5 Years In Prison For Building A Bitcoin Wallet | Lauren Rodriguez

15:23Keonne Rodriguez:And I believe it wasn't a very nice place to be kept for that long.

15:26Lauren Rodriguez:No, no. It was medieval prison and everything that entails, I can imagine.

15:32Keonne Rodriguez:And so when Keone got home, how was he?

15:39Lauren Rodriguez:This is a while ago now. I think I went to the court and picked him up and brought him a change of clothes because he had, you know, went downstairs barefoot in shorts. And I was able to get him like a T-shirt and some, I don't know, flip-flops or something. But I wasn't sure if he'd need to change for a court. So I kind of brought him some clothes and drove him back home. And I think we were both in shock still a bit. We called an attorney, kind of talked to them a bit, just really, you know, what's going on? Why is this happening? And I think at that time, from what I remember, I think we really were, did not think it would be over two years later and he'd be in prison.

16:24Lauren Rodriguez:Like, you know, I think we were hopeful.

16:26Keonne Rodriguez:And so when did the sort of reality of what the situation is now first kind of set in?

16:33Lauren Rodriguez:So court processes are very slow and take a very long time. So we had to go to New York numerous times for short little procedural, you know, making sure that they're handing over discovery and short little hearings. We did that quite a bit. One of these hearings, the bill's attorney brought up the fact that the discovery in this case was 17 terabytes, which is 75 % of the Library of Congress and had the really cool picture to just demonstrate how much that if it would have been printed out, it would reach the moon and back 22 times. So it's a ton of discovery to go through. And with Discovery, they don't point to things that...

17:19Keonne Rodriguez:They're gonna bring up.

17:20Lauren Rodriguez:Yeah, so you really have to go through it all. It's very expensive.

17:23Keonne Rodriguez:Is the idea there that it makes it so expensive that you can't really fight it?

17:27Lauren Rodriguez:I mean, I'm sure that's part of it, right? They don't wanna make it easy. They're out to win. They're not out for truth, they're not out for justice, they're out to win. It's a very adversarial nature of the justice system. And so that was a lot. And then, but we were seeing what was there and there wasn't anything there. You know, every, all the evidence that they presented was things they had said. So whether it be on Twitter or private messaging or, you know, different forms like that, I think they pulled a single slide out of a deck and misconstrued it. And everything was taken out of context, purposely misconstrued, maybe non-purposely on some of it.

18:17But, you know, it was, there wasn't, in our view, there wasn't anything there.

18:22Lauren Rodriguez:There were some memes that they, I don't know, thought were serious. And then there was the blockchain data, which, again, Whirlpool and Ricochet were the two.

18:38Keonne Rodriguez:They were the issues.

18:38Lauren Rodriguez:Yeah, that they had problems with. Ricochet, they didn't really focus on. They just said, it's bad. We don't like it. But Whirlpool, at its height, had$80 ,000 Bitcoin capacity. They were citing transactions that they claim. And we never got to the point where we had our own investigation to look into whether these numbers were accurate. So we'll just say that they are. quite small numbers by comparison to nothing that would raise a red flag as an observer, just watching a casual observer watching Whirlpool. Because again, as we all know, Bitcoin's a public ledger and you can watch everything that goes on.

19:23Lauren Rodriguez:So they said it was, I think they said under 10 % of Whirlpool capacity was connected to criminal proceeds.

19:32Keonne Rodriguez:But this is the nature of working on an open source tool in Bitcoin that you don't control. You also don't control who uses it and what they use it for.

19:40Lauren Rodriguez:Yeah, that's correct. And those numbers are in comparison with regulated entities such as banks that have the same criminality. And those are under obligation to KYC and AML, their customers, where we and the regulator didn't think that we had those obligations.

19:57Keonne Rodriguez:So you had these small court dates in New York. Was there a point before this went to full trial that you were like, okay, we could be in trouble here?

20:07Lauren Rodriguez:No, at this point, we're still really positive. Legal team was pretty confident. I mean, you're always, when you're going up against the federal government, they're, you know, Goliath. They've got good batting average. They have endless resources. You don't. We didn't. So there's always that to contend with. But, you know, we felt truth was on our side. It came up through discovery. Our attorney thought, thankfully, to ask the prosecutors, hey, did you ever have a conversation with FinCEN? And they said, yeah. And that's when that came out and that was a Brady violation. So, cause they should have handed that over and they didn't.

