No More Martyrs | THE UNBOUNDED SERIES: Colonial

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. Welcome to the Unbounded Podcast where we explore the intersection of technology,

human rights, and freedom. Today's guest is a writer whose voice has emerged at a critical turning point for the Bitcoin privacy community. Colonial wrote, sovereignty requires privacy, the lessons from the fall of Samurai Wallet, a widely shared essay reflecting on the fallout from the samurai guilty pleas.

This wasn't just a legal outcome. It marked the end of an era when builders believed they could stand in the open not yet knowing how far the state would go. This essay struck a deep chord not just because it honored what samurai had built and the sacrifices

that they had made, but because it clarified the question that was on everyone's mind. How do we move forward from here? This conversation is an introduction to the man, to his ideas, but it's not a final word. It's a beginning.

A forward looking conversation that pays deep respect to those who came before but doesn't dwell in nostalgia. It's about understanding sovereignty as territorial control. It's about the danger of exposure.

It's about why martyrs, by definition, lose. It's about why the next era belongs to those who move with intention, discipline, and anonymity. If you're here to win, if you believe privacy is a human fight and that sovereignty must be taken, this one's for you.

Colonial, welcome to the show. Alright. Thanks. Excited to be here. Super excited to have you. Let's jump right into it. So, Colonial, your article, Sovereignty Lessons from the Fall of Samurai Wallet, It lays out five really powerful lessons in linking privacy and sovereignty.

First, what I wanna do today in our conversation is lay down the groundwork for this discussion. We'll talk about physical versus digital sovereignty. We'll talk about territory as the base layer for power acquisition and sovereignty.

And then we'll walk through those lessons. What are the real world steps that we can do learning from the samurai story? But before we dive in, why do you think this article hit so hard in the privacy community?

Yeah. I was quite surprised actually, with the response that it got. I didn't expect that. I had just started the blog, maybe a week prior to that. But I think really it was just the timing, and it turned out that everyone was feeling the same thing I was feeling.

I started the blog about it, like I said, a week prior. And then right after that, we get the news from the samurai case that these guys, you know, had to plead guilty and the implications that might come from that. And I think that we were all kinda reeling from that a bit.

And I think what I was able to capture there is not just the feeling of, oh, no. Now what? But kind of a, okay. We need to move forward. And how do we do that? What kind of expectations did you have when you put this out there?

Yeah. I was a little concerned. You know, I've been a Samurai fan for for years now, and I was a little concerned that this might come across as a little too biting or a little too,

accusatory towards them, which I did not want. I didn't want that at all. I didn't mean it in that tone, and so I hope that didn't come out. And and I don't think it did. But I was a little concerned I might get might get a little pushback in that sense if if people's feelings, you know, we're still raw on this.

And, and, of course, you know, from from Bitcoiners outside the the privacy community, I expected, you know, just your standard privacy doesn't matter. And I got some of that too. It definitely came clear in the article that you were very respectful and you really wanted to get that clear that you're not it's not like a criticism.

If you're not in the arena like they have been in the arena, I think you have to be very careful about really overly criticizing people like that. So that definitely came through. So great. Let's lock in some definitions so the stakes are crystal clear.

I wanna talk about territory and the map and the foundation and definitions, and then we'll get into the lessons. But from a big picture perspective, when you say sovereignty, how do you define it in both kind of physical and digital realms?

And then where does territory fit into that picture? Yeah. So, I mean, they're synonymous in my mind. So sovereignty is territorial control. If you control the territory, then you dictate the terms. If you don't control the territory, then you don't dictate the terms. And this is this is not a

moral argument. This is just a the way of nature, if you will, both human nature and the natural world around us.

And, you know, I've got another article there where I mentioned a guy named Robert Ardrey. He wrote a book called The Territorial Imperative that I recommend for people if they if they really want to wrap their minds around this concept of territory. But it's basically biological.

We, at a biological level, we and pretty much every other organism on earth seeks territory. We we desire territory because it's through territory that we can, you know, achieve freedom. It's through territory that we can achieve most of the things we're looking for in life.

And so sovereignty means that I control the territory. Therefore, I control the rules. I control who comes and goes. And this applies both in the physical world. If we're talking about, you know, a lot of times we think in terms of of land space when we talk about territory.

But I think if we we can kind of extrapolate from this and say, hey, this also applies in the digital world. I have territory in the digital world where I have control. And if I lose control over that or if I allow someone else to dictate the terms of what I can do and can't do, then I don't have territory and I don't have sovereignty.

So I really think it's just it's just about owning the space, about really having control over that space that matters. If you had to sketch the map, physical being land, borders, institution and digital servers, keys, encryption, P2P communication, what overlap do most people miss between the physical and the digital, would you say?

Oh, that's a good question. I got you, man. Sure did. So, I mean, at a higher level, I guess the overlap is that in today's world, all of our communication or the vast majority of our communication is done digitally.

The vast majority of our information, our knowledge is stored digitally. We are now, you know, obviously in the era where our money can be stored digitally. And then on top of all of that, our entire mental frameworks, worldviews, all of that comes from information.

And if information is really the very backbone, the foundation of how we see everything, of how we understand the world around us, how we understand ourselves. I know this is deep, but so if information

really provides that understanding of of everything about about us and about the world around us, then it's very important that that information not be captured and run by someone else. Right? If someone else owns that information and has control over it, then they have control over how you see everything.

And so that to me is the biggest overlap, very fundamental overlap, which is that if information is captured in any way, if the information that we have access to that we are looking at regularly, that we are using regularly,

if that's captured in any way, then we're subject to someone else's frame of mind and frame of reference for everything. Very well said. How do you value the two? So you have physical and the digital realm. How do you value those in the fight for sovereignty?

