Defending Bitcoin Privacy | THE UNBOUNDED SERIES: Diverter

Welcome back. I hope you all had a lovely Christmas. I hope you got to spend lots of time with friends and family. Some of you might have realized recently that the Unbounded podcast has closed down.

This means they're no longer paying for hosting, and this means, unfortunately, that the great audio that was recorded would be lost. All of the five guests that appeared on that podcast are considered by all of us at Ungovernable Misfits to be part of the family.

Q, Diverter, Seth, Pavel, and Colonial, all privacy advocates, all people we have a lot of respect for. And TBD, who ran the podcast, did a really great job of running through some of these important topics.

So rather than it being lost forever and that audio fading into nonexistence, we decided we would host it here. I'm gonna be releasing one a week, probably. We'll start with Q, then Diverter, then Seth, Pavel, and end with Colonial.

Thank you to TBD for putting in the effort to make these podcasts. Thank you to all the guests, and we're very happy that we can host this audio so that anyone in the future looking into privacy, security, freedom, has some more great audio to listen to. I hope you enjoy these, and stay ungovernable.

This is the Unbounded podcast where we explore the front lines of technology, human rights, and freedom. I'm joined by Diverter, a privacy activist and champion of financial sovereignty. His journey into Bitcoin started back in 2016.

As he dug into it, he quickly discovered its inherently political and subversive nature and the power to challenge government control and give individuals true autonomy over their finances. Divert a story is closely tied to Samurai Wallet, a project that was at the forefront of the Bitcoin privacy movement.

This gives him a unique perspective on Bitcoin privacy. Samurai Wallet was more than just a wallet. It was a beacon of hope for those who believed in the true potential of Bitcoin to bring about financial sovereignty.

In our conversation, we'll discuss the mindsets and the strategies needed to achieve financial sovereignty with Bitcoin and the personal costs of advocating for financial freedom and the risk of putting your life on the line for something that you believe in. We were already deep in conversation

when we hit that record button, so let's jump in as Diverter shares his thoughts on the current state of Bitcoin and as a tool for financial freedom. Okay. So, yeah, like I said, I kinda go back and forth a little bit on it. Bitcoin as in as much as it exists as an actual tool for freedom and individual sovereignty

is probably in the most dangerous position it's been in potentially in its entire lifetime since the very beginning and not so much in the same way as it was in the beginning. So in the beginning of this project, the danger was that it just wouldn't live.

Like, it it it wouldn't get enough legs to literally continue existing in the future. The government most likely had the power at that time to be able to just brute force shut this thing down, because it was a small enough community, didn't have its legs under it yet. So it was a very dangerous time for Bitcoin

in the beginning, just before the WikiLeaks stuff and all that because is this thing gonna actually live or not? Now it's a completely different sort of danger, and the danger is no longer is this thing going to to survive.

Bitcoin is here to stay. However, the personal usage as a freedom tool, as a tool for individual sovereignty, that is not at all guaranteed. As a matter of fact, I would argue it's almost guaranteed that it will not be allowed to simply continue as in its current form. So in its current form, Bitcoin can still be used to

subvert government power, to transact outside government surveillance and control, albeit much much more difficult to do so right now with samurai being on hiatus, but it it can be done. And it can be done on the fringes of legality.

Right? So it's not fully outright illegal to self custody your own Bitcoin yet, but I believe it will be. Now

whether that is a danger or not to Bitcoin itself, I think we may have reached a point where it actually isn't anymore. I think we may have reached a point in Bitcoin where it being outlawed to hold it in self custody would not have the impact on it that it used to because there are so many people involved

in Bitcoin holding Bitcoin that have absolutely no interest in transacting it. They have no interest in it being a tool for individual sovereignty outside of the quote unquote inflation hedge.

That's the only interest for a lot of people. And there's so many people holding it, so many Bitcoin in the wallets of people that think like that that are they gonna sell their Bitcoin because they hear that, you know, it's illegal to self custody now? No. They're not gonna do that.

So, you know, what kind of impact would it have on Bitcoin itself as a network, as a protocol? We may be past that point. But as far as the real world impact, that is much more dangerous because who's gonna build the tools?

Right. That's a really good point. Who's gonna build the tools? Who's gonna build the tools? You know? And so because what you would be doing now what they have essentially already done, and I've said this on Twitter a little while back, the government, especially in The United States, which is essentially the world government,

because they'll come get you wherever you're at. But, essentially, what they've done is they've already drawn their line in the sand. Now I'm hoping that maybe a new administration can kinda change this, but they've drawn that line in the sand, and they've said that, essentially,

development on Bitcoin privacy tools going into the future will have to be done underground. They're driving it as far underground as they can. And that's evident when you look at the Samurai Wallet case and these guys that were following

as clearly defined regulation as we have in the Bitcoin space for nearly a decade. You know, I think the fencing guidance originally came out, I think it was 2013, and then they came out and reinforced it in 2019.

So this was a decade or maybe it's 2015 and '19. Either way, it was a decade or nearly a decade worth of regulation

that FinCEN had put out that was about as clear as you get in the Bitcoin world that said, if you don't take custody of coins, then you are not a money services business. And so, therefore, you do not have to register as a money transmitter, a money services business. And therefore, then you don't have to adhere to the AML KYC

regulations because you are not a money services business. So, custody was the red line. And that was very clearly and well understood for, like I said, a decade or more. And then suddenly, you know, a random April day in 2024, they just decided to completely overstep a decade plus worth of guidance

and arrest these guys who were very clearly operating their service within the rules of those regulations.

So Right. You know, if you can't follow the regulation that they put out that says, if you don't take custody, you're not a money services business. So you don't take custody, and now you get arrested for operating conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money services business, what are they telling you?

They're telling you that it doesn't make any sense to try to follow the rules as, you know, my favorite villain of all time in movies says,

you know, in No Country for Old Men. You know, he says, if following the rule got you to this point, then of what use was the rule? Yep. Yeah. See no. For sure. I wanna just take a step back. You clearly

dedicated a significant part of your life, right, to the Bitcoin privacy movement. What drives you to be a part of this fight? Obviously, you have your own personal reasons. Is there a bigger kind of reason here?

I hope so. My origin story, for lack of a better term,

helped me be more clear with people about the ramifications of this and what is going to happen, and that is exactly what has happened when shit starts hitting the fan is, you know, all of these not all of them, but the vast majority of the these people online, what I'd like to call the the quote unquote come and take it people,

the people that are post on Twitter and talk about, oh, yeah. Come and take it. I lost all my Bitcoin in a boating accident, etcetera, etcetera. You are going to fold when they come for you. So I'm just that's a fact. You're going to fold. Absolutely.

Let's let's say that one more time. When they come for you Yeah. You are going to fold. That's a fact. Right? Like a lawn chair. So and that's the vast majority of people. Now there are those few that won't. Right? And those few that won't become the examples for everyone else that does. That's how that works.

And so we see that right now with Samurai Wallet. They are becoming the examples for everyone else to go ahead and fold. We already saw the week they were arrested. Multiple people, multiple companies

shut down immediately. Lightning companies that there hadn't even been an announcement about Lightning, they saw the writing on the wall. They immediately shut their companies down. They stopped serving US customers at the end in an effort to try to avoid this. Like, that is how they operate. The government is a one trick pony.

This is how they do things. Yeah. So it helped definitely shape my view of things going forward and and trying to explain to people the gravity of these things, of working on these things, of being involved in these things is is very real.

