Financial privacy in focus as odds of Samourai pardon rise

On the same day, both US President Donald Trump and the Securities and Exchange Commission sent signals that strengthen hopes for change in how financial privacy is perceived and regulated in the United States.

Answering a question during a press conference on Monday, Trump said he would look into the case of Keonne Rodriguez, the co-founder of privacy-focused BTC wallet Samourai.

"I don’t know anything about it, but we’ll take a look," the president said, also referencing US Attorney General Pam Bondi, who attended the press conference.

In November, Rodriguez (37) was sentenced to five years in prison for conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter and is about to start serving his sentence this Friday. Last month, another Samourai developer, William Longeran Hill (67), was also sentenced to five years.

As reported by Cybernews, in the bitcoin world, this case is mostly seen as an ongoing attack on privacy technology.

But while the majority of commenters on social media are calling to "free Samourai," the case is not without controversy, as both developers are being criticized even within the bitcoin community for knowingly advertising their services to criminals.

However, from a regulatory standpoint, a pardon would be important because during the trial, prosecutors were criticized for charging the developers with operating an unlicensed money transmission business, despite FinCEN (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) not considering Samourai to constitute money transmission.

Reacting to Trump’s statement, Rodriguez said, "This President knows all about lawfare."

"He knows all about a weaponized [Joe] Biden [Department of Justice] hunting down their political rivals. He knows the tactics and tricks they play. If he looks at our case closely, it will be a case of deja vu, and I think he would do the right thing and grant us a pardon," the developer said.

Trump had already pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the darknet marketplace Silk Road, in January this year, and Changpeng (CZ) Zhao, the co-founder of crypto exchange Binance, in October.

Meanwhile, in a related development, the US Securities and Exchange Commission held a roundtable on financial surveillance and privacy this Monday, where Commissioner Hester M. Peirce, head of the Crypto Task Force, said that "New technologies give us a fresh opportunity to recalibrate financial surveillance measures to ensure the protection of our nation and the liberties that make America unique."

"Privacy should be the norm, not an indicator of criminal intent," she stressed, also urging authorities not to prosecute developers of self-custody software where developers do not control user assets and cannot override users’ decisions on how the software is used, as was the case with Samourai.

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