So I think the goal is to view technology as a tool. If we can see it as a tool and recognize that this is this is something that can help better our lives in, you know, in the real and the physical world, then then it ought to be used just that way. But it is a tool. It can't I don't think it should take the place of our, physical lives.

Some people by virtue of what they, you know, maybe their occupation or just their their hobbies and what they're into and and where they are going to be focused on building things, it's going to obviously side more on the digital. Others are going to side more on the physical, and that's fine.

But the key, I think, is to wherever you're at is to to try and capture territory. I will say that it's there is, for me at least, a pull to the digital world to capture some territory there because I think we have we have more game there than we do in the physical world today.

In your article, you talk about there are moments that define an error, not because they shock us, though the arrest of Samurai Wallet developers certainly shocked us, but because they clarified the terrain in the clash between sovereign individuals and the surveillance state, samurai was never just a wallet. It was a declaration of war.

I wanna first talk about a really powerful way to frame it, by the way. Really love that. But what terrain is being clarified and what is this struggle? Yeah. Anyone who's been in Bitcoin for a while will probably recognize the international geopolitical financial

framework that appears to govern the whole world. And, you know, the United States government is has a lot of power in that, but the United States government is also beholden to that. It is its own system, and it owns the territory that is money.

And if Bitcoin is going to well, we could back up from Samurai Wallet, and we could say Bitcoin from its very beginning, from when Satoshi put it out there, it was a declaration of war. And I think what Samurai Wallet recognized early on is that in order for this declaration of war to have any force whatsoever,

we're gonna need privacy. We need to own we need to own the territory on our transactions and not be subject to someone being able to to pressure us in the physical world, if you will, because they can tie our physical selves to those digital transactions. If Bitcoin is going to realize that ability to fully undermine that geopolitical

global financial system, then users have to be able to use it privately. And that's the area that Samurai Wallet came into, I think, and was able to make a huge difference. Massive difference.

Yeah. I came late to the game, but I love history. And I go back and read their famous tweets and their presentations, and it's so impressive. It's aged extremely Because they were the only ones.

Yeah. I mean, maybe not the only ones, but they they were certainly the only game in town to offer that privacy. Absolutely. And there were few others even that recognized the need for this.

Right. Yeah. And I wanted to ask you. That actually leads into my next question. You just kind of alluded to it right there. So you say Samurai Wallet gave people a shield. So what made Samurai Wallet so special?

What was it exactly that made it compelling as a weapon of war for sovereignty? Well, on a on a technical level, it was compelling because it it was a it was a useful shield. It worked. It prevented chain analysis companies from being able to to trace your your transactions.

It was truly a zero link protocol. And so it worked. So first and foremost, it was just a it was a good shield of functional, right? It did its job the way it was supposed to do it. It made your transactions private.

I will say on a personal note, I remember, you know, the CoinJoin wars, if you will, where, Samurai and Wasabi were going back and forth on Twitter constantly. And and Samurai's attitude was very attractive to me.

For for sure. This is not true for everybody. I know. I've conversations with folks. Right. But the their attitude of, listen, this works and it's functional and will help you if you need help. And they were very helpful, by the way, to anyone who Absolutely.

Yeah. They had they had a customer support desk, which was which was pretty wild, which I thought. Yeah. Yep.

But if people were going to fling fling mud or FUD or whatever you want to call it without really understanding what was going on behind the scene, they had no patience for that. No. They didn't. Yeah. And I appreciated that attitude because I think that that's really the attitude that plays into what I was writing in this article.

We need that kind of attitude. You we have to recognize that this isn't a game. We're all either playing to win or we're gonna lose. And the the folks out there that think they can just throw around words without actually understanding what's going on,

They're going to be the big losers, I think. But but Samurai had no patience for that, and I appreciated it. Yeah. Yeah. No. And they were totally very welcoming at the same time. But if you wanted to step up and Yep. Try to go toe to toe, then you're gonna get met with some pushback.

So in your piece, you wrote something that really hit hard. The exclamation point in the beginning of your article there, you said, this was never about crime. This was about control. It was about power.

It was about territory. And you said samurai was helping everyone stake a claim inside the regime's territory. Unpack that a little bit for us because that's that's pretty powerful kind of red pill stuff right there. And what kind of power struggle are we really in here?

Yeah. So I'll tell you my thoughts. I would also like to hear kind of how that resonated with with you because it definitely sounds like it did. My thoughts on this are that, the regime being this kind of global geopolitical system, it does own the financial territory.

It owns money as a whole. Right? Yes, you can still use cash. You can still use you can still use gold privately and, have pretty much full control over that. But but again, as all Bitcoiners are aware, cash is still subject to whatever the government that owns that particular fiat cash wants to do with it.

If they want to say it's worth nothing tomorrow and we're starting over, which they do sometimes, then then that's the case. And so they have full control over the monetary system, over the financial system.

And obviously your finances are a big piece of your territory in the physical world. This is actual value that you do you do own and you do control, or at least you would want to control. Right? And so Bitcoin kind of offered that. When Samurai gave us, though the, well, I guess we back up before Samurai.

Bitcoin offered that, but it became apparent in the early days, and and I wasn't around then either. But, like you have read a lot of that history, it became apparent with the Silk Road and everything that came out of that, that, that maybe people didn't control their finances quite as much as they thought

with Bitcoin. It's it's transparency and its lack of privacy at the base level left people very vulnerable to the regime coming in and saying, hey, you're playing in our territory, this finance game, that's us. You don't get to do this. And so the regime did come in and, you know, several people went to jail.

Fortunately, Ross was recently, pardoned. But, you know, he spent many years in jail just for building the website, essentially, just for building a website where people could transact privately, or at least they thought it was privately, or but they could transact with their own sovereignty. They could sovereignly

transact with one another without needing intermediate intermediaries, without needing anybody say so.