And, you know, especially when you have a wife and kids, or husband and kids, whatever, you have a family that you're trying to support, you're just some person living life. You know, whenever they come and put that weight on you, you have no idea what it feels like to have the weight of the government pressing down on you.

And so to think that you will look at your family and your children and make the decision to stand strong and say, oh, nope. I don't have that Bitcoin. I don't you know, whenever you've went on a KYC exchange, you you went on Cash App and bought your Bitcoin and a DCA every day. Right?

Just like people who are on Twitter were telling you to. Just set a DCA, bro, and then you'll have it. And now they've outlawed Bitcoin self custody, and it's a simple email to Cash App saying, hey. Give us your KYC records of all these people. And then it's a simple email out to you saying, hey.

We see you bought x amount of Bitcoin on x x x x x date. Where is it? And that you're gonna just say, oh, I lost it in a boating accident, bro. And when you're as you're sitting here looking at your family, give me a break. Right? Get real.

So that's what I have spent so many years trying to impress upon people, like, get real with yourself. Be real with yourself about it. The only way that you are in reality going to stand up against them is if you are at least very confident that your ownership of Bitcoin is not easily

accessible with a simple email to a single centralized company. Like, at the very least, you have to not be on their list in order to feel like you're you have some sort of ability to stand up to them. And you never know. Was there a particular moment when you just said, I gotta get involved in this Bitcoin privacy,

you know, fight? Right? Like, I mean, I consider you to be pretty hardcore. A hardcore activist, you really believe in this stuff. Right? Yeah. So what made you step into this fight knowing and I think you've even tweeted about this and talked about it. Knowing that what happened to samurai was probably inevitable

at some point, somewhere, somehow. Yeah. My origin into everything was a very lonely journey, I would say. So I when I got into Bitcoin, all I was trying to do was preserve some purchasing power. That's all I was trying. I was trying to beat inflation.

So I had correctly identified without being into, like, Austrian economics or Bitcoin or or gold or hard money or anything like that. I had just I was looking at my checks and, like, they're

not buying the things that they were buying and I feel like I'm going backwards and I've gotta try to figure out how to beat this thing. So I started, you know That's not normal diverter. Right.

So I started. Not back in 2016, '17? Yeah. 2016. Yeah. This is 2016.

And so, you know, that's I got into stocks in the stock market. And I'm sort of looking at, you know, trading and this is when Robinhood was was first coming out and now trading was more accessible to people. And so I started looking into things and looking at charts and analyzing, doing technical analysis and all this stuff.

So I got into that stuff and I, you know, got kind of a little bit of a following on people that like to see and hear the things that I was talking about. I had a guy ask me one time, hey, have you ever looked at Bitcoin, at the Bitcoin chart? And I was like, no, you know, no, no, never have. No, nothing about it. Pulled it up.

And then I was like, well, this is this is getting ready to explode like right now. You know, just looking at the chart, was like it was it was ready. It was this was something that was getting ready to take off. But, again, I'm still looking at it as a stock. I don't know what it is at all.

I'm thinking it's just like a stock, some sort of new tech stock. I don't know. But it looked like it was getting ready to go up in value, so I bought some of it. I mean, it looked like a trade to you is what it it sounds. Yeah. Looks like a trade. Yeah. Yeah. And so, I bought some of it. It went up.

It went up, like, 20%, which, you know, in the stock market is that's a good trade. So I took my 20% profit, you know, as happy as a clam that I took my 20% profit, And then and then I watched it run all the way up to about $20,000.

And when that happened, it kinda stopped me, and I realized

there's something here that I do not understand. I don't know what this is, but stocks don't act like that. I have no idea what is going on with this thing, but now I'm interested. And so I just began kinda looking into Bitcoin. And I didn't go the route of podcasts or YouTube, which there weren't nearly as many podcasts.

And then in 2017, there was a handful. Yeah. I mean I mean, it was just scattered Right. Scattered information at that time. So I just kinda start looking into things a little bit and reading online, and then it just kinda sucked me in. You know, the vortex kinda sucked me in. I started learning all these things that I had no idea about.

And once you start learning about this stuff and you start realizing how badly you're being screwed by the, you know, the current monetary system. At least to me, it was it was overwhelming. I know several people have told these stories, but I'm I am one of them where it essentially

overtook my life for about a week. I was forgetting to eat, not sleeping, not doing my work. I I was completely just enamored by this thing. Couldn't take my eyes off of it. That that is that is a common experience.

And from a psychological perspective, it is pretty profound. I mean, I've been in and out of the tech industry, and there's not another technology

over that twenty years that has captivated people in that way No. That I know of. Like That's not surprising. Yeah. The masses. I mean, maybe AI is doing that now Sure. Because it's some inflection point, but people there there's something profound about that. And Yeah. It's real. So I never really studied economics

and money and and the properties of money. No. Not at all. And I never even really got into technology all that much, although I was in the technology industry. Same. I was not involved in any of this stuff. Know? I was I was I was always I was a jock growing up. I didn't care anything about computers

or the Internet or I'd like, I was I could it was the furthest removed from my mind as it could be. But this thing just kind of took me over. And so the more I start reading about it and learning about it, very, very quickly to me, it became extremely apparent that this thing was inherently subversive.

This is not a mainstream asset. It was very, very clear to me that the ideas behind Bitcoin, the design of Bitcoin, the the things that you can do with Bitcoin are inherently subversive

and inherently political. I know people try to say Bitcoin's not political all the time, but I think that's completely backwards. I think Bitcoin is an inherently political. Yeah. It's foundation.

That was very clear to me very, very early. So I consider myself somewhat lucky in that aspect that I didn't just stop with the, cool. I can make a lot of money. Now that I actually started trying to understand why

this thing is worth so much money. Why are people so invested in it? That's what kinda led me to it. So when I started seeing the trail that this was leading me down, that this is a subversive asset, that certainly the government can't just allow this thing to grow into the potential of what it could be.

Just just to put stop real quick. So Mhmm. You you mentioned subversive. I think that's a that can be pretty charged, and people who don't understand where we're coming from would think that that's, like, kind of a negative negative thing to say. But it seems like this idea of subversive characteristics,

the design, the ideas of Bitcoin is what really, really hooked you into Yeah. Certainly. It's subversive in the aspect that it by its very design, it is designed to allow individuals

to have full power and autonomy over their finances. And nothing else offers that outside of maybe you could argue gold years ago. But in a digital world that is again just becoming more and more digitized by the day, there is no way to be fully

autonomous and have full control over your own personal finances without uncle Sam's helping hand. It just doesn't exist. So everything that you do, whether you realize it or not, but everything that you do is routed through the government and therefore approved by the government.

And so anything that is not approved by the government, so any sort of anti government thought or even some things that you that are not you wouldn't think would be anti government, just like, you know, gun ownership. You would think in The United States, if anywhere,

that being pro gun ownership and pro guns, that this would be the place to be for that. But that's not actually true when you start looking at the companies that are running the financial system in The United States.

They are they tend to be very anti gun companies, like credit card companies, things of that nature that won't process, you know, gun transactions,

you know, that's that to me is what Bitcoin is. It's radical personal responsibility for those who choose to undertake it. And again, that's why I've often said that Bitcoin is for anyone. It's not for everyone. It's it's a very big distinction.

Bitcoin is for anyone that wants to use it can use it, but it is not and in my opinion in its designed form will not ever be for everyone to use. Mass adoption is just a pipe dream. Anything that would be quote unquote mass adopted would be so different from the thing that we know as Bitcoin

in order to make it work for the masses that it would lose all its bite, you know. So the thing that gives Bitcoin its bite is the personal ownership.