20:46Lauren Rodriguez:So we thought, well, that's good. The judge isn't going to like this, right? It goes against judges rules that you need to hand over, um, this information by a certain date. And so, taking long, everything's feeling good. And then where we got to, and this is over a year in, and we've assembled a motion to dismiss. We've assembled some other motions. And Judge Berman, who was our judge at the time, wanted everything. He was going to pile everything together. We're going to have one big hearing. This would be our first big hearing. And we would go over the Brady violation, have oral arguments on our motion to dismiss.

21:34Lauren Rodriguez:He was going to rule on some other minor issues and decide whether he was going to take amicus briefs, things like that. A few days before this hearing, gearing up to go, we're suddenly told that Judge Berman has recused himself. Don't know why. and we have a new judge, Judge Coate. She's going to keep the same date. So go to court and expecting to present and have oral arguments in front of her.

22:04Keonne Rodriguez:So was that a red flag when you heard that he'd recused himself?

22:08Lauren Rodriguez:Oh, well, a little bit. We were a little kind of surprised. You know, he is, both of these judges are in their 80s and, but he was still seeing other cases. He wasn't like he didn't recuse himself from everything. It was just our case, which was a bit odd. But, you know, first time dealing with the justices, I just go with the flow on that. But, you know, our attorneys thought it was a little bit weird. And also the distinction between the two judges is so Judge Berman is one of the few judges within the Southern District of New York who does not come from a prosecutor's background. Okay. Judge Coates, our new judge, on the other hand, was the former chief of the Criminal Division of the Southern District of New York Prosecutor's Office.

22:54Lauren Rodriguez:So, the people who brought the charges against us, she used to be their boss. She's a prosecutor's prosecutor. So, that was a little bit weary. We're like, okay, but judges are supposed to be non-biased, they're supposed to be fair.

23:06Keonne Rodriguez:But did it feel like you were getting a tougher hand when the judge changed?

23:09Lauren Rodriguez:A little bit, a little bit, but not so much. We're still ready to go. We had strong arguments. Again, we had two conspiracy charges. Both the charges were conspiracy. And in a conspiracy charge, the government is supposed to prove that you entered into an agreement to break federal law. Well, we knew that wasn't the case. That was never the intent. That never happened. So there wasn't any evidence to that. And then we also had the Brady violation, which said FinCEN, who is directed by Congress to be the regulator who is in charge of money service business, are saying that you're not a money service business.

23:55Lauren Rodriguez:so felt pretty confident um and our motion to dismiss had some really good case law one from uh the 1940s with prohibition and it was a sugar manufacturer who was selling to bootleggers and that was ruled through the appeals process that no even though he knowingly was was selling to bootleggers he was not part of the conspiracy to create and distribute alcohol and then there was another case in the 90s where a grow light operator was advertising in high times magazine and that case as well uh went to the appellate court and they said no even if you're advertising knowing that it could be used for criminality it's not enough to be considered a conspiracy so we're feeling pretty confident seems to fit yeah uh and from the outside of someone who's

24:52Keonne Rodriguez:watching this case, the Brady violation seemed like a really big deal. I thought that was going to be sort of the smoking gun that meant that Kearney and Bill got off. But obviously that didn't come to play. But so when you went to court, was the plan to plead not guilty?

25:10Lauren Rodriguez:Yeah, we had pled not guilty up to this point. We're going, and this is our first appearance a few days after the judge has changed. So she's just gotten the case. She's just been given all the motions that have been submitted to her in writing. We're going in thinking we're going to be in court for a few hours. There's going to be, you know, these motions can be argued back and forth and, you know, we'll see where they fall, but we're feeling good. We go before this judge and it was maybe a five to 10 minute hearing. She gets on the bench, says, good morning, says I'm denying everything goodbye and when you have that when you're not allowed to you know she wasn't interested in hearing anything more didn't explain why which usually they will give either orally or in writing while they're denying things it was shocking and that's the point where we realized, okay, the math's changed.

26:11This is not the same.

26:14Lauren Rodriguez:And we were advised at that point as well. And something I didn't realize before having this interaction, that the judge really does have such an impact in determining the outcome of a trial. Same set of circumstances, same facts, and who your judge is can determine whether you're found guilty or not. A judge gets to decide what kind of defense you're allowed to put on. They get to decide who you're allowed to present as witnesses, what kind of evidence you can present to the jury, and as well as down to what words you're allowed to use in front of the jury. So they really are kings and queens of their courtrooms.

27:02Lauren Rodriguez:And what they say is kind of final. And so hearing that, and hearing that we wouldn't be able to put on the defense that we had been planning, again, this is over a year into this process.