And that's kind of kind of gets to that concept of controlling that territory and owning that territory. Nobody else gets to dictate what you do there. And so you could say the Silk Road was was something of a territory controlled at that time by Ross and a place where

he dictated the terms, but the terms gave a lot of people a lot of sovereignty within that territory. And that was that rug was pulled out from everybody once the government realized that Bitcoin's not private and they could trace everything. Right. The government came in and said, we own commerce.

No commerce happens without us in the middle of these transactions. We own money. Nobody does any transactions in this domain, this territory. Let's walk through your five lessons in order, and we'll keep bringing these back to samurai.

So the first lesson that I want to get into, the first one that you take on is, which is sovereignty is not granted. You write that no regime grants sovereignty. It is taken, it is maintained, it's defended relentlessly.

So what does taking sovereignty actually look like today in this crazy surveilled monitored world? Yeah. Well, I think that's that's part of why the digital world is so important right now. And and like I said earlier, it's attractive to me for that reason because it's a place where I can take sovereignty.

In the physical world, maybe I need guns or I need money to, pay lawyers or whatever to control territory. But in the digital world, I can get a lot done with a lot less physical power, if you will.

And and I think it's important for people to really understand that that regimes don't grant sovereignty. And that while while The US founding documents say that freedom is is essentially everyone's natural right, I think that we could maybe rephrase that and say

the ability to take freedom is your natural right. But nobody's going to give you that. A natural right is just what what is nature? And nature doesn't give you sovereignty. Nature doesn't give you territory.

In fact, there are always players in nature trying to take it from you. And you have to you've got to take it and defend it. And the same is true today. No government, no regime, no one who actually controls and owns territory is just going to give you some.

And so the only way to get it is to is really to go and take it for yourself. And this is a little bit of a probably a different moral framework, I think, than most people are used to dealing with in our modern world,

where we think a lot about fairness and justice and that kind of thing. Well, the natural world does not care. Nature doesn't care about fairness and justice. Nature cares about who can take and hold and control the territory.

And to some degree, we've got to adopt that mindset or we will will be without. That leads me into my next question. I think this is the ultimate red pill truth here. So you you say that privacy tools challenge the geopolitical order, the geopolitical enforcement, the empire, the hegemony.

How do they do that? How do these private tools, encryption, Bitcoin, crypto, cryptic communications, what have you? How do they challenge that geopolitical enforcement? Because that is where the rub is, I think. I think once you really understand, is this really privacy versus empire, or is this privacy versus regulation?

Because I think once these issues get into the geopolitical level and you understand power politics at that level, then your whole world kinda changes, and you have that red pill moment. And then you realize, oh, this is why Samurai Wallach got arrested.

Of course, Vincent said that they were operating within the guidelines, and they got arrested anyways, of course. Right. Because it was the geopolitical world order. They can't let, you know, North Korea they make all these things up. Right? And so all these horror stories. We can't let Iran or Russia

or any other rogue nation that we have a sanctions regime on that can have access to these powerful tools to be able to avoid these things. That is absolutely a mortal threat. It will not happen. They will never allow it. And you might think that you're getting a fair trial.

Right, you know, in Manhattan there, but it's really a show trial at the end of the day. I think, you know, who knows, right, but I think that what happened with Samurai, maybe even with Tornado Cache, is really a deep state operation, if you will, at least being pushed, but, you know, trying the deep state is yeah. Trying get

Trying to influence that. And then No doubt. And if if we weren't sure about that, the, the current administration's response or lack of response to this, while they are publicly telling everybody they're not going to regulate crypto via via prosecution, but they have nothing but support for these cases against Samurai and TornadoCash.

Exactly. Their actions speak louder than words here, clearly. Absolutely. And you say and again, I think this is what's kind of blowing my mind from your article is you said this was hard for me to kind of swallow, to be honest. I've had to reflect on it really hard. You said there is no president or administration

that you could ever vote into office that will change this reality. Right? This is exactly why you must take your sovereignty if you want it. So for example, when you have Tornado Cash and you have Samurai Wallet, these privacy tools, again, when it when it kind of reaches to that level of empire and hegemony and regime shank sanctions

and geopolitics, all bets are off. And it does not matter if Donald Trump spoke at the Bitcoin conference a year ago and said the war on the Bitcoin industry and the crypto industry is over. It doesn't matter.

Once it rises to that level, nothing matters. The constitution doesn't matter. The regulations don't matter. Your good intentions don't matter. Yeah. That's right. And I don't wanna black peep or black pill people on this either.

I think, you know, if if people want are are interested in politics and they want to participate in that, if voting is important to you, if if being active politically in as a citizen of of your country is important to you, that's fine. You'll probably be able to get some things done.

And I don't have any problem with that at all. But recognize that there are some there are some areas where they can't bend, and it doesn't matter what they say. They can't give you this sovereignty because if they give it to you, it means they're they're giving it up from not just themselves, but they're giving it up from

all of the players who currently have a share in that power. That's why it's so important to recognize that this is global. Right? This this geopolitical structure is global, and they can't give up.

Even if you were to elect a very benevolent leader, he can't give up his power freely to you without giving up power from all of his buddies. And that's definitely something that I want to to get to here in just a minute. But just to kind of sum this up, you said, and if a tool like Samurai Wallet makes that possible,

so freedom and sovereignty makes it possible, it becomes a threat to the geopolitical order. The crime then is sovereignty itself. Boom. Yeah. I mean, I think it gets to the heart of it. Right?

The crime is that we would take some territory. The territory is finite. Right? The landscape is finite. Even in the digital world, territory is finite. And so it's it's competitive. If you think they're not playing to win, you don't get it.

If sovereignty must be taken, then exposed identity becomes the critical fault line. So you say, we're here to win, not to be a martyr. You say, martyrs lose. That was pretty hard hitting, actually, when I read that, and I was like, oh, shit. Yeah.

