/-/issues/458

They said they would not even add a warning. Now the Feds got everything.

[NotATether]

As if it wasn't possible to use it over Tor since 2019, or a VPN.

I know. Samourai deleted the issue I opened in their Gitlab to have this information hidden from them by default: https://web.archive.org/web/20230417145554/https://code.samourai.io/wallet/samourai-wallet-android/-/issues/458

They said they would not even add a warning. Now the Feds got everything.

What makes you think that they are not going to target Wasabi next?

[BlackHatCoiner]

Bitcointalk people were already forseing this when they forbid conjoin campaigns in te forum...

Coinjoin services are allowed. Mixers are not.

The authorities may have found the data of the centralized Whirlpool coordinator, but this should not affect Samourai wallet.

It affects it, because their servers were used to run the whirlpool coordinator and the SPV backend for their lightweight mobile application, if I recall correctly.

What makes you think that they are not going to target Wasabi next?

Targeting Wasabi what for? They're not even a honeypot. They're officially paying for mass surveillance software and their privacy software is broken. What else could the government ask for?

[buwaytress]

Man that's sick to hear, hope the devs behind them don't get more blowback. This somewhat affects my work, more of a nuisance at the moment to just update tools for privacy, but longer-term not even sure any longer how US would view people who recommend these services, or even teach them how to use them.

Can anyone see a silver lining?

[Kruw]

Targeting Wasabi what for? They're not even a honeypot. They're officially paying for mass surveillance software and their privacy software is broken. What else could the government ask for?

You're lying, Wasabi's privacy software isn't broken. If you aren't lying, then prove it by tracing this Wasabi coinjoin: https://mempool.space/tx/bffa359a9d7908be069800e6bf471db1050496fc4fac40298b15c0d126202298