Samourai Wallet seized and founders arrested

[notblox1]

Their fiat system or monetary system is a failure against scam, money laundering, terrorism, banditry and other criminals activities.

It is total failure but most people still believe everything is going to be fine and they can continue to use it.
They always invert things, if something is white they will say it is black and they will convince people in this.
When they say something is bad there is good chance it is really good.
Privacy is not bad.

[examplens]

Let's see how this works for them, and if it wasn't too late.
Probably next is mandatory KYC....

Smart play from Wasabi team, but there is no guarantee this will protect them from anything.

They ^Wasabi went a step further. Shutting down its Coinjoin service, effective from June 1st, 2024.
https://blog.wasabiwallet.io/zksnacks-is-discontinuing-its-coinjoin-coordination-service-1st-of-june/

Wasabi Wallet will continue to function as a regular bitcoin wallet, users can generate private keys to receive and send bitcoin. Even without coinjoins, Wasabi’s client-side filtering architecture, Tor integration and custom coin selection make it the most private light wallet available. However, the nature of the bitcoin blockchain prevents users from obtaining complete privacy without coinjoins.

[Charles-Tim]

They ^Wasabi went a step further. Shutting down its Coinjoin service, effective from June 1st, 2024.
https://blog.wasabiwallet.io/zksnacks-is-discontinuing-its-coinjoin-coordination-service-1st-of-june/

The mistake decentralized mixers did was that they are kind of centralized in one way or the other. A true decentralized system can not be taking down by the government because it will be made up of decentralized nodes instead.

US government are trying all possible means to make cryptocurrencies to be centralized and in a way people can not use it privately, even if it can cause problems in the future to coins holders, they do not care.

[Stompix]

Smart play from Wasabi team, but there is no guarantee this will protect them from anything.
Phonix wallet did something similar with removing their apps from stores for all US citizens.

I don't think that any of those teams were that stupid to say let's just ban people from US and we will be safe.
I mean, you have guys doing something similar to you getting arrested and maybe face a decade in prison and you just take an app offline for a country and get over it, no way they didn't talk with some lawyers or even asked through some channels if somebody is coming after them.

I personally would like "them" to focus more on other things when it comes to cryptocurrencies, such as for example stablecoins, or all those shitcoins that are listed on CEXs, and anyone who looks a little closer to that topic sees that 99% of all that is just a nicely packaged scam.

And the irony in this is that when they finally label a coin or a cex a scammy behavior group, the users light more pitchforks then than they would have for protecting privacy wallets or mixers. The whole thing is so divided at this point that we won't see any consensus in fighting back on those regulations and actions, as long as they package it with promises of more acceptance and being more legal thus more $ there will be no real fighting back. We've entered the stage where $ matters the most and I'm not sure this is the right way.

They ^Wasabi went a step further. Shutting down its Coinjoin service, effective from June 1st, 2024.
https://blog.wasabiwallet.io/zksnacks-is-discontinuing-its-coinjoin-coordination-service-1st-of-june/

Total capitulation, huh?

[examplens]

Total capitulation, huh?

Add to that the Tumbler mixer becoming unavailable https://www.altcoinstalks.com/index.php?topic=320992 , pretty bad days for Bitcoin & privacy
 

[Z-tight]

pretty bad days for Bitcoin & privacy
 

Very bad days and it is sad to see it happen like this, the government is clearly winning the battle. Now developers know they risk being charged and could face jail time if they write any code or run a service that enhances privacy, so they are obviously not going to do that, using BTC privately would be gone soon.

[NotATether]

They ^Wasabi went a step further. Shutting down its Coinjoin service, effective from June 1st, 2024.
https://blog.wasabiwallet.io/zksnacks-is-discontinuing-its-coinjoin-coordination-service-1st-of-june/

Total capitulation, huh?

Wasabi's CoinJoin was going to be tainted anyway. If you remember the UTXO blacklisting nonsense that they announced two years ago, that got a lot of angry reactions, they never did end up implementing that.

I wonder when the court date for the Samourai developers will be though. They need legal support to win this otherwise they might become the next Ross Ulbricht.

[dkbit98]

Wasabi's CoinJoin was going to be tainted anyway. If you remember the UTXO blacklisting nonsense that they announced two years ago, that got a lot of angry reactions, they never did end up implementing that.

It's interesting that Coinjoin volume is now biggest ever, everyone is trying to use very low coinjoin fees and grace period of one month.
Tainted is stupid concept and that existing would mean that Bitcoin is not fungible at all, like it or not, that is the fact.