Martyrs lose. You know? I mean, it's kinda hits hard a little bit. Martyrs lose. What does real evolution look like in practice, especially when facing systems that that you can't really beat head on?

Yeah. Good question. Again, I think if we look at, we look at history and and the natural way of things, if you can't take them head on, then you're gonna have to play some some kind of guerrilla warfare, if you will.

And that means you've got to be able to be hidden. And the best, I think, in in the last couple of decades I mean, let's take a look at an entity that actually defeated The United States Government, And that's the Taliban in Afghanistan.

You know, maybe maybe The US could have beat them if they played by different rules or whatever. There's lots of maybes about that. But what actually happened is the Taliban won. They've got their country and they now own the territory and they get to do what they want.

And they did this by playing a clandestine game. They were regular everyday villagers when it suited them, and they were soldiers when it suited them. And they could go back and forth between those two worlds very seamlessly.

And when you have an enemy that can do that as a large force, as a large structure or system, that's a that's a tough thing to confront. And again, this is what Samurai Wallet and

a lot of, you know, encryption and a lot of digital tools that enable digital privacy. This is what this gives us. And again, this is why the regime hates it so much because it enables that kind of guerilla warfare for us. It enables us to be both kind of in the world, in their open world, and also clandestinely

do what we want, even if that undermines their goals. So you write morality means nothing to power. I think if people aren't careful and maybe haven't read a lot of philosophy, they might kind of struggle with this one. So morality means nothing to power. So how can principled people, ethical people operate

in, let's say, survival mode, if you will, without losing their compass? It's a great question, and it's one I've wrestled with recently, quite a bit, actually. I think I've I've really gotten into, as you said, philosophy helps a lot here. I've really read a lot of Nietzsche recently, and he frames this

he frames this in a way that helped me understand things. And a big part of that is, again, to understand that our sense of fairness, our sense of justice, all of those things that we've been been taught and brought up to adhere to in our in our modern Western world, those things don't matter to power. They don't matter in nature.

And whether we like it or not doesn't really matter. We are, we're part of this natural world. So if you're going to, again, control, own some territory, have some personal freedom within that territory,

you've got to play by some natural rules. You've got to understand that power doesn't care about your feelings. It doesn't care about whether or not it's being nice to you. It just wants to win. Now that said, I think that one of the areas that Bitcoiners struggle with really, in my opinion, is this actually. It's it's this ethical

question because a lot of us, myself included, came from a libertarian mindset. And we were libertarians because, or at least for me, because that felt the most ethical, that felt the most fair to everybody.

If we just allow everybody to to do what they want and get what they want in the world, you know, we don't need to be picking winners and losers. We don't need to be choosing who gets to do what or when or how that just feels fair.

But the reality is the world does not work this way. It doesn't care about fair. And we are trying to impose fairness on a very unfair world. And if we continue to think that that our job is to impose fairness, I think we're gonna run up against nature. We're gonna hit that wall where nature says, I don't care whoever is strongest wins

or whoever holds the most power or, you know and so, yeah, that that's a bit of an ethical conundrum for those of us who value fairness, who value justice. But if I can talk to Nietzsche a little bit, he's going to say that, well, fairness and justice are satisfied when the strongest wins because the strongest is

is by nature, by virtue of them being strong, they get their just desserts, we'll say. And so it's a different way of looking at justice. But I think this is how men looked at justice in the past.

If you lost, you know, if you lost the duel, then you fairly lost the duel and you didn't win and you didn't get the prize.

Your life or the the woman or whatever. Right? And there's we have to, I think, if we're if we're going to win, we have to understand that the goal is not to impose a sense of fairness for everybody. The goal is not to to satisfy everybody's yearning for justice.

The goal is to control the territory. Then we can dictate the terms. Yes. Once you control the territory, there's lots of ways to act and dictate those terms. And you can be fair. You can be benevolent. You can do kind of what you want there.

But if you're going to gain that territory and if you're going to hold it and defend it, that's just a game of power and power does not care about morality. As you're talking, I was just kind of thinking, you you have morality kind of on different levels maybe.

Morality on a personal level, morality within a family, let's say, or maybe within a community, or maybe within a nation. But when you get to that level of geopolitics, I think that's where things really begin to change.

Because I think people have argued that at that realm, there really isn't morality. I mean, it really is on many, many levels the law of the jungle. Just look at what's going on with all the wars around the world. What rules are those? Right? It is the law of the jungle, except it's it's kind of an inverted jungle right now where

where you could say, I don't know that anybody is that strong man that holds power out there in geopolitics today. And I think this is what chafes at a lot of us. It definitely chafes at me as libertarians is that I would actually be okay if a guy who was strong

controlled the territory. In fact, we're seeing this with Bukele. Bukele is being something of a dictator, and I'm totally fine with him personally. I think it's great. He has taken control of that territory. He's cleaning it up, and he's remaking it in in his image in some way. He's making it a better place by his rules.

The rest of geopolitics, what's happening in the world, what's weird about the world today versus ages past is that it's hard to find anybody that's really in control. There's no there's nobody that's in control themselves that is kind of remaking things or creating things after their own image and after what they think is great.

Instead, you have this geopolitical system where they are all beholden to each other, and no man actually gets to be creative and free in this environment. Yeah, it feels chaotic because it feels like also that there's no competence.

You look around at the institutions, there's no one that seems to have their act together. I mean, that's why when you look at El Salvador, what does Bukele say in his profile there? Philosopher king, right? Yeah.

Pretty Yeah. Ballsy thing to say about oneself, but I think he really does see himself that way. Yeah, he clearly does. Yeah. He's living it. He's living it. He embodies it. And I think when you embody it and you live it and people say, yeah, they see it. They're like, this guy embodies it. He's competent.