The fact that you can fully own this thing and, you know, like your house, if you buy a house, even after you pay it off, you know, there are taxes that if you don't pay, they will come and take your house. So do you really own that house? You know, the money that's in your bank account, can you go withdraw

all of it out on a Saturday night? And if you feel like just withdrawing all your money, putting it under your mattress? No. Can't do that. So, like, do you really own this thing or are you do you just have a lease on it? Is it something that you're you know, they've they've got the first lien on all your stuff?

Without question. Yeah. It's it's just so obvious to people.

Sure. I think that that is one of the one of the great things about just Bitcoin in general. I can be very critical of the Bitcoin community these days, but I think on the positive side over the last four or five years, especially is there's no question that the Bitcoin community has educated not only itself

about a lot of these ideas, but also the general public, I think, to to a large to a large extent, I think. Certainly.

Yeah. Now whether or not it's something that appeals to them is different, you know, because it doesn't appeal to everybody. I would actually argue it doesn't appeal to most people. Most people want a bank. Most people want somebody that is gonna take care in their mind, take care of their money for them. Right?

If somebody steals their money off their card, you know, the bank will get it back for them. You know, they want a customer service rep that they can call. Like, most people don't want the radical personal responsibility that comes with full self custodial Bitcoin ownership. So Sure. That's fine. But I did. Right? I did.

That did appeal to me. It appealed very much to me. But So absolutely. And you speak so eloquently about this, and I just recommend anybody who is listening to this podcast to check out your many, many podcast interviews that are out there. You speak very eloquently and passionately about these people.

I love it, man. I love it. I love it. I'm just glad that you're still around and you haven't disappeared on us. Yeah. But but take us from the subversive. So this idea clearly

just captivated you. I I don't think it's happening in a vacuum. I think this is very much happening from a if you buy into the fourth turning thesis that Mhmm. Our society is going through massive changes right now. Institutions are collapsing, a crisis of credibility.

So that totally makes sense because and you saw it sooner than most people, and I think more and more people every day are kind of understanding what's at stake. And then you're like, okay, given this context, oh, look at this technology, look at what it can do. This is pretty radical.

It can really unlock some possibilities or opportunities that just weren't even available not that long ago. For sure. So how did you go from being completely activated in that way to actually contributing?

So those two dots. Funnily enough, the first Bitcoin wallet that I ever downloaded was Samurai Wallet. Right? That was that was the first Bitcoin wallet that I ever downloaded. And I did that. I heard you I heard you talk about that. Yeah. Yeah. Just because of the logo. I thought the logo was cool. Funny. Right? Never never underestimate

the power of a logo. I'm telling you. That is a perfect, perfect example.

I'm telling you. That was the first wallet I downloaded because I searched Bitcoin wallet on the Play Store, and I just scrolled. This this is subversive. That that I said this this looked cool, man. It's just a cool looking I I had no idea what the wallet was, what I had in my hands. I had no idea.

So I ended up going backwards from there. I went back to, like, blockchain.com wallet and Mycelium.

I I went backward. And then they came full circle back to Samurai. But I came full circle back to Samurai after running into Samurai on Twitter. And so it was just random enough. Like, I really did like the wallet, but I I still I had no concept of what it was actually doing.

And so I was just a random comment on Twitter one day and I said to somebody, yeah, the wallets that I would tell people to use are Mycelium and

Samurai wallet. And again, forgive me for the Mycelium recommendation, but this was this was yeah. This was early. Right? So I tagged you know, you can tag these accounts in the comment, and I tagged Mycelium and and Samurai Wallet. And Samurai Wallet actually answered the comment and said, you know, thanks thank you for your support.

I was like, oh, that's cool. Let me follow them. I didn't even realize, you know, like, I'm brand new to Twitter. Like, I'm I'm just figuring everything out. So I'm like, oh, cool. I'll just follow Samurai. And then that following Samurai on Twitter is a journey in itself.

So if you start scrolling back through samurai wallet, Twitter history, it's like Oh, it's fantastic. Oh my god. It's just a treasure trove. It's total treasure trove. And you realize

this is what comes to mind when I look at that. You say these guys were the real deal. Yes. These guys had it right. These guys are cool. They actually stand for something. They're principled,

and they build, like, just the best products as far as Bitcoin privacy. Well, that was the thing that kinda got me is that, you know, as you mentioned earlier, this sort of visceral response to this stuff, and it's it just it makes you really feel something. And so

this was I went from feeling like I was completely alone and and isolated and potentially going crazy to surrounded by a group of people that not only saw things the same way I saw them, but had so much more knowledge and information and different points of view. And not everybody agrees with each other and that's fine.

And we fight and we argue and, you know, like everybody has taken to Colin, you know, just these big red lines. Red lines are a very, very important aspect

and part of, like, the samurai wallet community. And so, you know, you draw your own personal red lines and these are the things that you just you absolutely will not cross no matter what. And defend and defend. I mean, I think Yes. That's that's what I the Samurai ecosystem syndicate is, I think, some of the most intellectually

honest in the Bitcoin community. You know, there's a lot of different tribes in Bitcoin world, but Sure. People who are very passionate about this stuff and very authentic, I find. You know? That's the thing about this community is the Samurai Syndicate can spot in authenticity

a mile away. And that's why, you know, when I started this podcast, very much I'm wanting to contribute to this community just because it very much aligns with What? My values. Yeah. Well well, that was the thing is that's what kinda got me. I I I started noticing that, first of all, these were just, like, people like myself,

and everybody, it seemed like, was contributing something. And that was very uplifting to me to see that I, being as nontechnical as I am, not knowing how to code anything, I can't contribute to the code, I can't even at that point especially, I couldn't read or audit any sort of code. I couldn't tell you what any code was doing.

I didn't know anything about anything, but I still felt like I can contribute something because I felt like there are more people like me out there than there are people that understood this stuff. So if I can somehow find a way to be somewhat of a translator between these two worlds and find a way to allow people to understand

what this stuff is doing, why you should care about it, and then finally, how to actually take action and do it. If I can start putting some of that stuff out and get that into people, that's a real contribution. Like, I'm actually contributing to this thing instead of just, you know, taking. I didn't wanna just be a taker.

I didn't wanna just take all the knowledge and take all this wealth of information, all these things in my life. I'm changing aspects of my life to the positive, and I'm just taking. And I wanted to be able to give something back. That was the big part of me is that I wanted

because it's one thing to, you know, theorize and and have all these discussions, which is really cool. Like, you can learn a lot about yourself, about the world just by having discussions around these topics. But at the end of the discussion, like, now what are you gonna do?

Are you actually gonna do anything about it, or are you just gonna, you know, log off to a computer and go catch the game? And so I wanted to find a way to talk to the people that maybe wanted to do something, but were scared to try to do it because they don't know what the hell they're doing.

And because that's where I was at for so long. So that's what I just started doing was I just started I'll just maybe write a guide. I think I've I first started just literally doing, a weekly Twitter recap, if my memory serves. This is a lot a long time ago, but my memory I I I started simple. Yeah.

I was doing, like, a weekly Twitter recap of what Samurai Wallet was talking about on Twitter, and I would post that in the telegram. And they would pin you know, pin that little PDF file or whatever in the telegram and let everybody read it and kinda catch up, and people liked it. And so I was like, oh, cool.

That's like that's that's awesome. I was embraced. I wasn't you know, they didn't make fun of me. They didn't do any of that. They just they saw that I wanted to contribute and so they helped me. And that just really just spurred me on. So now I was like, oh, cool. So now what can I talk about?