27:15Keonne Rodriguez:That's crazy. They can sort of sway the outcome before anything's even been said in court.

27:19Lauren Rodriguez:Yeah.

27:19Keonne Rodriguez:I did not realize that's how it worked.

27:21Lauren Rodriguez:Yeah. They get to say whether, yeah, I mean, what, they could have two sheets of paper and they say, yeah, you can show this one. but you can't show this one.

27:29Keonne Rodriguez:Wow.

27:30Lauren Rodriguez:So, yeah.

27:31Keonne Rodriguez:So at that point, this is more serious than maybe we thought.

27:35Lauren Rodriguez:Yeah. And it was after that hearing where everything was denied. And it came down to, she denied amicus briefs, which for those who don't know are friends of the court letters. They're interested parties, but not for the defense or the prosecution, just giving more educational insight into a case. Because a judge can't be expected to know, be an expert in every case that comes before her, especially in such a technical one, such as one involving Bitcoin.

28:06Keonne Rodriguez:What was the stuff that they weren't going to allow you to say?

28:08Lauren Rodriguez:Well, we didn't get to that point, but we were advised by the attorneys. So a legal defense option is defensive counsel. We, as in the whole industry, had reviewed the guidance of FinCEN. and again it wasn't just our attorney saying this this was this is industry-wide reviewed what fincent said and said no if you're non-custodial you're not a money transmitter and that was really the crux of it because if you're not a money transmitter if you don't need to do kyc iml then how can you be a money launder because you don't know who's coming through and you're not you're not holding anyone's funds to to move um again whole industry was under this interpretation it wasn't even an interpretation it's pretty black and white uh what the guidance said and so that was one of our defense options to to present a defensive counsel saying this is what the loss is what we told a lawyer said we thought we were following the laws therefore we can't have conspired to break the law which is pretty accurate they designed it to stay within the bounds of the law as we understood it.

29:22Lauren Rodriguez:They said that's not going to fly with her. She's not going to let you put on that defense. And shortly after this hearing that the prosecution came to us...

29:30Keonne Rodriguez:So they don't want the truth?

29:31Lauren Rodriguez:No. No. Hmm. No, it's, you know, prosecutors... And maybe in some cases they do. But a case like this, the head of the Southern District of New York at the time under Biden, had said he wanted to be the sheriff of Bitcoin, or sheriff of crypto, actually, which was in reference to, I think, in the 90s, the head of the SDNY was the sheriff of Wall Street. So he was looking to make a name. That's why there were, you know, these cases didn't happen, right? Samurai was in operation under President Obama, President Trump won, and then Biden. Biden's wanted, you know, they came and brought these charges.

30:17Lauren Rodriguez:Same set of facts, different interpretation. And that's not how the law is supposed to work. But there was a lot of crypto cases all brought within the Southern District of New York at roughly the same time.

30:31Keonne Rodriguez:With Roman Storm.

30:32Lauren Rodriguez:Roman Storm's another, yeah. And, you know, these are AUSAs who are looking to make a name for themselves. And that's what was interesting with the whole, you know, when we were talking to different law firms, the first thing they all said when meeting with them, their pitch to us, for us to be their client, was formerly an AUSA at the SDNY. They all come from there and then go into private sector, or they turn their prosecution job into a political career. It's just a stepping stone. And what are they after? They're after wins under the belt. And that definitely came to this, because if they were after truth, then there wouldn't have been a need to hide the Brady that Vincent said.

31:27Lauren Rodriguez:There wouldn't be a need to twist things the way they did. they were after a win. And so that's when they came to us and they said, we're going to make you an offer, offer of a plea deal. You have 24 hours to decide. You both have to agree or the deal's off. And what they offered was plea to unlicensed money transmission and we'll drop conspiracy to money launder. And the difference of those two charges is unlicensed money transmission has a max sentence of five years, while the conspiracy to money launder has a 20-year. So go to trial, you're looking at 25 years. And Bill is in his late 60s. That's potentially a sentence.

32:23Lauren Rodriguez:Not to mention, they're also threatening that the entirety of the money they said went through Bitcoin or went through Whirlpool or people that use Whirlpool that were criminal proceeds, which they claimed is 248 some million dollars, maybe more, that they would put a fine against them.

32:47Keonne Rodriguez:So it's life bankruptcy.

32:49Lauren Rodriguez:Yeah. Well, it's not even just life bankruptcy. It's if you have that over you, you're on kind of bail conditions for the rest of your life until you pay that off. So you're never a free person.