He's he's a force. He's a phenomenon. Then I think people might wanna fall in line. I don't know what the right way to to say it. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, you know, we don't like hierarchy. Again, another thing libertarians don't like is hierarchy.

But when hierarchy is done right, it's not just the king that has a lot of freedom. It tends to give everybody a lot of freedom within their domain, within their territory, if you will. But again, in our current world, it's like nobody has sovereignty over anything.

Yeah. And I think that's what makes it so dangerous. I think that's what people can feel that it's like the tectonic plates are kind of shifting and I think it's really kind of causing a lot of anxiety.

I say now is not the time in life to not be paying attention. You know, when you just look at just kind of the rules, the regulation, the war on free speech and on the Internet. I mean, I think 2025 will go down as the year where governments all over the world declared war on the Internet.

Yeah. It's ironic, isn't it? Especially given the the administration that just took power campaigned on the opposite. But that's exactly what we're seeing. Absolutely. Okay. We're talking about we wanna win, not be martyrs.

Do you think there was a way where Samurai Wallet could have acted the way that they did and win the game? So they weren't anonymous. They were known. They had an LLC. They had crypto lawyers.

They spoke at the conferences. They spoke at podcasts. So they were out there. They weren't trying to hide anything. As far as they were concerned, they were operating within the rules. In hindsight, obviously, we have tremendous respect for them.

Do you think they could have won this game playing by the rules, quote, unquote? No. No. No. Because the rules are dictated by by those who control the territory. So you're if you play by the rules, you're playing by their rules.

And so, no, I don't think there's a way to play by their rules and win. We have to dictate our own terms, which is why it's war. Right? We are now actively shirking the rules, and that is war.

The current model for this is Oshigaru. So Ashigaru wallet is now out there. Nobody knows who they are. They've taken up the samurai and whirlpool torch for which I will be forever grateful for these guys.

They are shouldering a ton of risk by doing this. Unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah. It's I mean, this is It's heroic. That's heroic. That's why I do all these Absolutely heroic. And it's and it is so beautiful to watch. Like, to to see these guys even in the, you know, even in the aftermath now of the Samurai case,

I'm still getting remixes in my, in my my Whirlpool UTXOs on their Ashigaro terminal software. So it's still running. They're still running the software. They're running the code that could send them to jail, and they're doing it by not playing by the rules. Right? They've registered nothing.

They have no there's there's no way that anyone has discovered to tie who they are to their real world identities. And let's keep it that way. But anyway, I think that that is the model, right? We've got to look to that and say, Okay, we need to be so very careful about our our real world identities when we are going to

when we're going to be on the offensive, when we're going to choose, if you will, to engage in that guerrilla warfare. And that's not all the time. That doesn't mean you can't have an online persona that is tied to you. You can have both.

You probably should. There's times and places to be fully a part of the rules. That's part of guerrilla warfare. You've got to be able to do both. And so I I think that they're the model. I love what they're doing. Grateful for it. And it's it's awesome to see. Awesome to watch. Yeah. Absolutely. And this is a perfect transition.

So all roads lead to one thing, privacy as the foundation of freedom. And the next section you talk about, or one of the lessons you talk about, I think it's the fourth lesson, you say without privacy, there is no freedom. And love this first sentence. He said, let's return to fundamentals, right? First principles.

I always think it's always a good thing, especially in these moments when we're having, we're kind of transitioning into a new chapter in this battle. You said, let's return to fundamentals. Why does any of this matter?

And why should you care? Because without privacy, you will not be free. You won't be free. You will be managed. What does managed look like, let's just say, for everyday people in real life?

Sure. Well, again, so we gave one real world example where if you're not able to own any territory and be able to do it privately, we probably will get to the point, although Google retracted that, we probably will get to the point where self custody wallets are illegal.

And the only way you're going to be able to run a self custody wallet is if you are is if you know how to do this privately, first of all, so that you can't be jailed for this. And also, if you know the tools and you know how to use the tools.

So that's one kind of real world example of that. Can you restate the question again? Yeah. So you wrote in the fourth lesson, without privacy, there is no freedom. And you say, let's return to fundamentals.

Why does any of this matter, and why should we care? And then you say, because without privacy, you are not free. You will be managed. Yeah. That's kinda what I wanted to play off of. So yeah.

So how will people be managed? So that's an example. Right? Real world example where there's gonna be a lot of people who will be managed out of their ability to even own Bitcoin or any kind of crypto.

Other examples include, as I alluded to earlier in the in the conversation, other examples include just your your mental thought processes. If you're using nothing but the regime approved AI, you're going to get no information except for what the regime approves.

So you're again, your your way of viewing the world is going to be totally subject to what the regime wants you to to see and understand. Other tools, you know, besides crypto, well, actually, I guess let's go back to AI.

Not only will the information that you receive be managed, but all of the information that you're giving out gives them now more data to manage you. And this includes, you know, on your cell phone, if you are broadcasting your location everywhere you go.

A couple of good examples, real world, are the January 6 protesters, who most of whom were jailed because they were all either their faces were seen on camera or, and in most cases, both, they were geolocated

by their cell phone numbers to have been in that location where the camera said it was them. Right? So anytime you're going to be involved in any kind of

again, this is political protest, but the regime takes this as war. The regime says, you know, you're and coming at we're going to fight back and we're going to fight hard. We're not going play by the rules.

And they didn't. Right. And what did they use more than anything? They're using digital tools to either prosecute you in the real world or cut you off from digital resources and significantly diminish your ability to to act and be free in the world.

I think The UK really comes to mind, I think, and what's going on in the European Union and the EU. You will be managed in terms of what you can say, what you can't Yeah. They're going to jail just for saying things online.