So it just everything just opened up from there and led to me writing, you know, the my mining guide because when I started telling him, you know, like I said, I started mining and all this stuff without even having conversation on Twitter, without even really having a conversation on Reddit.

Here I was just this lone maniac just with a miner running in his house at a time when very few people were actually doing that. Before AI could help you. Yeah.

Yeah. And, like, very few people were actually doing this. And and so Zelko, you know, was adamant that he wanted to know more about how he could do it, you know, and he kept on pestering and pestering and pestering me until I finally was like, fine. I'll I'll write a little simple guide.

And I sat down with the intention of writing, like, literally two or three paragraphs about physically, legitimately how do you set up a mining thing in your home. But then when I started writing, was like, well, like, why would you even do that, though? Like, everybody's gonna tell them not to.

If they ask anybody else, they're gonna tell them not to. So I gotta at least talk about why you would do it. And then the more I started touching on a topic, I was like, well, if I gotta talk about that, then I gotta talk about this other thing. Next thing you know, it's like a five page, like, damn near manifesto

on home mining and, you know, why you should be doing it and then how you can do it. And it had a massive ripple effect. So that that's a powerful story. I didn't quite realize that it was that guide, that mining guide that you had did that really I mean, that's a whole another kind of podcast in in and of itself.

Yeah. But not to get off on another tangent, but that was very cool to see. You know, a boiler alert, like, I feel like I was vindicated.

Like, I was right. And then you were hooked. And then you were totally totally took off the races. Right? Like, that's one hell of a journey and totally makes sense. And I think in that that process, you kinda learned what what what some of your talents are, I think, along the way. I mean, you I'm not sure if no.

Maybe you appreciate it a little bit more now, but, you know, there's a saying that your community will tell you what you're good at if you're paying attention. I really believe that. That's very, very true. And I think that's what happened with you. You really can just articulate these things for

the average person who's not technical to understand without, like, dumbing it down. Right. Right. But let me ask you this. So as you look back over the journey, was there a moment that you realized that becoming associated with samurai community, the Bitcoin privacy, all of that,

that would actually make you a target, you know, of government overreach? Or was there a moment that you realized you're like, oh, shit. Like, maybe I'm on the chopping block here? Yeah. So I think I always kinda knew that, and this it was the reason that I approached

some of the things in the way that I did. I've never been fully anonymous by any means. And, you know, I'm well aware that, especially by going to conferences and show you know, being

in person, I've been at conferences where I know for a fact the feds were outside taking pictures of license plates of all the cars in the parking lot. Like, that's a real thing that happened that conference organizers were shown pictures by the feds that only someone

at the conference could have given them. So, like, these these things are very real. Like, it's not this is not you know, a lot of people would like to use this term logging. Like, you're just you're just live action role playing. It's not real. You just wanna pretend that you're on some list or something. No. No. No.

You're you're probably on the list. Like, that's that that that's that's a fact. But, you know, there's some things

that once you open the door and you make the decision to take the first step through it, there is no going back through that door. And so, you know, if you're if you're gonna get wet, you might as well go swimming is the way I've always kind of looked at it. And my I mean, that that's pretty profound,

really. And I think that's a massive decision. Oh, it is. Yeah. Because so for example, I'm gonna be interviewing a human rights activist from Burma, and he's in exile now. And he's got a really powerful story about how he used Bitcoin to help him, you know, make it to The United States. It's a it's a very heroic and just amazing story

Mhmm. About, you know, when the military took over. And so they long story short, they they came after him. He decided to speak up. And Yeah. But but there is that moment where you're kinda looking into the abyss. Right? And you're like, this this is for real. The consequences are potentially real.

Mhmm. Not potentially

very real. Yeah. But but but a lot of times, it's still kinda theoretical at the same time. Right? Oh, a 100%. A 100%. Like, even when you're telling yourself, like, these are the things that could happen, there's a there's a big part of your mind that's like, yeah. But, I mean, it's not really gonna happen. You know?

Like, this is it's good to to be prepared and to do all these things, but, like, you know, they're not who am I? You know? They're not really gonna actually come after us or anything. That's what your brain is kinda telling you. Even as you're telling yourself, no. This is very real. You know, you're still, yeah. But not really.

There was an activist that I was listening to that was talking about. He's like, look, man. You can say what you say, and that's fine. But when the the boot of the state comes knocking on your door and they take you away, you are gonna have many dark night of the soul nights. Oh, dear. Yes. You know? It's it's Yeah. It's terrifying,

and I don't think people really, really appreciate that. You know? Yeah. A 100%. And I I just I I wanna be kind of very clear on the way I've always viewed, like, myself and my participation in these things. I I am as much a nobody as you can ever possibly be. I so when I've spoke at several conferences and they always ask me for,

you know, my title. Like, what are you what are you gonna put down under your name whenever, you know, like, the camera pans to you and you're talking like it says, you know, diverter, and then it says, you know, whatever you are. What you're the CEO of a company or, you know, what what is your what is your tag?

And I always would just give them,

I'm just some dude that likes Bitcoin. That that's my tag. Like, because that's, like, that's all I I'm just some guy that like Bitcoin. Right. No big deal, man. No big deal. Nothing to hide. Yeah. Right? That's all I am. It's all I'm just some guy. Just some guy. So I'm not like, I've never considered myself an activist.

You know, people like the guy that you were just talking about, that's an activist. Somebody that has, you know, had to flee a country and spoken up against their government. Somebody that has founded a company that allowed other people to speak up against their government. The I look at people like Snowden and Assange,

and now I put you know, you put the founders of Samurai Wallet in that same category of people that founded these companies or did these these things that allowed

so many other people to be involved. I never, for a million years, have ever put myself anywhere near that category because that's just not I'm just not me. Now the fact that I don't put myself in any sort of category like that has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on what category the government puts me in. Right.

Right. So you should be very percent. Yeah. Be very clear about that with yourself and with everyone else. Just because you think you're a nobody not doing anything does not mean they do.

Right. And so, you know, that's why I've been very outspoken and and very clear with people that they need to be realistic with themselves whenever you take this path, when you open this door.

When if you have, you know, a family and you've got young kids at home and you're buying a house and you're working and you're trying to do it, like, be very realistic with yourself about what you're willing to lose and what you're willing to want. So so critical.

So critical. Yeah. Is you have to get clear on that as much as humanly possible. Because not nothing is going to prepare you for a boot at the door pre dawn raid. Right? No. A 100%. Nothing's gonna prepare you for that. But you

have to at least do a thought experiment on it. Right? Yeah. And kind of think it through and be like, are you willing to shed blood for this? And how much are you willing to go in on this? You know? Sure. I was just going through Samurai's,

you know, Twitter feed. Right? And and they talk about that just a few years ago. It's like you you gotta shed blood for Bitcoin privacy. Yeah. And I think it's just nobody's going to give it to you. Right? The powers that be, it's not you know, the revolution is not a dinner party, right, or whatever metaphor you wanna say.

Mhmm. They're not gonna give it to you. Right? That that's clear. And, you know, I always say there's no big tech company that's gonna do their own version of Whirlpool and throw that out for the goodness of the world. Right? Like, that's just never gonna happen. It's going to be underground

Yeah. And it's gonna be, you know, unleash the world. Right? It was crazy that ProtonMail I I don't know if you saw this, but ProtonMail was about to release Whirlpool in their wallet. Did you see this? I I I kinda saw that, and I'm just very skeptical.