32:59Keonne Rodriguez:And when you went home to discuss this, did any part of you want to fight it?

33:04Lauren Rodriguez:Yeah. Yeah. Keone, I mean, it was a really tough call because he didn't conspire to operate an un-laced money service business, and he didn't conspire to money launder, which were the two charges. So it was a lot of, you know, it did. It weighed really heavily, but it came down to there's no way we're going to get a fair trial with the judge operating as a fifth prosecutor from the bench. You know, you're fighting with both hands tied behind your back. And, you know, what do you do? So if we would take it to trial, and prosecutions have a 90-plus percent conviction rate for a reason. If you take it to trial and lose, which the fact that we're not going to be able to present anything, yeah, is the likely outcome.

34:00If you would appeal it, a lot of times you're appealing it, not all the time,

34:06Lauren Rodriguez:but depending on the judge, you might have to appeal from prison. And there's people in prison with Keone right now that are appealing their sentences, and they can take years. So, you know, the decision was made that we're going to take the deal.

34:23Keonne Rodriguez:And were your lawyers saying that was the best outcome here? Yeah, they were.

34:27Lauren Rodriguez:And that's the thing, too. It was hard and still hard. But when you have two law firms that are leaving a lot of money on the table and they're both advising the same thing, I didn't realize this. But to fight a technical case within the Southern District of New York through trial, to go to trial, is about$13 million per defendant. We didn't have that kind of money. We still don't. BPI was great, and they were able to raise about a million dollars that was divided between the two things. But we're a million dollars in debt at this point. Yeah, there's no—so there wasn't any money to fight it. We're definitely—you know, with her as a judge, we weren't going to be able to present our defense as we wanted.

35:17Lauren Rodriguez:And, you know, the downside is a big downside. So it was, you know, ultimately came to the decision. And when you do change your plea, you have to give something called an allocution statement. And it's pretty much just in your own words stating how you broke the law as it's been charged. And that took a lot of back and forth, too, because Keone would not lie. He's like, I'm not going to lie in this.

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37:49Keonne Rodriguez:Is that one of those really tricky situations where you're trying to please the judge and kind of let them think that you're confessing to your sins and accepting responsibility, when really you wanna just tell your truth of what actually happened?

38:03Lauren Rodriguez:It's actually more so, so the allocution had to go back and forth between the defense attorneys

38:08Keonne Rodriguez:and the prosecution attorneys first before it was presented to her.

38:13Lauren Rodriguez:So they actually got a say in what he said. And it finally came down to what his statement, and I'm paraphrasing, but basically was, you know, I founded, coded, and maintained Samurai Wallet, which allowed users to transact their Bitcoin, and knowing that some of those users could be, some of the proceeds from those users could have been from crime, which is completely true. I think anyone that's a developer or that builds anything, whether, you know, gun, hammer.

38:51Keonne Rodriguez:It could be used for that. It could be used for good. That people could possibly use, yeah.

38:57Lauren Rodriguez:Didn't know of any specifics, but that was enough. That was enough and they accepted that.

39:01Keonne Rodriguez:So how was that last night before you went to court knowing that potentially you weren't going to see him again in the same capacity for five years? Well, part of what we, so once you change your plea and then you go away for a bit and

39:19Lauren Rodriguez:there's like this whole pre-sentencing report, it's a couple months, everything, everything is really slow. And they do a pre-sentencing report and some interviews and then you go back for sentencing. So it was after the change of plea, it was hard, but once it was done, it's kind of like you can't go back. So there was a lot of anxiety until that point. Are we doing the right thing? And then we can't go back. We've done it. It's done. So it was just moving forward and focusing on sentencing. And so we went to the sentencing. And that's really when we realized, yeah, this was the right call. because this judge threw the max of everything at him.

40:06Lauren Rodriguez:And if she could have given him life, she would have. But there's legal maximums, and she meant all of those. And that was the point when Keone said, like, yeah, this was the right call. Like, we definitely made the right decision. At that point, part of what was agreed with the prosecution was that he would be able to self-surrender. because again, there's a waiting time between sentencing and when the prison, federal prison, will be ready for you. A lot of paperwork has to go through. If you are not self-surrendering, then you may be remanded to a jail. And in New York, that's, I think it's a jail in Brooklyn, which was obviously not close to where we live.

40:51Lauren Rodriguez:So that's part of what he agreed, that he wanted to self-surrender. The judge was ready to take him into custody right then. She had marshals in the back of the room of the court hearing. So that was her intent, but it would have looked bad if she would have gotten up and remanded him, even though the prosecution had agreed to let him self-surrender. And he had been out on bail, again, for over a year.