I wonder when the court date for the Samourai developers will be though. They need legal support to win this otherwise they might become the next Ross Ulbricht.

It would be great for everyone (except government parasites) if they could win the case against them, but I don't believe regulators will allow that to happen.

[bayu7adi]

As is currently being discussed, there are lots of local news portals in my country that discuss money laundering... The government in my country immediately took the decision to tighten the KYC process for every cryptocurrency transaction. There has been no privacy here since I started being actively involved in the world of cryptocurrency (around 2017). P2P transactions are also closely monitored by the government...

I worry about the continued existence of our privacy in a Bitcoin world that the government seems to be ending soon.

[Freemind]

The mistake decentralized mixers did was that they are kind of centralized in one way or the other. A true decentralized system can not be taking down by the government because it will be made up of decentralized nodes instead.

US government are trying all possible means to make cryptocurrencies to be centralized and in a way people can not use it privately, even if it can cause problems in the future to coins holders, they do not care.

The United States government, as always, wants to control everything. In this case, knowing who has (traceable) cryptocurrencies and knowing who they send them to, knowing where citizens spend them and also knowing which countries those cryptocurrencies are sent to. Any type of service or product that makes everything I have said more difficult and consumes more time and resources will be declared illegal by the government, it's as simple as it seems. They make the laws at their convenience to be able to control not only citizens, but also their money and cryptocurrencies.

[Z-tight]

Any type of service or product that makes everything I have said more difficult and consumes more time and resources will be declared illegal by the government, it's as simple as it seems.

The U.S government are yet to declare mixers and CoinJoins illegal, so i think their approach is not even to illegalize it, but to directly attack privacy options, arrest people who write and develop codes for privacy softwares, and then use custodial services like centralized exchanges to attack BTC's fungibility with the nonsense of tainted coins.

So if they do all these and devs are scared of writing codes for the purpose of privacy and people are scared of using privacy options so their coins won't be confiscated, then they have achived their goal without making it illegal.

[NotATether]

The U.S government are yet to declare mixers and CoinJoins illegal, so i think their approach is not even to illegalize it, but to directly attack privacy options, arrest people who write and develop codes for privacy softwares, and then use custodial services like centralized exchanges to attack BTC's fungibility with the nonsense of tainted coins.

So if they do all these and devs are scared of writing codes for the purpose of privacy and people are scared of using privacy options so their coins won't be confiscated, then they have achived their goal without making it illegal.

The thing is, you can't really outlaw mixers and coinjoins without also outlawing privacy coins such as Monero. The reason being, that it makes no sense to ban mixers when people will just do BTC <=> XMR <=> BTC exchanges on different exchanges.

I saw a stat on a chain analysis website that says one of four wallets is suspicious. Technically they mean, one of four addresses is suspicious. But if they actually think they can try to segregate dirty bitcoins from "clean" (i.e. passed through an exchange) bitcoins, then that is very dangerous and alarming.

[examplens]

I saw a stat on a chain analysis website that says one of four wallets is suspicious. Technically they mean, one of four addresses is suspicious. But if they actually think they can try to segregate dirty bitcoins from "clean" (i.e. passed through an exchange) bitcoins, then that is very dangerous and alarming.

It is a bit hypocritical that confiscated "dirty" coins suddenly become "clean" after they come into the ownership of the FEDs. In their fight against money laundering, they are the biggest coin cleaners, while there is no one above them to sanction them.

[Z-tight]

It is a bit hypocritical that confiscated "dirty" coins suddenly become "clean" after they come into the ownership of the FEDs. In their fight against money laundering, they are the biggest coin cleaners, while there is no one above them to sanction them.

Hypocritical is even an understatement .

They confiscate coins and call it 'dirty', but once they auction the coins off and collect the money for it, the coins now become 'clean' coins and centralized exchanges are no longer to confiscate or blacklist such coins. Anyway, we know they are just attacking BTC's fungibility and we do no believe in their nonsense about tainted coins.

[Stompix]

The thing is, you can't really outlaw mixers and coinjoins without also outlawing privacy coins such as Monero. The reason being, that it makes no sense to ban mixers when people will just do BTC <=> XMR <=> BTC exchanges on different exchanges.

I don't think they would care about that as long as it's done on centralized fully regulated and KYC-enforced exchanges, they have no intention of tracking all the stopping points, they want to know that X took 100 BTC out of exchange z and that Y deposited 100 BTC on exchange w, as long as they know the full identity of X and Y they are happy because they know you have 100 BTC, and then the IRS comes sweeping in, anything out of the ordinary and they will catch up!