Topic: Samourai Wallet seized by the feds - page 7. (Read 1993 times)

money laundering = moving your money privately
tax evasion = doing the right thing & not complying with criminals, keeping the fruits of your labor. not allowing pedos to extort you.

it's word magic, a spell that has been placed on the population

it's all a scam folks

if you think this system has any legitimacy left, you're brainwashed

government is slavery using lies, deception, psychological abuse over generations

samourai was bitcoin's best hope for privacy

they're coming for privacy in 2024 as the agenda progresses fast, time to switch to privacy by default - monero

Anyone that has ever been on the twitters will know that Samurai was very popular there. Yes their main account was cocky but on the other hand, if you said anything non positive about the wallet, myriads of fan accounts would swarm at you seeking to inflict harm at you and your image for simply criticizing samurai and/or supporting one of their rivals.

If not suspicious, to me it's certainly odd that a purported privacy solution for Bitcoin transactions would have so vocal supporters in public. I always pondered as to why. Why be so public in the first place? What did they have to gain as a FOSS tool from attracting users through viral campaigns and attacking their competitors?

Your first statement explains your second statement. Samourai may be a wallet but it's designed in such a way as to strongly support privacy and anonymity. It is even labelled as a cryptocurrency mixer by the DOJ. It's not that it's a mere wallet. The point is that it has been used to make illegal transactions and even launder money. And it is made possible by its very design. The government doesn't like that as it weakens its "ability of law enforcement to trace the proceeds of criminal activity."

And you don't taunt these powerful guys.


It seems to me that the authorities are more focused on running after crypto services which offer privacy and anonymity. They seem to be nonchalant over scammers, which the market has a lot. Incidentally, Do Kwon is now a free man.

I'm Samourai's user.

I can still open the wallet, view my seed phrase and any other features. I faced endless loading in my wallet and every time I click "Send" button, the software crashes. Technically the funds got locked only if I use Samourai, when I import my seed phrase to other wallet e.g. Electrum, Bluewallet, now I can access my coins.

Even though I know I've back up my seed phrase, but I'm still scared when I see this news lol.

Jeez! This is really scary right now.  These governments are really into it and no one is excuse.
Samourai's wallet is growing wallet this happened. They are really into mixing services. I'm curious if someone really affected here like their funds got locked because there are ways to withdraw your funds from Samourai wallet, I hope some will be able to do it.

Theymos forbid centralized mixers to be promoted in this forum.

Government 1 - 0 Privacy

SEC seize Samourai wallet that has a privacy tools.

Government 2 - 0 Privacy

What's next? No KYC P2P, unregulated casinos or non custodial wallet (without privacy tools)?

I'm really shocked if the Feds now seized a non custodial wallet, Samourai asked FINCEN to withdraw few things on their proposal about CVC mixing, instead of respond it and enlighten to Samourai's developers, the Feds choose to seize everything.

The “land of the free” is a complete fallacy. A US-led global order has increasingly diminished freedom around the world. They went with the North Korean hackers excuse this time — no matter how minimal their involvement, there is always some convenient bad guy for them to justify wider surveillance, more regulation, and restricting how people are allowed to live their lives. You can’t use certain apps or technology because of vague “CCP spying reasons” or “it’s Kremlin propaganda”, yet Israel is allowed to spy on U.S. citizens and influence politics without media conglomerates and congressional representatives raising any concerns.

The reasons given for why they targeted Samourai are obviously BS. Any tool which enables users to transact outside their financial panopticon will be seen as a threat that cannot be allowed to exist. Whirlpool doesn't meet the legal criteria for being a money transmitting business. It’s simply a protocol for collaborative transactions. Arresting the Samourai developers is as absurd as arresting the Telegram or Session developers because those apps are used by pedophiles, drug dealers and hackers.

It might be argued that Samourai didn’t do enough to discourage illicit activity and were almost encouraging of it. If that was the case, they should be allowed to walk away with a fine, as is the normal standard when banks and corporations are implicated in money laundering.

Feds are against everything that we do as crypto users and whatever makes them suspicious of privacy, they will just stop that thing.

It's the first time I'm hearing that feds have seized a wallet which is somewhat insane but it was expected by many users.

I believe that in near future we may see feds seizing many swap platforms as those are allowing rug-pulls or you can say rug-pulls are operating on those platforms by scamsters.

if they can scare theymos into removing mixers, they can do anything !

That was not one of their better moves. There is a difference between doing something that may be illegal or at least used for illegal things and broadcasting the fact that they want you to use their product to do illegal things.

-Dave

Look for an allegation you said? They will make one; if the government is after you, they don't need any strong allegation against you; they make one that they can use against you; they make the law to suit them; they interpret the law to be in their favour; and they turn whatever they don't like to be against the law that they can use against you as long as they want; all they need is the perfect time to strike once they get it, that's all.

Well, it's a fact that this kind of news is never good for the community. And it is regrettable that we are reaching this type of situation that the authorities have been promoting.

But we also have to note that they were the ones who put themselves in the sights of the authorities:


They invited Russians who were being penalized by the authorities because of the war to use their services to evade the sanctions. Without a doubt, it was a matter of time before the authorities caught up.

I'm fully aware. The coins "in" Whirlpool are self custodied by Samourai's users. Their data, however, is now controlled by the Feds,


The funds aren't seized, he can just spend his Bitcoins:

Samourai Wallet had something called Whirlpool with nearly 700 million dollars in it. This is now shut down and under the control of the feds from what I’m reading. This is what I was referencing. Again, I’m not sure how it all works so maybe I’m just misunderstanding your explanation, but there are definitely funds that have been seized or frozen in some fashion so I would assume some part of it is custodial or based on web contracts or something. I give you exhibit A of this below:

Is there another wallet that would support whirlpool transactions from samurai? I was in the process of using whirlpool but it's not possible to connect to it anymore. It just provides an error. How would I continue with my conjoin or worst case, withdraw my funds?

EDIT:

Managed to withdraw my funds from whirlpool. You'll have to use Sparrow wallet and import your seed + passphrase.

Coinjoins aren't custodial, so there's no funds they can seize. The Feds are only able to access the data of Samourai's users since their wallet was designed to collect xpub addresses and IP addresses by default.

Are we understanding why privacy needs to be implemented at the protocol level yet?

I don’t know how Samourai Wallet worked but my understanding from what I’m reading is that there is potentially up to 700 million dollars now under Fed control as a result of this? Are the users the ones who have had their funds confiscated? If so, is there any hope for recovery?

They can shut it down so long as they believe the platform is being used by the criminals they hate the most, such as those North Korean hackers, to "launder" money through it. it doesn't matter where the platform was created from or who created it. They will work so hard to sanction it and then probably seize it.
Centralized platforms where the developers are not even anornymous are so prone to such a thing.

They do not work alone. They work with other international agencies to do it. For example, in 2019, the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) which is almost like the Feds in the US shot down a mixer. It is a collaborative effort.

No matter who you are and where you are, they can get you and shot down whatever platform you have running without apologies.

Sorry friends and @BlackHatCoiner but I have a question, I see that the US government have brought down a few Bitcoin mixers and some platforms too that support Bitcoins privacy for user but my question is, does it mean that the US government can shot down any sit or platform that they want even if that site or platform is not operated or was  not designed and managed by a US citizen?

Take for example, if Samourai Wallet was being designed by a black man somewhere in Africa and the platform was open to be used by anybody around the world (across other countries), can the government still shot it down?

If they can not, then it can be a means for SamouraiWallet to relocate their company to a country where they can operate freely but should restrict American citizens from using their service.  I don't know if this makes any sense, but it's just my suggestion.