Well, I mean, they're not now, but, like, the you know, before Samurai was arrested, like, they they unbeknownst to, I think, anybody. I don't I don't I'm not I don't even think Samurai Wallet knew that Whirlpool had had been working on integrating that ProtonMail had been working on integrating Whirlpool into

the wallet that they were just about to release. So, like, and and that's a key aspect of this whole thing, I think, is Samurai Wallet were right on the cusp of releasing these things and being so ubiquitous and released to people that normally may have not ever been exposed to it that this is this was almost the moment.

Like, it was almost there. I think that had a big impact. I think that had a big impact on their actions. Sure. Yeah. Massive. And, you know, I don't wanna go down this rabbit hole right now, but I I do think what I tell people you know, a lot of people in this space, and I love just about everybody in this space, but are very skeptical,

let's just say, of government politicians, government institutions, and rightfully so. Right? It's kind of cypherpunk. They don't wanna be a part of it. It's like, fuck that. Nobody you know, don't ever put your your trust and, you know, entrust your future to some of these these people, which I totally, totally get. However,

I tell people we need time. You know? Hopefully, this new administration, call off the dogs. Yeah. Right? Drop the charges and build. Right? And build and build. And because it does seem you know, I I feel like I'm a newbie in this world,

and I think it's kinda difficult for people that have just come on. Like, you know, I I went down the rabbit hole hardcore about six months before they got arrested. Right?

So it's like, you know, I, you know, I got my, you know, Ronan Dojo node and, you know, I'm Yeah. The wallet. I got my graphene. You know? You know, I'm doing all I'm doing all the right things. Right? Spending all my free time, and then just the rug completely completely got pulled.

And it seems like that we were very, very close

Yeah. To getting there. Right? So we're all trying to kinda figure out kinda figure out where we are. But Yeah. That's kinda, you know, again, a big part of, I think, the point is most people are not willing to make the sacrifice that government is very clearly telling you you're going to have to be willing to make

in order to step into the arena and to build the tools that need to be built. And government is very aware of that. And this like this, again, they're a one trick pony. This is why they do the things the way that they do them is by going after the biggest and the baddest. You know, this is a long

standing cliche, you know, that, yeah, you you wanna get your respect. What do you do? You go up to the the biggest, baddest, meanest guy in the room and you punch him right in the mouth. Right? Because it's not about what you did to that guy. It's what everybody else saw.

Everybody else just saw you punch the biggest, baddest dude right in the mouth. So that's that's essentially what they've done here is they came for the head of the snake. You know, they came for the head. And what they're betting on is that this was not a hydra.

They're betting that this was this was a one headed snake. They're betting that this will have a chilling effect enough that it will allow

them to continue to develop their tools on the surveillance side and allow them to get ahead back ahead of us. The sovereignty tools aspect, we're always a little bit ahead of where the government is. Like, this is how darknet markets have existed for years and years.

Like, we're always a little bit ahead, and that's the whole point is you gotta you gotta keep moving. You gotta stay agile. You gotta stay ahead. So, you know That's so interesting. Yeah. That's so interesting you say that because it it definitely

that's what the whole point was. Right? That's what it seems like to me, and I'm not an expert on these things. But in terms of, like, choke point, you know, 2 dot o or any of these massive and I think it's just criminal what they have done. If there's any consolation whatsoever

with Samurai and what happened with those is they were not alone. It was an industry wide, clearly societal thing. Yes. In many, many ways, it was like Bitcoin became like this right wing kind of nutty technology that was, like, tagged as, you know, toxic masculinity or whatever. Right? Yep. And it so it was caught up in this very

nasty culture war at the same time. But there were a lot of people in the crypto world, which we did not understand, that were also getting frog marched out of their house in front of their children at 6AM in the morning. Yeah. Yeah. And there's so there's been a lot of people that have made these huge sacrifices in order to

move Bitcoin forward. You know, Ross Ulbrich was just just recently released from prison after having, you know, a double life plus forty years sentence and get pardoned. So his use of Bitcoin on the Silk Road dark net market was pivotal in really proving out Bitcoin's technology.

And so it it was a big, big step forward. It really moved Bitcoin forward.

Now a lot of people maybe feel like that was the wrong kind of attention for Bitcoin or whatever, but it was really a proving ground just like Wikipedia, you know, when they came for a science. These are proving grounds to show that Bitcoin can actually do the thing that it's theorized

to be able to do. Yeah. You know, I haven't I haven't really thought about that. But, yeah, it was actually,

obviously to people who have studied this. It was earth shattering in many ways. If you're the powers that be the governments around the world, it's like, okay, you know, just put the nature of the marketplace that Ross had created. It was the business model. Right?

I mean, you know, it's like, oh, okay, this is actually a parallel kind of self sustaining, self contained, for lack of a better word, economy. Here, digital economy. And it doesn't take like a lot of imagination to be able to extrapolate that out and blow that out of what those possibilities,

you know, could could be. Yeah. Who who do you think has made the biggest sacrifices for Bitcoin privacy? I I would just think that it is these people that have felt this the weight of the government press on them in in unprecedented ways. So, like, Ross Aubrey and and the funny thing is is these are not people that are actually coding

on Bitcoin. They're not developing Bitcoin privacy tools necessarily, but their use of Bitcoin technology furthered the growth of Bitcoin and the adoption and the proving out of the technology.

And, you know, for that, they they were targeted. You look at, you know, Julian Assange, I would consider is has made big steps for Bitcoin privacy even though, you know, he didn't do anything for Bitcoin privacy tools, anything like that. But, you know, he used

Bitcoin to kind of keep WikiLeaks alive when they began getting cut off by by banks and financial processing. So that kind of proved out that Bitcoin can be this parallel sort of economy.

Then you've got Ross Ulbrich used Bitcoin on Silk Road Market. And so now this is when we start getting more into the Bitcoin privacy aspect in particular because, again, it's been proven now Bitcoin can work to allow a, you know, marketplace or an economy to run parallel to the normal financial economy.

And so when you start doing things like darknet markets or even donating to WikiLeaks,

this starts to shine a light on the fact that Bitcoin is not an anonymous currency as it was originally marketed, you know, in the early days. A lot of people got hurt by that original marketing that this is an anonymous digital currency that no no nobody knows what where you're sending it to or who you are. To this day.

But I I understand the point that you're trying to make. Yeah. Certainly. Yeah. So, you know, so now that but for those kind of in the know and involved in Bitcoin, it really does highlight that, oh, wait. We have to build some sort of privacy protections

into this protocol or we have to or on top of this protocol in order to protect people because, you know, the promise of Bitcoin is with individual freedom and liberty and bring putting the power back in the hands of an individual citizen.

But if they're scared to use the Bitcoin because they're not confident that they can do it in a private manner, then they have to always fear the retribution of the government coming back after they've tracked their Bitcoin transactions from 2011.

If that's the case, then that has a chilling effect on activists, on everyone worldwide.

And so it starts really like lighting a fire under Bitcoin privacy. So without even writing the first piece of code, without even throwing any sort of idea about Bitcoin privacy out there, just by using it in these marketplaces and by for receiving donations,

it's highlighted the fact that there is a problem with Bitcoin privacy. So they made huge sacrifices. Samurai Wallet obviously have made an enormous sacrifice. And it's funny that, again, they they

tried to do this thing the right way, quote unquote. So, they made conscious decisions not to develop this thing completely underground and to treat themselves like criminals because we're following the law. Right? There's always this point where you can follow the law, but you can go right up to the edge.

Right? And this is how people That's all Silicon Valley. I mean, when you think of, like, Uber in the early days, man. I mean, they would go they would go into New York City. They would go into San Francisco. It was totally illegal.