41:16Keonne Rodriguez:Yeah.

41:16Lauren Rodriguez:So there wasn't a flight risk. So she agreed, but that was definitely a close call. She would have, had it not been agreed and said openly in court, she would have definitely taken him there. And I didn't realize that was until I saw the marshals that.

41:32Keonne Rodriguez:But how weird, like your life must have felt so strange in that interim period between getting the sentence and before he self-surrendered. Like, what do you even do?

41:42Lauren Rodriguez:Cry, cry a lot. I mean, really. Yeah, it was hard because it's, he was very focused on a couple of things. One, making sure that you're married, you have, there's just certain things that you take care of versus sure your wife takes care of. And so he kind of wrote me this huge guide of what happens if the internet goes out, like how to fix that. I don't know how to fix that, but now I do. Where to get toner for the printer. So, I mean, that was a very practical thing, which I appreciate. But then also he was finally like free to tell his side because of this whole up until this point, everything that was coming out was from the prosecution.

42:30Lauren Rodriguez:So I think that in a sense was a relief that he was finally had his voice back for a brief time. And so, you know, that was nice. But then it also took him away a little bit because he was doing as many speaking engagements as he could just to get the word out of this is how it actually is. But yeah, it was hard. And she said he needed to self-surrender on December 19th. So just before Christmas, actually just before one of my brother's weddings was on the 20th. So, I mean, yeah, just kind of, there was no reason that it couldn't have been after Christmas. It was pretty spiteful, I think.

43:13Keonne Rodriguez:Yeah, for sure. And how did he feel? Because I know if I was in his shoes, I'd be terrified. Like the idea of what you see on TV and in the movies about going to prison, terrifying ordeal, how was he?

43:25Lauren Rodriguez:um he's pretty pragmatic so he read a lot of books of people or blogs of people who have been

43:32Keonne Rodriguez:in we knew where he was going so where sorry where is he he's at morgantown federal corrections camp or federal prison camp i should say i should say um so he kind of so knowing that able to do some

43:48Lauren Rodriguez:research, able to kind of get an understanding of how it functions, you know, the more information kind of better prepared. I don't think you can ever be fully prepared. Uh, but I think that helped and gave him something to do, something to focus on. Um, again, he's just the kind of

44:06Keonne Rodriguez:person that's like, this is, yeah, I mean, really.

44:09Lauren Rodriguez:And, you know, just trying to, trying to comfort me and, you know, I was trying not to be too big of a mess. And, um, and is that, how far is that

44:17Keonne Rodriguez:from you. Can you easily go and visit him?

44:19Lauren Rodriguez:Thankfully, yeah. It's about an hour and a half from me.

44:22Keonne Rodriguez:Do you get any say in that, where he goes?

44:25Lauren Rodriguez:So, the way it works, he requested that because it's the closest to our house. And it's all based on what level of prison you're at. It is based on a variety of factors, whether it's violent crime or not, whether it's your first offense or not, how many years the sentence is. So, like, all these play into it. And so, he was going to be at a federal prison camp, and they've been shutting a lot of prison camps down. So the fact that there was one that close was really lucky for us. They have to play, or they try to place you. They don't have to. They try to place you within 500 miles of family. That's a pretty big distance.

45:05Lauren Rodriguez:So yeah, an hour and a half drive isn't so bad. And there's a lot of guys that are in there with them that families have to fly in because they live so far away. So the fact that I can go down and I'm able to go and see him at least once a week is, you know, and if there's a federal holiday, I can go on federal holidays. So that's definitely been a blessing.

45:25Keonne Rodriguez:And what kind of reputation does that jail have or that prison have?

45:29Lauren Rodriguez:It's because it's a prison camp. So there's no fences or walls. It's actually used to be, it's a beautiful setting, like rolling hills. And there's a lot of like geese and ducks and deer. So it's kind of, you know, this juxtaposition between all these prisoners and that it's not violent, which is, you know, right. That's what I'm, I think, most thankful for is that like he's safe, but it's still prison. And it's still, especially for someone who, you know, as I think a lot of Bitcoiners are so invested in freedom to have that stripped away and, you know, told this is, and it's like silly little things that, you know, they'll call it the Bureau of Prisons.

