Trump Says He Will Consider A Pardon for Samourai Bitcoin Wallet Co-Founder

President Donald Trump acknowledged he’ll overview the case of Keonne Rodriguez, co-founder of Samourai Wallet, as questions mount over the federal conviction of the Bitcoin privateness tool developer.

When requested about Rodriguez’s upcoming penal complex sentence, Trump acknowledged, “I’ve heard about it. I’ll watch at it.”

“I don’t know the leisure about it,” President Trump acknowledged. “However we’ll rob a watch.”

Rodriguez publicly acknowledged Trump’s sentiment, tweeting “Your persisted noise is working. Thank you to each person pushing @realDonaldTrump to pardon Bill and me. Let’s acquire this over the line. #pardonsamourai”

Rodriguez, alongside with co-founder William “Bill” Hill, used to be convicted of conspiracy to goal an unlicensed cash transmitting change, a fee stemming from Samourai Wallet, a Bitcoin privateness system that allowed users to combine coins and retain financial anonymity with out giving up custody of their funds.

Facts of the Samourai Wallet case

The case, which began under the Biden administration and persisted in the course of the Trump Justice Department, culminated in Rodriguez receiving a five-year sentence and Hill four years, though Hill’s age and most modern autism evaluation led to a lowered sentence.

Critics of the prosecution argue the case represents a unsafe precedent for the cryptocurrency change. The U.S. Department of Justice claimed that Samourai Wallet facilitated over $2 billion in unlawful transactions and laundered more than $100 million from criminal sources. On the opposite hand, handiest the “unlicensed cash transmission” fee survived a high-profile trial, elevating questions about the means of the case.

Samourai Wallet’s mixing products and providers, Whirlpool and Ricochet, were designed to imprecise the muse of criminal proceeds from activities including drug trafficking, darknet marketplaces, fraud, cybercrime, and assassinate-for-hire operations.

Courtroom paperwork picture the builders actively inspired criminal employ, describing the provider as “cash laundering for bitcoin” and promoting its tools on darknet boards.

The Department of Justice framed the case as part of a broader crackdown on crypto mixing products and providers. Rodriguez had requested a lightweight sentence, however the court imposed the statutory five-year most.

Trump’s feedback come amid his campaign promises to defend the merely to self-custody and financial privateness. Right in the course of the 2024 Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, he pledged to total what he described as the “anti-crypto crusade” of the prior administration.

A pardon for Rodriguez and Hill would model a transparent commitment to those promises, keeping builders from apt exposure for constructing tools that enhance privateness and security for on a standard basis Americans.

With Rodriguez location to anecdote to penal complex on December 18 and Hill already sentenced, the Trump administration faces a high-profile decision that would form the manner forward for financial privateness, tool construction, and cryptocurrency law in the United States.

This put up Trump Says He Will Take into yarn A Pardon for Samourai Bitcoin Wallet Co-Founder first looked on Bitcoin Journal and is written by Micah Zimmerman.