100%. 100%. Like illegal. And they had their lawyers, and they Yep. And it's like they had this whole thing game plan battled out. You know? And they're like, hey. We're going for billion dollar markets here. Yes. But we don't give a fuck. Right. You know, we're lawyered up.

But I think I what I what I tell people, that is but see, these people are the, quote, unquote, elites, the ones that have started these companies, the the investors, the VCs, and the people that they hire. They are the establishment.

And that's what's different with an open source project is you have no protection. You have no VC behind you a lot of times. I'm sure there's exceptions that's gonna go out and kinda help and defend you. Right? The the problem with privacy is it's always gonna be a niche part of anything that is built into.

So a privacy tool, in order for it to be, like, used by the masses, for lack of a better term, It has to be built somewhere in the background. It has to be something like HTTPS or, you you know, this is some sort of encryption that just becomes a part of Internet traffic.

Right. But it's can't be. Yeah. If it's if it's an extra app that you have to download on your phone that you download specifically to gain some sort of privacy, it will always be niche. And so with that the problem the problem that we have is it's the capitalist business model today, especially with AI. It's surveillance capitalism.

Right? A 100%. Yeah. 100%. So You look at you look at Silicon Valley, it is surveillance tech. Right? And it's not trying to be doom and gloom. It's just a reality. They want to measure everything.

I mean, your your blood pressure, your glucose, every metric humanly freaking possible. Yeah. Wherever your eyes look on the screen, how long you stop scrolling for, all that stuff. So that's where the money's always gonna be at, not in the opposite end of that. And the argument against privacy tools is always such an easy,

simple argument to make to most people. Yeah. Because anybody that's involved in any sort of privacy, anything in their life, I guarantee you, if they've ever talked to anyone

else about it, I promise you've at least probably from every person, but at least from every third person you've heard, well, I mean, I'm not doing anything wrong anyway, so, like, I don't have anything to hide. That's such a fundamental mindset of people these days and our data being harvested and taken has just become so normalized

that trying to say, wait, I don't wanna hand over all that data. You are looked at as the outsider. Outsider. Well, Well well, why not? What do you have to hide? You know, that's such an easy argument to make to people. It is. I think I think my theory is it's just going to probably take another decade or two. But let me ask you this.

So do you so they paid a heavy price, but do you think these sacrifices are necessary? I personally do not see any way around it. What what are your thoughts on that? No. I think that's a 100% true. And furthermore, the the Samurai Wallet guys knew this. And so, you know, I spoke at Bitcoin twenty twenty four in Nashville,

and this was I was on a panel with Conno Alchemist and with Zach Shapiro, who's one of the lawyers that's helping out. One of the things that I talked about during that speech was just how I'm somewhat torn on this. And still to this day, I get I find myself kinda torn on this because on the one part of me is is absolutely

just horrified that my friends are are going through this. And then there's another large part of me that is is super grateful that my friends are the ones that are going through this because it was going to have to happen. This fight has to happen.

And so I'm glad a big part of me is glad that these are the guys we've got fighting on our side

because they're not gonna fold. They know that this was coming. They know they understood this a risk, not to keep from going into it too much, but just believe me when I tell you they fully understood that this was a very, very real potential. Now I don't think we believed that it was gonna happen this fast.

I think we maybe envisioned some other things, some other dominoes falling first before they made this move.

Like, you know, maybe we would get kicked out of the Google Play Store, you know, because because now if you look back at it, you know, Google Play has been helping according to the government, Google Play Store has been helping people, quote, unquote, launder money for nine less indicted co conspirator. Yes, sir.

So so, you know, I think we we maybe expected to see something like that first, but the guys knew that this was this was where it these this led.

There was no bones about it. It wasn't like they were, you know, delusional that they were just gonna be left alone forever. They understood what they were building, and they made the decision to continue building it even knowing that they were gonna lose their life for it potentially.

And when I say lose their life, I'm kinda talking about the whole death athletic thing. Cody Wilson gave a really, really good speech about this at I think it was Steel Guns and Bitcoin at that time in Austin. It was I mean, people should look this up on YouTube. I'm pretty sure you could just type in, like, Cody Wilson, death athletic.

It is outstanding. But what he talks about is terrifying is what it is. It is. Yeah. It is. It is. It is. But I I watched that thing, and I I'll put this in the show notes, and I'll share this. That little

three minute speech was absolutely terrifying. So just just you you sent this tweet out on that recently and had a question. Right? So it's this idea about deaf athletic. And you talk about the honor and humility of engaging in an act that you know to be doomed. Right? The honor in an act that you know to be doomed.

Right? Turning a desolate future into an ultimate act of defiance. Yeah. Right? That is hardcore. So, I mean, is is this what this Bitcoin privacy fight is for? I mean, is is this the battle that must be fought? Right?

Knowing knowing what the the outcome may be defeat? I mean, that's crazy talk. It is. I do believe it is. I think that this was an inevitability.

It had to happen this way, and there is, you know, a very good chance that the guys will lose and that they would be defeated in this. Now, does that mean that the Bitcoin privacy movement is defeated?

Absolutely not. That's that's not what that means, but it it makes everyone say out loud where they stand. It makes the government say out loud, I'm telling you, you're not allowed to own your own finances.

Period. Right. Right. So it forces them out into the light. Right? And light is the best disinfectant. Right? So

as long as they're allowed to keep operating in the shadows and sneakily debank the people that we don't like or that say things we don't like, then they'll continue to operate that the government operates best in the shadows. Like, they know exactly how to play that game.

It's only when something like this happens, when they just blatantly overstep their own guidance

to arrest people for following the laws that they, the government themselves, had put out for over a decade. It's only then that they're exposed for what they're really doing, what they really believe, and this is what turns people around to say, wait a minute. I thought I thought that we're this is the country of freedom.

Like, we're this is the individual the rugged individual country. Like, we're the we're the ones that believe that the most. Alright? You should be able to strike out on your own. Alright? Be your own man, quote, unquote. So, like, you're telling me you actually you you can't do that? I'm not allowed to do that? So now what's happened?

Now the Bitcoin privacy fight has moved on to these these guys, Ashigaru,

who picked up the mantle from Samurai Wallet because everything was open source, which is such a powerful powerful tool. So they've been able to pick this up, and now they are a decentralized force. I don't know if it's one guy. I don't know if it's 10 guys. I don't know where they live. I don't know who they are.

Everything they're doing is over Tor. Like, it's a much more resilient

group. It's a much more resilient Well, they've clearly they've clearly learned some lessons. That's exactly right. So is that the the samurai wallet being taken out is not just a defeat because a defeat would be if we just lost everything and it was all in vain and all this was for nothing. Alright? Like, what what did we gain here?

But, in reality, thousands and thousands of people have for many years been able to transact outside of government control using Samurai Wallet. Now we have a new group of people developing a new tool based completely off of Samurai Wallet, and now this new group is presumably decentralized.

They're much more underground. They're much more resilient, much more able to stand up or at least remain mostly in the shadows while they continue to develop these tools. And now people are, again, able to use this thing, maybe not to the level that they were before yet,

but it will just take time. So we learn the lessons of the previous battles and that's how we win, you know, because this is a hydra, you know, they were making the bet that they could cut the head off this one snake and that everything would die. That is the bet that they are making. They want that to happen.