46:16Lauren Rodriguez:they, they nickname it, you know, they say it's backwards on, on purpose. Cause like just things that you think in any other section of society would be so easy to have operate in a certain way, logical way, and it'll be the complete opposite there. Um, so that's frustrating, but you know, he's got to kind of just one day at a time and do it and read a lot and kind of try to distract himself, but it's boring. It's very boring, especially for someone who, you know, was so active and thinking and learning and, yeah, developing.

46:54Keonne Rodriguez:How has he been? Like, how was the first time you went to see him?

46:57Lauren Rodriguez:Uh, the first time was a big relief for me because I didn't know, you know, I dropped him off, but I did, I couldn't even get close to it. So when I was first able to go down and see him, that, which was, I think it was Christmas Day. It was the first day I drove down to see him um was a huge relief you know he was okay um he had eaten like just like normal concerns that i just didn't know what to expect yeah so now we've definitely gone into a routine like that that took a while to right you have your partner who's we've been together for a long time and you're used to waking up next to them or you know fixing coffee and just normal daily life and then that person's gone you definitely notice it so as we've progressed and it's it's been over three months now like kind of right getting used to things yeah it's crazy though because like you

47:49Keonne Rodriguez:obviously always will think of him in that situation but it completely throws your life

47:53Lauren Rodriguez:upside down as well like how have you managed it yeah it's um definitely being able to focus on right continuing to try to be his voice out here yeah because yeah he's been writing articles from, but it's not the same. And I think it's important because this case doesn't just affect us. It has broader implications for not only Bitcoin, but kind of developers as a whole and further. So that's really been kind of something to keep me occupied and focused on. And yeah, I just get by, we kind of gotten our, like I said, our routine down with, you know i know to expect his call between six and six thirty in the morning and you know we talk for this amount of time and then we email throughout the day like just little things like that but but those are always weird too because you're like aware that there's a third person

48:46Keonne Rodriguez:yeah you know listening in and oh do they they're literally live monitoring every call you do and i

48:51Lauren Rodriguez:i don't know how i mean they could be yes yeah and it's and it's not like we have anything bad to say but it's still yeah yeah it's it's weird to you know you want to have a private conversation And it's just, that's just not how it is. And you have to accept that. And yeah.

49:07Keonne Rodriguez:So because he pled guilty in the end, obviously sentenced to five years, which started just before Christmas. The pleading guilty means there's no appeal process, right? Yeah. Okay. So really your options are that he's either going to serve five years or you can try and get him a pardon.

49:27Lauren Rodriguez:Yeah.

49:27Keonne Rodriguez:So what's happening with that now?

49:29Lauren Rodriguez:So the pardon route is, you know, and I think we have good cause. This goes against, you know, Trump's executive orders. This goes against the deputy AG's memo that they put out. This goes against the regulation that was there. It's violates on some constitutional grounds of the fact that they brought the charges to begin with because there's, you know, rules within the constitution that if a law is ambiguous, that it should always be cited on the defendant's side. And if, you know, you can't change a law and then just go and arrest people or change the interpretation of a law and go and arrest people, which is exactly what happened here.

50:12Lauren Rodriguez:So there's a lot of grounds for Trump to, President Trump, to be able to grant a pardon and be doing the right thing, the just thing. But, you know, it's the pardon process is, President Trump's very busy and it has to get in front of him And that's why keeping Keone and Bill's name out there and keeping the story on people's minds is important because they're not going to want to get the attention of the president. It needs to have wider attention in people's minds and be something they care about.

50:49Keonne Rodriguez:Totally. And it is obviously very in line with what you'd expect Trump to do, like with Russ Ulbrich and I think CZ got a pardon. And, um, but I could be totally wrong here, but the way you hear about pardons generally is it'll be like at the very start of a presidential campaign or the very end. Like, do they still happen all the way throughout their term?

51:06Lauren Rodriguez:They do. There was, um, last month he did a round of pardons that, and sometimes they go in themes, which is, I don't know why, but they do. And, uh, it was former NFL players, much of them got a pardon. So they do happen throughout. Throughout, there are, like you said, kind of larger chunks of, there might be thousands of people pardoned, you know. And obviously with the January 6th political prisoners, that was a huge, huge one at the beginning. But there have been some throughout. It's just not the numbers.

51:38Keonne Rodriguez:But you're really at the whim of him whenever he feels like it, I guess.

51:42Lauren Rodriguez:Yeah. And I don't even know if it's so much the president as it is, you know, he has a lot of people advising him that someone has to carry it over to his desk at some point. And when they decide to do that, I don't know how that works.