That blows my mind. I never thought in 2025, I would see a quote unquote Western liberal democracy that literally will come banging on your door if you say the wrong thing. They have a team that go through, they track, they monitor, and God forbid you say anything wrong, and the bar is so unbelievably

low. I mean, you could just say something rude. Yes. And they will come knocking on your door and take you away. And said something mean. You hurt somebody's feelings for God's sakes. It's it's And you see you see videos of this.

This is such a great example. You see videos of this, and everybody's first reaction in the comments of of those videos is, boy, imagine being,

one of these losers who comes and puts you in handcuffs because of something you said. They should feel bad about themselves for, you know, enforcing these kind of laws. But, man, you do not understand where we're at.

Yeah. Sure. Would was this something you would never do? Should they feel morally bad about themselves? Let's get back to to what we've been saying. Morality does not play here. They don't care because they're playing to win.

That's so interesting. Yeah, I have thought about that. Like, are people not pushing back these police officers? I'm sure there are some people that quit, but not a lot. I guess it's just a job. I don't know how to look at that, but it definitely is something that I'm struggling with.

So again, we're talking about privacy without it, there is no freedom. And then you mentioned leaving his personal ledger open. He has left all his territory open to a massive attack vector.

Nations, criminals, personal competitors will come after him. I think that's really important. If an open ledger leaves all your territory exposed, You know, what does real protection look like at the user level? Right?

Yeah. And this kind of gets to how how the how and why the financial world is so important because it really touches everything. When I say it, it leaves all of your territory exposed. I mean, all of it, not just it doesn't just leave your your Bitcoin exposed. It doesn't just leave, you know, your your wealth exposed.

If your financial life is exposed, then everything you own, everything you control is exposed because that's just the way finances work. They touch everything. And it's through finances that the regime tends to tends to attack or defend their territory, if you will.

And that's because finances and wealth are so fundamental to our our ability to project power in this world, our ability to to purchase territory in the physical world, if you will, buying land, but also because finances, because everything is run by commerce, and that's not a bad thing, but because everything is run by commerce,

then everything can be traced if we have a financial system that is traceable. Right. You know, this is one thing that I think about a lot. Think KYC, Bitcoin, and there are no escape patches anymore.

I mean, you might as well go back to the traditional banking system. There's more privacy there, right? Yeah and it is funny to me. Mean how paradoxical

is that? Think about that. There is more privacy in the traditional banking system. You know, I said this years ago, I was like the governments, they have finally figured it out, right? Like the governments seem kind of clueless in the early days,

but man, they they really got Bitcoin and crypto dialed in now. They do. They've got it. They they got it. And I was saying years ago, they should love fucking Bitcoin. It's totally transparent, man. You know? Everything is tracked.

They should love it, you know, especially with chain analysis. And they do love it. Look what we're seeing. They are loving it. Oh, right. Right. Yeah. They get it they get it. They can control it just by just by, keeping privacy out. If they just do that one thing,

they can control it because they can control everybody behind it. And I mean, it's amazing how much if they by owning the information, by knowing what's going on, that's all they need to be able to control everything is just to know what's going on. Absolutely.

And put pressure on the builders. Know, my new favorite quote is, they don't have to ban the protocol. They just have to criminalize you. Yeah. That's right. It feels like that's kind of the world that we're in right now.

You talked about you say Bitcoin promised to be a tool of liberation. But that promise means nothing keyword. It means nothing if every transaction is visible to everyone. Transparent money is not sovereign money. It is programmable compliance.

Boom. I think that hits really, really hard. Yeah. Tell me about that, man. Yeah. Well, like you said, we kind of talked about that. But if you look at I mean, why do KYC laws exist? They do not prevent money laundering.

They do not prevent criminals from, doing their criminal activity because KYC is it's relatively easy to get around, frankly, especially in this AI world. You can make yourself a fake ID and submit that to get past the KYC.

And there's a variety of other ways to do this too in the criminal world. So who is KYC really for? Who is this, and what is it for? Why does why does the regime care so strongly about it?

Well, it's because if they can see everything we do, then they can control everything we do. In fact, this is a this was kind of a red pill moment for me early on in Bitcoin. I went to a local Bitcoin meetup.

The meetup, kind of the guys that were running the meetup, they had put together some pins for the meetup group. Right? And, I think they had that that old account. I don't know if he's still around that BTC pins guy. He he had created them for him.

So they had these pins they wanted to sell at the meetup, but you had to buy them with Bitcoin. And the goal was to have a little fun and and encourage people to use Bitcoin and and, and see actually how this works. It's always a comical scene, is it not?

I know. It's like, shit, man. We gotta use Bitcoin at a meetup. How the fuck do I do that? It's like, you know. Right. Yeah. We're supposed to be surrounded by by experts here in Bitcoin.

This is digital cash. Right? Right. Yep. And, and believe it or not, not only do they fumble around when when they have to actually use it, but several folks didn't even wanna use it to spend. I think it was like $5 for a pin. They didn't wanna spend $5 of Bitcoin because they were worried about the tax implications.

Losers. Losers. Why live your life? Talk about being managed, man. Be entirely managed. That's a managed mindset, man. Yes. Yeah. And so what what good does Bitcoin do you hear if you can't even spend $5 of it to get a pen? Right?

Right. And and this is an example of how you lose privacy and you lose control. They because they they couldn't be private with that transaction because they, you know, they had bought everything KYC, and and they didn't like Samurai Wallet because because they were mean.

And so they had no privacy, and they they could spend $5. Tweets. That's right. Oh, that's good, man. Do you worry that Bitcoin could become essentially something like a central bank digital currency?

I mean, that's that's kinda my worst nightmare, you know, when I think about it. But I do think the writings on the wall. We have samurai. They've entered guilty pleas. We have a mixed verdict. The state has shown their cards and and we've all got to kind of react to that.