But as long as another head is sprung up over here and another head is sprung up over here and people are still working and people are still involved and dedicated, it's almost it's an unwinnable fight for them because as long as we can continue to give power to individuals,

we are winning. Those individuals are winning. We can lose a battle, but we continue to individually win the war. And, you know, that to me is what I cling to, you know, to to not be so black pilled is because Diverter. I feel better already.

Yeah. Things things do move on. We go on, you know, and now that doesn't mean that we forget the guys that came before us. Certainly not. Like, we need to stand for them more now than at any time. But they also understood that if if they fell in this battle, they fully understood and hoped and believed

that someone would pick up their sword and continue to fight. And that's exactly what's happened. And that's why they left everything as open source. They had left everything, you know, that anyone else can build on it. And so when the government came and started seizing their stuff, it's too late.

The genie is already out of the bottle. It's just a matter of, is there somebody else that's gonna pick up this sword? And we've already seen that at least one other person is willing to do that. So as long as that's the case, I think we are on the side of, you know, the winners. I think that they are the one fighting that never ending

battle. They're essentially fighting the war on drugs two point o. Alright? Like, you know, it's a never ending battle, and the only add differences, and this is the this is a net positive. We're giving people their freedom and their sovereignty.

So as long as there's one person willing to stand up and continue that fight on, it, you know, it was not all in vain. That's really, really good to hear, and I think a lot of people are gonna be happy to hear that. I wanted to ask you about the community's response to the samurai arrest and get your take on that.

When the samurai arrest happened, did the so called freedom money community rally behind privacy, or did most of them just walk away and focus on on number go up? What's your thoughts on on the community reaction?

So I think it's been, in some parts, surprising. Yeah. So initially, it was a lot of kind of what I expected. I expected a lot of people to kinda duck their head down for cover. You know? Sure.

When you realize you're getting shot at when maybe you thought you still had a couple more miles to get to the battlefield. And you see somebody next to you fall, and you realize, oh, shit. They just got a leg blown. Yeah. They're shooting now. Like, holy shit. Right. Mean The shooting was happening Right.

Man. Which they yeah. Yeah. No. How the hell they hit us from here. So it was initial shock for everybody, I think. Yeah. I mean, in an ideal world, you know, obviously, everybody stands up and stands their ground, but I I think it was just more, again,

of a vindication of some of the things that we've been saying for a very long time is that when this shit goes down, most people are going to fold. And so they they folded. They did exactly what I would expect them to do. Now there were some, however, that did stand up. You know, Zeus Evan Kulutis from Zeus Lightning Wallet,

you know, came out and publicly made a declaration that he's not going anywhere, that he is gonna stand and he believes he's following the law, believes he's doing things the right way and he's not changing anything. He withstood the initial barrage when a lot of other people folded at the first sign of trouble and he did.

And kinda knowing Evan a little bit, again, yet another person that far from agreeing on everything. There's been several disagreements between maybe himself or the Lightning community as a whole and the Samurai community, etcetera, etcetera. But there are certain things when it comes to red lines where we do agree.

And so I believe he means what he says. But to our point, you won't know until the knock comes. And I hope it certainly doesn't. Let me say be clear on that. I hope it doesn't. But you know? How the industry responded.

I think they were just spooked quite honestly. Oh, a 100%. It, for the most part, had its intended effect. It had an extreme chilling effect on most people. Yeah. And read that indictment that, you know, talk about terrifying. I mean, the the the indictment is is terrifying.

I mean Yeah. I was like, I was shocked. Right? I was like, I read this, and I'm like again, it's all abstract theory. You kinda you know you know, right, you know where this could go and very likely will go. But still, man, when you see you know, you go to the Samurai website, it's down.

You got the FBI there. I mean, it's like this is as real as it gets. And the heinous charges and the way that they did it, it's I just think it's

massively criminal how how they've done what they've done. Oh, I'm sorry. I I just don't understand how they get away with it. And it it really is just a symptom. Again, I try to tell people this is it it's not just samurai.

Right? No. It's no. No. This is a very much a societal thing. Not that that's any, you know, consolation, but who surprised you on the upside and who really disappointed you on the downside in terms of yeah. Well,

I'll say this. It was disappointing a little bit. There were some there were some disappointments. But as far as, like, larger or community wide, I think one of the biggest disappointments for me was seeing a decent amount of the Monero community.

Rather than take this as an opportunity to stand with a fellow privacy soldier, they took it as an opportunity to say I told you so. And I don't think that's the right path forward. I think Samurai Wallet had, at great risk to their own brand, had embraced Monero simply because of the fact that it was a privacy tool

trying to do the same things that they were doing on Bitcoin. And they made the commitment to work on Bitcoin privacy and Bitcoin privacy only. They made the commitment that there would never be any other coin in their wallet. It was always going to be a Bitcoin only wallet, so it would always stay that way.

So they decided to stand their ground and not abandon Bitcoin to the number go up crowd and go work on the next thing. They decided that it was worth fighting for. So they stayed, but they embraced Monero in the way that they were, you know, building out a Monero swaps tool because we understood that people were using Whirlpool,

and then often they would take their toxic change from a TX Zero transaction, and they were swapping that into Monero and then coming back to Bitcoin. So in order to do that, they were using custodial swap services. So because of that, Samurai Wallet decided to kinda

help the customers out, help the users of Samurai Wallet out. They would help build a non custodial atomic swap tool between Monero and Bitcoin, which was a major, major milestone. That tool was built. It was ready. You know? We're working on the final releases.

So my point is there were two ways that they could have gone, which is, you know, see, told you you needed to leave that Bitcoin stuff alone to come to Monero where, you know, the premise is this wouldn't have happened.

Or they could have said, you know what? These these guys were fighting an honorable fight. They they never took the route of calling, you know, Monero people

shit corners and dismissing them. They understood what they were trying to accomplish and felt we were on the same team. So, you know, I would have liked to have seen a little more solidarity.

But to see a a decent part of the community kind of be like, you know, I see. I told you so. And treat it as if, like, they had made a mistake or they were dumb or trying to be like martyrs. These guys were not trying to be martyrs.

They just understood there was a very good chance they would become martyrs. Even though they don't want to, but they understood the realities of the fact that there's a very good chance they could be and went ahead anyway. Death athletes.

Unbelievable. Amazing. There's nobody else. Yeah. It's been a very lonely journey for them in in in a lot of aspects, you know, kinda standing outside the norm, you know, because Bitcoin as its price continues to appreciate, you know, the more and more money that comes into it, the bigger that the price gets, the more diversified

the holders of the coin become, the less and less of the original ethos is gonna remain. The community continues to be diluted and diluted with newcomers

who, you know, aren't seeing things the same way that we are and don't care to learn about the things that we care to learn about. The only thing that they want to make sure doesn't happen is that there's nothing that impedes the growth of their value

of their asset. That's the only thing that they care about. And so there is a large swath of people that actually believe privacy is a detriment to the price of Bitcoin. This has been very clearly stated many, many times that they actually believe privacy is a detriment. So That's that's crazy to me. I heard you say that.

I hadn't quite heard it that directly. So you did a tweet back on December 22 where you stated, my heart isn't in it anymore. The days of writing guides or provoking conversation on interesting topics on here are done. Free Samurai is all that's left because they freed me. I thought that was actually heartbreaking

to see that. What what was that turning point? So when I talk about my heart not being in it, I spent, as you've alluded to, many, many years, uncountable amount of hours that I dedicated to writing guides, to writing explanations, to trying to bring more people into the fold because I believe that if more people understood

that they also would believe in these same things. As time goes on, that becomes a very, very weary pursuit.

