by Andrea Togni
Mises.org
On April 24, two lead developers of Samourai Wallet (SW), the most-advanced privacy-centric wallet in the bitcoin ecosystem, were arrested and charged with money laundering and money transmitters offenses by order of the United States Department of Justice (DOJ). This is just the latest assault of an escalating war waged by US regulators on financial privacy and freedom.
Other examples are the arrest of Tornado Cash developers—a privacy protocol developed for Ethereum and other blockchains—and the pressure exerted by three-letter agencies on centralized exchanges to delist privacy-centric cryptocurrencies such as monero. Regulation by arrest and intimidation is the strategy deployed by the US government to drain liquidity from privacy-preserving money, which is perceived as a threat to the hypersurveilled fiat monetary system.