Yep. I'm I'm very afraid that that Bitcoin is essentially gonna be KYC. And if it's KYC, then that means if you're trying to operate outside of the system, you're going to have to think about that, let's just say. But do you do you worry about that? Do you think it's it's kind of where do you see this going, bro? For sure.

Yeah, I think if it's KYC and if all, let's say, if all Bitcoin used within the regime's acceptable space is KYC ed and all they have to do to cut out the rest of us is say is have whitelisted addresses or say if we can't trace the origin of your Bitcoin,

then you can't spend it here. And anybody who accepts your Bitcoin will also go to jail. In that kind of a world, then, yeah, our our Bitcoin, my Bitcoin, which is KYC free, which I'm mixing,

it doesn't play well with the rest of this KYC Bitcoin. It doesn't play at all, actually. And maybe there are ways to get around that. That's maybe that's something we explore in the future if we get to that point. Hopefully, we don't.

I think the way to prevent that from happening now is we have to get people just like there has been a massive push to get people to hold their own keys, we need a massive push for people to use Bitcoin privately to understand how to do that, understand what the tools are,

understand the dangers of KYC and the danger of not having private Bitcoin. And if we can get people to do that, then I don't think that world ever comes. Because if you have you know, there is a large enough number, a critical mass, if you will, where the regime can't enforce those kind of rules or it becomes much, much harder.

If we don't do that, then then I don't know what happens to those of us who who actually see the writing on the wall. I don't know what happens to to our ability to transact with Bitcoin in the future. But, you know, we're not there yet. And I think really what we need to do right now is figure out how to continue to build the tools

and continue to to spread the word. I'm not a programmer. I don't I don't write code, unfortunately. So my goal is to get the word out there and to help people learn how to use these tools, because if they don't, then Bitcoin,

once it's fully captured in terms of KYC and in terms of just being able to see what everybody is doing with it, that's all the capture they need. They don't have to own the code. They don't have to own all the nodes or the miners.

They just need to be able to see it. Yeah. So given all of that, Colonial, you know, what's the playbook going forward? So the last lesson number five that you talk about is a new code for anon warfare.

You talk about how builders now are going to have to operate as ghosts. They're going to have to be decentralized in every way possible, digitally, technically, socially, in many, many different ways. But just talk about that. And then you mentioned in there, said that this is not for the average man who has been domesticated

by convenience, softened by safety, and hollowed out by a culture that rewards exposure over discretion. The mission requires something rarer, which I thought was quite interesting. Aristocrats of the soul, men of inner nobility, iron discipline, and spiritual severity.

So pretty philosophical there. But Mhmm. Yeah. Tell us about that. Yeah. Well, I stole that that phrase, aristocrats of the soul, from, Evola, who people can look up. He's written quite a bit on the idea of aristocracy, playing off of some Nietzschean themes and things. But

what I mean by that is not, again, the modern understanding of what an aristocrat is. The word aristocrat comes from aristos, which means the excellent, right? And so the aristocrats were supposed to be the excellent, the excellent of the excellent, if you will.

And again, throughout history, we see this playing out where when, if and when men take power and take control of their own territory, their own lives, it's always this aristocratic spirit. It's always this.

I'm willing to sacrifice all of the comfort. I'm willing to give up anything that you could offer me to bind me in your chains of slavery, if you will, because that's that's what it tends to be. I'm willing to give up all of that and go the road that I see that gets me to freedom.

And it takes that kind of a mindset, and that kind of mindset is probably not built overnight. This is something that requires people, like I said, that you can't have been lulled to sleep.

Or if you were, it's going to take you some time probably to get out of that. You can't just be you can't be lazy. You can't be lulled into comfort and just wanting to do what is easiest.

It's going to take people who are willing to deal with discomfort, who are willing to deal with inconveniences, who are willing to deal with even as we see in the case of of samurai, and others willing to deal with

the consequences of actually clashing against the regime. Again, that is part of that aristocratic mindset of, yeah, I'll I'll take on the fight. I'm not here just to fight, just to show that I fought. I'm not here to lose. I'm here to win, but I'll take on the fight. And I know there's consequences. I know there's risks.

So it's a different kind of mindset, I think. Obviously, one you do not see if you go on to Noster and, and talk about just number go up and and we're all excited. And and it's ironic actually that you and I are having this I think there was another all time high, over the last couple of days. Oh, right in the middle of our podcast, man.

So I'm sure those people are celebrating. They think, they think they're gaining all the territory. Right. Right. The reality is they're they're fully under the thumb. They can't even buy a $5 pin. They're they can't even buy a $5 pin at the meetup Right. For Bitcoin. Yep.

At the Bitcoin meetup. Yeah. You say the regime plays to win, so must we, and that means sacrificing the luxury of public recognition for the reality of lasting power. I don't know if it was this article or another one. I really liked what you said. It really requires an ego death.

And I've been thinking about this. Your article has really made me reflect on that. How much should I expose? How much can I afford to expose? And what's that calculation and how to properly set myself up for that? It's not an easy answer, I would say.

But, yeah, I mean, it's definitely an ego death. This is a rare, rare individual that's willing to build Ashigaru, that's willing to relaunch Whirlpool without fanfare, without any social media.

I mean, it's, you know, it's a warrior, man. I don't I don't know what to say. It is. Hands down. It is absolutely man, it is absolutely a warrior. And as you consider, you know, like, how much of my personal identity do I expose? And as everyone considers this, I think you kinda have to consider what your role is in the fight. Right?

