Nikhilesh De is CoinDesk's managing editor for global policy and regulation. He owns marginal amounts of bitcoin and ether.
There was a lot of news last week, but maybe the biggest news came Wednesday when the U.S. Department of Justice arrested two co-founders of Samourai Wallet, a bitcoin wallet that offered mixing services. The arrest ramps up the federal government's efforts to tamp down on what it sees as money laundering enabled by privacy tools, and sets up a continuation of that broader conversation on where the right to transact in privacy fits within national security interests.
The third focuses on questions of national security. The U.S. dollar is a tool, and the federal government will use it to try and prevent bad actors, as defined by U.S. and other national authorities, from engaging in economic activity. These sanctions have been imposed on individuals, like) users from these sanctioned entities or regions to use their services is a pretty obvious red line, and criminal indictments are a logical next step.
Questions about a right to privacy are almost a red herring. Sure, it's an important issue, but it's not theissue at the heart of these cases. However the cases are resolved, the issue in court won’t necessarily be whether Americans have a right to transact privately or whether code alone is speech; it's what the services providing privacy are doing and how they're doing it.
Rather, the DOJ argued that the money-transmitting business includes relayers, the Tornado Cash pools, a commercial enterprise, etc. Moreover, the DOJ argued that something that can transfer value qualifies as a money transmitter . Samourai, like Tornado, collected fees for services rendered, the DOJ alleged in its indictment, and the defendants built tools knowing there may be illicit usage.against U.S.-based customers as a result, though unless they actually build know-your-customer programs, that may not be enough to satisfy the DOJ's concerns.
This BBC article relates the experiences of a Sri Lankan who became enslaved in what sounds like the other end of a pig butchering scam.
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