Totally. I say I say if you care about, you know, digital privacy sovereignty, you you're gonna age about a decade more than the other person. Yeah. You just have the same arguments and fights and and conversations

just over and over and over. And I'm the type of person that I've never been one to just say things just to be saying them. Like, if I have something that I wanna say, it's because I believe what I'm gonna say, like, matters or is gonna have some impact or is or is different than what other people are saying.

I don't wanna say just the same thing that everybody else is saying. I don't wanna just react to what other people are saying. I wanna be the person that's saying the thing that somebody else is reacting to.

So, you know, when you whenever you keep getting dragged back into the same conversations over and over, and it's like, I've already I've already said all this. And then as the years go by, some of the things that you said start happening, and you realize there's absolutely

no joy in that tweet where you get to quote tweet, and it's supposed to be your dunk for years later where you're say, see, I tried to tell you three years ago this was gonna happen. You realize there is zero joy in being right about these things. It's actually heartbreaking to be right about them when you see and you're like, I

try I was trying to tell people. And it's like it's almost like have been what I call as having the Cassandra syndrome.

Cassandra was given the gift to be able to see the future and to know future events, but her curse was that nobody would ever believe her. Okay. I forgot about that. Okay. Yeah. That that is one hell of a curse. Point being, like, it it's not joyous. It's not a good feeling to be able to go back and say, See, I was right.

It's it's more like, oh, man. I was right. Like, I don't want to be right about most of this stuff. So it really takes a toll on you. And then I left a career that I had spent many years building, you know, against a lot of odds. I had built this career,

and I left that and made the decision to go work for Samurai while at full time. Like, as again, I'm just some guy. Right? And and so I I just had this job, and so I left my job and and gave up and took this risk to just go work full time for Samurai, you know, be paid directly in Bitcoin, which was a dream.

But it's also it's very frightening

to actually make that move, you know, because you have to give up a lot of certainty for a whole lot of uncertainty. But if you believe in the thing, then that's that's when you have to have that conversation with yourself. Like, do I actually believe all this stuff that I've been saying all these years, or don't I?

And, you know clear and clearly, you do. Let me ask you this. So the the future of financial rebellion after everything, the crackdowns, the arrests, the pressure, do you still believe that financial privacy can win? And and if so, what what does that winning look like? Yeah. You know, again, to me, winning means that an individual

that wants to take full control of his personal finances outside of government control is able to do that. That is winning. So I don't need mass adoption.

I don't need everybody to all of a sudden agree that privacy is super important. I just need there to be tools and people that are building tools that enable the the anyone part of Bitcoin is for anyone. Anyone that actually wants to do these things that they have the ability to do it and the tools exist for them to be able to do it.

You know, losing would only happen if there is a person out here that wants to take full control of their finances and they just can't. There's no escape. And so, you know, with Samurai Wallet being gone, that's a major blow. But then we saw Ashigaru

spring up, you know, and I'm quite sure they're probably not done. That I'm sure they'll continue to build. I wouldn't be surprised at all to see another, maybe a different type of tool that would spring up. So as long as the individuals

that say, yes, I want to do this, as long as there is a route for them to do it, then that to me is the form of winning. Like, I do think that there are enough individuals around that do want to do this, that it's it's worth it is worth working on.

And then in the event that maybe it all does fall down around us and, you know, you're able to protect yourself and your families, the people that you care about, then, you know, that that would, I guess, be some sort of, like, the ultimate victory. But I don't see that as being necessary.

I don't see the government crumbling or capitulating completely to privacy tools as being necessary to declare a victory. I think we declare small victories every day that we allow people to do what they want to do with their own money. That is a daily small victory. So that is what winning to me looks like.

Small little acts of defiance is kind of how I I think of it for for me on on a personal level. Certainly. So for those who are new, you know, because it seems like a big war happened. Right? Big battle had been fought. Right? We lost a battle, not the war, but with samurai.

And, you know, for those who are kinda just getting into this Bitcoin privacy rabbit hole and that believe in privacy and really believe in

sovereignty and all of these things, how do you recommend that they get started today? So the biggest recommendation that I think to is is just to find your community. That is kind of the beginning of it all because, you know, standing alone is not very fun.

And not only that, you can accomplish some things for yourself personally, but it's much more rewarding to be able to see others also be able to to accomplish the things that you're accomplishing to maybe feel like you've contributed in some way to that. And there are so many forms of contribution.

Like, again, like I've said, I don't know anything technically, and I somehow found a way to be a customer support agent because of my intimate knowledge of a product. Oh, that was you? That that was you I was talking to, man?

So I I was a customer support agent, and then I was and then I was the head of QA. You know? So I was the the head of QA for Samurai Wallet, and, you know, I did that with having absolutely no

real technical knowledge when I got into all this stuff of how any of this works. I was just really interested in this product because of the community that surrounded it as much as anything. The community of people is what made me feel like I could continue on and that I was being helpful.

So I would say anybody that's first getting into this stuff, that community and the people that you surround yourself with is so, so important. And that I would also say you have to be prepared to lose a little bit. Let me put it like that. Because you're not gonna get all the things that you want. You know, we should have had Bitcoin

protocol level privacy improvements years and years ago. And so you have to if you're gonna get into Bitcoin privacy, you have to kinda in my opinion, you have to go into it with the mindset that you're not gonna get that. You're not gonna get a protocol level privacy improvement on Bitcoin. You're not gonna get confidential transactions.

You're not gonna get anything like that. So go into it knowing that even though you're not gonna get that, there are still battles that you can win. You can still build app level privacy tools, which Samurai Wallet did very, very well for many, many years and hopefully will continue to do once all this is over.

But go into it with the understanding and the mindset that even though you might feel like you're losing some pretty big battles that the individual wins, that that's what you're looking for. Man, yeah, we we cannot lose you. We've we've lost, you know, Samurai and the founders and and others.

You're in, man. You're in. There's no there's no getting out for you. So last question. Very, very last question. And thank you so much, Divert. I'm I'm so grateful for for your time. But for those who are listening, what do you want them to take away from your story?

I would say, again, just I can't be any more clear on how how much I truly did went from having zero understanding about any of this. I had never thought about money at all. I had never really even given much thought to privacy at all, especially like digital privacy, online privacy, like none of this stuff was even on my radar.

And I went from that to being the head of a division at a company that's based their entire existence is based around providing people with financial privacy and sovereignty within a matter of of a few years just by believing in it and continuing on step by step every day.

So if you could take anything away from my story, it's like you can literally be, like, just some dude and have an extremely outsized impact on things that you care about just because you also care about them and you're willing to try. So I would say don't be afraid to try.

And this is what I love about the community. We'll definitely be following your work. What's what's the best way to follow you? Follow you on Twitter? Yeah. I mean, I I'm not on there nearly as much anymore. I am still on there. I don't make quite as many comments as I used to. You can do scroll through this history.

Yeah. There there's some there's some doozies in there. But, you know, I'm as much as I'm I'm gone, I'm not gone, and I'm definitely not leaving the guys behind. You know, they they need support right now more than ever before.

So you may not see me put out a guide, but I'm definitely around if you wanna hit me up, talk about anything, especially anything that you might be interested in doing to try to help the guys out and further fund their defense. I'm definitely, you know, down to help. Diverter, you're one of the best. Thank you so much.

Thank you your help. Man. Thank you for having me. That's it, everyone. As Diverter said, don't be afraid to try. You can have an outsized impact on things that matter to you simply because you care and you're willing to try. Love that quote.

Join me next time as we continue to explore the world of sovereignty and financial freedom. If you want to be a part of the conversation, hit me up on x.