We're going to need people. And again, as I talked to you before, each of us is probably going to need to be able to go back and forth between open and private identities. We're going to need to

fight this fight from multiple fronts. So someone like yourself, if your identity is a little more out there, I think that's fine. In fact, that's good. We need that too. Again, if we go back to the Taliban, they had plenty of people who were openly Taliban too, or at least who were openly

aiding the Taliban, but they were doing it in a way that wasn't quite going to get them, draw the attention of their enemies. Right? And so there's room for that. In fact, there's a need for that. You really do have to consider this a bit of a battleground, and you've got to strategize a little bit with yourself and think through

the threats to what it is you're trying to do with whatever particular identity you're using. And that's the great thing about the digital world is you can have all the identities you want. Easy to get lost in that if you're not careful. But

but, yeah, I think you have to strategize. You've got to figure out what it is you're you're gonna be doing, what you're gonna be trying to accomplish, and where that might cross with the regime both now and in the future. Consider that the regime gets worse and worse on this. And if so, then what do your actions look like?

And do you have an out and that kind of thing? Right. So consider this a battleground, I guess, is the is the bottom line. Think about think about real threats. Yeah. For sure. Like, how to practically go about it? Here's my fear. My fear is is that I underestimate how bad this stuff really is.

And, you know, they say, like, the worst security is thinking that you are secure and you're not. Yeah. Mean, the battleground right now is is the information world. Right? So battle the battleground right now is the information space.

For for most of us, maybe there are maybe there are places in the world where this is not the case. But for most of us, the battleground is not the physical space. It's the information space. And so this is an information war.

The information war does spill over into the physical space, though, right, if you're not careful, and that's the danger. I just don't want to be a slave, colonial. So let's land this. So on the fork in the road here, total sovereignty or total subjugation.

So you say that there's no neutrality. That's a bold, bold claim there. You say the world is bifurcating. There will be those who are watched or those who are not. There will be those who live under algorithmic rule or those who are ruled by their own systems.

There is no middle ground. There is no neutrality. We must live in this world, and we cannot afford to be of this world. And I love this line that you said. You said, you will either encrypt or you will be exposed.

You will either hide your movements or you will be mapped. You will either take sovereignty or it will be taken from you. Samurai wallet was a line in the sand. And then you say the regime has shown its hand.

So you say there's no neutrality. There's no middle ground. Why? And how can people tell which side they're on and which side if they're not? Yeah. So when I say that, I don't mean that this is a struggle between good and evil. Again, I I I don't consider those

in this particular fight. In fact, I don't consider good and evil in any fight. I consider winning and losing. And so Okay. That and that's gotta be your mindset because otherwise, it's, oh, it's not fair. You're so mean to me. No. It doesn't matter. You just have to win.

And so that's what I mean by there's no neutrality because it is something of a zero sum game. Territory is finite. So if you're not taking territory or controlling and defending your own territory, then it's gonna get taken from you because someone else will.

And whether that's fair, whether that's good, whether that's bad, it doesn't matter. It's just the way of the world. And so so, yeah, I think in in that sense, there is no neutrality. You know, the cypherpunks back in the nineties, they understood the power of the digital world to be a new battle on this front of of people capturing

some of their own territory and therefore some of their own freedom. And we could say that the regime showed its hand back then when it went after encryption. And we could say that the regime showed its hand when it put Ross in jail.

We could say that the regime showed its hand, as you said, when Oh, yeah. Snowden. Yeah. Yeah. When Snowden revealed all of that. And so in in a lot of ways, this is just one more more event where the regime has showed its hand.

Either we recognize this for what it is. It is a it is a true battle for who's going to control stuff, who's going to control the information in this case. And that matters, or at least it matters to me.

For sure. Absolutely. So what's one practical step listeners can take this week, next week to protect their privacy and take their digital territory without becoming martyrs. Let's leave them with, like, a practical step.

Yeah. Absolutely. So because we've talked a lot about it, I'm gonna strongly push Ashigaru Wallet and Ashigaru Terminal and their their new Whirlpool implementation for for folks who are Bitcoiners.

It will if you're not technical, it may seem a little daunting at first, but I I promise you they have a great guide on their site. And there are some other guides out there. And in fact, I can send you one if you wanna put it in the show notes.

But I would love to see more people, getting into that. It's it's early days, obviously, for their protocol, but it is working. It is functioning. I'm gaining real privacy on my Bitcoin right now that, that people who are sleeping on this just aren't getting.

Ashigaruashigaru.rs, I think, is their domain. So go there and look through it. And then as always, I've put this out there before. I'm happy to help people if they have questions. And what's the best way to get ahold of you?

Yeah. So go ahead and just go to my website, which is sovereigncolony.com, and there's an about page in there with some contact information. Okay. Great. So if you had to leave people with one rule for the next era, what would it be?

Either control your own territory or someone else controls you. Colonial, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure getting to know your work, getting to meet you. Really enjoyed this conversation.

I know I've had several people that have asked me, when is this this episode coming out? So I encourage you to keep writing. You said that you've just recently put these articles out into the world and started sharing them. So I know that I speak for quite a few people that your writings have really resonated deeply with people who

who love privacy, who love these technologies and sovereignty and financial sovereignty and these kind of topics and themes and things like this. So keep going, my man. Keep going. Well, I appreciate it, and I appreciate what you're doing as well. The goal is to, not just help each other out as we've we've talked to

the privacy community in Bitcoin and elsewhere is always willing to help each other out, and so we appreciate that. But we also need to expand. We need more people to see the importance of this. Thank you so much. Really appreciate it. Take care now.

That's it, everyone. Hope you got as much out of this one as I did. Colonial isn't just writing essays. He's shaping the mindset for what's to come next. A voice worth following. What he shared today wasn't just analysis.

It was a shift in mindset, a call to clarity, to discipline, to survival with sovereignty intact. Yes. We honor the past, but this isn't about nostalgia. It's about moving forward. It's about navigating the now and building what comes next.

Because as he said, we're not here to be martyrs. We're here to win, and that changes everything. If this one hit home for you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Thanks for listening. Until next time, stay sovereign, stay disciplined, and stay unbounded.