51:57Keonne Rodriguez:It's all about picking the opportune moment. Yes. But the crazy thing here is like there's huge implications for Bitcoin. Like we want this to happen because that then, I don't know if it's, maybe not set a legal precedent, but it does set some kind of precedent that like you can work on free and open source software that is like in the benefit of Bitcoin. You're not breaking the law. Like it seems obvious that there should be a pardon here, but what can we do to like amplify that message? What do you need Bitcoiners to do?

52:21Lauren Rodriguez:So we do have a change.org petition to sign in support of a pardon.

52:28Keonne Rodriguez:Do they work?

52:29Lauren Rodriguez:So Ross Albrecht did say that that was instrumental in, because his had over 100 ,000 signatures, that that was instrumental in him being able to be granted a pardon by President Trump. Because They saw that this, again, people care about this topic and they care about this injustice of, in his case, a double life, over a double life sentence.

52:52Keonne Rodriguez:How many signatures do you have so far?

52:53Lauren Rodriguez:Just over 15 ,000.

52:55Keonne Rodriguez:We need to pump those numbers.

52:56Lauren Rodriguez:Yes.

52:57Keonne Rodriguez:Well, I'll make sure that's included. Everyone go and sign that petition. And so the petition is one thing, but I'm sure this legal case cost you an absolute fortune. Can people still donate to this? I know BPI had their fund set up where you could go and donate Bitcoin. Is that still there?

53:13Lauren Rodriguez:So BPI's fund was for the defense costs. They've since closed that, but we do have a lot of legal debt. And so if people do want to be so generous to help us and kind of say, again, another way to say this is wrong and we support it, there is a website, billandkeone.org. And through there, there's a link to the petition they can sign. And then And there's also links to GiveSendGo as well as Bitcoin donations.

53:42Keonne Rodriguez:Okay. Well, I'm going to try and send as many people to those links as possible. What does this mean for Bill? Because obviously you're fighting for Keone's pardon. Is he also trying to get pardoned?

53:52Lauren Rodriguez:Yeah. As much as I'm mentioning Keone a lot because he is my husband, everything we're doing, the fundraising, the petition, as well as the pardon application has all been together. They started Samurai together. They're co-founders, co-defendants, and hopefully co-pardonies. But yeah, everything's been in lockstep with them throughout this process. He's just, and this is how it was, you know, Keone was the kind of the spokesperson did the speaking on behalf of Samurai, and that's just not what Bill's interests are, so.

54:28Keonne Rodriguez:Fair. But we need to get them both pardoned. Yes. How hopeful are you? Do you think there's a good chance this happens?

54:34Lauren Rodriguez:I do. I do. Again, it's, you know... So, the Southern District of New York is the same federal prosecutors that went after President Trump. So, he knows... He doesn't like him. He doesn't like them because he knows... He has an insight where I didn't before this, and I don't think a lot of the American population has, to the fact that they will lie, cheat, you know, do whatever it takes to win, that they're not after truth, they're not after justice. So the fact that he's a president who has been through this process, who has had lawfare perpetrated against him and can see it, he's also then someone who is able to fix the injustice.

55:20Lauren Rodriguez:And I think he likes to do that. I think, you know, given if the case was sat in front of him and he was able to, you know, if he watches this podcast, hi, then he would get it.

55:32Keonne Rodriguez:If you saw the facts, he'd be on your side. Yeah. Yeah. I think so too. Can I ask you an awkward question? Obviously, one of the things that was, I believe, going to be brought up in court, one of the things that maybe played against Bill and Keone's defense was some of the tweets that they'd written, which were like kind of out there. I think you can definitely argue that they're joking and it's like tongue in cheek, but was that a big, was that like an instrumental part of the prosecutor?

56:01Lauren Rodriguez:That was definitely, I mean, that was their whole case was look at these things these guys said. And a lot of them, right, there's one, the Russian oligarch one they like to point out that they said, welcome Russian oligarch users. And anyone, the X handles of Samurai Wallet is still up there. You can go and search. And if you see welcome new blank users, you pull up a lot of them. This is a meme template that they used. And right, they got into, so when we kind of all got into Bitcoin, Bitcoin was this magical internet money and there was a lot of people like fun. Yeah. Using like unicorns. And so it was still kind of that mentality.

56:38Lauren Rodriguez:And I know it's like, it's changed a lot. It's a lot more serious and, you know, a lot more money at stake and everything. But that was kind of the ethos still behind it. And they didn't have a, you know, they didn't have a marketing budget. They didn't have this relatively small team. And so, right, these kind of catchy, meme-y, ex-posts, tweets, whatever you want to call them, were it. And there was, I mean, there was one, welcome new Fed users, welcome new Kuwaiti. Like, it was just, it was a template, a meme template that they used. And some of the other things that they pointed to, that was the big one they really liked, because I think Russia was the bad guy with the whole Ukraine war.

57:18Lauren Rodriguez:But they mentioned something about, there was a slide deck that they had posted that, again, they made a big deal out of. And this is a 40-some page, you know, trying to get investors, probably the first slide, one of the first slide decks they made. And on the far column, it said something about elicit something. I forget the actual terminology. But if you would flip through a couple of slides before and a couple of slides after, it was animated where there was a little samurai icon logo saying, these are the things we want to be in. And there was arrows pointing to, we don't want to be in the on-ramp, the fiat to Bitcoin.

58:03Lauren Rodriguez:Not interested in that. We want to be in this little space of wallet and transactional. at no point did it point to the illicit or anything like that. It didn't point to the poker. There's a lot of things on that list. But again, it's just their way of cherry picking things to say something that the original document didn't say at all.

58:25Keonne Rodriguez:Yeah. It's one of the tricky things where the reason that this is an amazing tool for human rights activists, dissidents, just normal people who want to protect their privacy is the same reason that people who are doing illicit things might want to use it. And it's like you can't have one without the other. And I don't think those tweets are at all soliciting Russian oligarchs to come and use it. It's a joke. It's crazy that that's what the prosecution was based off. I mean, the facts were always on your side. Hopefully, I've got everything crossed for you that you do manage to get Q &A and Bill pardoned.

58:57Keonne Rodriguez:What's next for you? What do you have to do? What are the steps between here and there?

59:02Lauren Rodriguez:So, I mean, from my understanding, I don't fully know if I would find out with everyone else if he got a pardon. I'm not sure how that process works.

59:13Keonne Rodriguez:If you get the heads up or not.

59:14Lauren Rodriguez:Yeah, there's not too many people that have, I guess, been through this process. But that really is, you know, continuing to raise awareness to the point where I do get that call to go pick him up from prison. That's the end goal. It'd be a pretty special day. Yeah, and that's what's next. But further than that, I think it's important for people to realize that this did stifle innovation, privacy innovation on Bitcoin and innovation in the space in general. And that's all still needed. I think, I don't know, we get this weird separation that people forget that the Bitcoin blockchain is exposing your bank or your credit card statements online for the world to see.

59:58Lauren Rodriguez:you know, good, bad, everywhere in between. And so I hope that if there is a pardon, that there's some taken seriously, the privacy within the Bitcoin space. And then also kind of in a larger scale that the war on crypto is not over and that people keep - You don't think it's over?

1:00:23Keonne Rodriguez:No. So have you, because I'm sure you're watching this closely, do you think there has been any change under Trump? Or do you think this is still alive and develops is still at risk?

1:00:32Lauren Rodriguez:So there's definitely been a pause because, you know, thankfully, President Trump is friendly to this space. But the people who are starting these investigations, who are bringing, you know, the charges are not, you know, the AG or Deputy AG, these appointed positions. They are the line prosecutors and the FBI investigators, these are the lower level people and they still have an ideological lean and they don't like Bitcoin. At any point, this could resurface. I was saying earlier that I do hope clarity gets passed. I think there's a lot of protections in there, But it doesn't necessarily stop a prosecutor from bringing charges like they did here, right?

1:01:28Lauren Rodriguez:In this case, it was unprecedented, novel theories, taking established, you know, what a whole industry was built on as guidelines, regulations, and turning it on its head. And that can still be done.

1:01:43Keonne Rodriguez:I mean, and we saw the chilling effect from that. Like companies left America straight after that, stopped offering services in America. And like, I know a lot of them have come back, but it's not to say that can't happen again. Yeah. Well, I hope the next time we do this show is with you and Kyone. Yes. That would be awesome. I'll just let him do it.

1:01:58Lauren Rodriguez:He's much better.

1:02:00Keonne Rodriguez:But like, if there's anywhere else you want to send anyone, let them know. If not, I'm going to put those links in the show. Everyone go and sign the petition. if you've got some money that you want to donate do it um i really wish you the best of luck i hope that we are sat here in a few months time doing this with uh you and q a thank you so much for having me on no thank you for coming on it's amazing this is the most serious i've been in a long time but um thank you so much lauren and i really do wish you all the luck in the world thank

1:02:27Lauren Rodriguez:you

1:02:39Thank you.