Latest / Monero Talk / Why Tornado Cash Free Speech defense was rejected in Court w/ Tor Ekeland Mike Hassardl | EPI 329

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Why Tornado Cash Free Speech defense was rejected in Court w/ Tor Ekeland Mike Hassardl | EPI 329 · Monero Talk

• Doug All righty. We are live. Good morning. Good morning. Mike I'm already early here. It's early here. Do an excellent job something that's loud Doug I know we're both on the East Coast here. We're so close yet so far in New York, right? I mean Whether whether you're two miles away or it's always far in New York You know nobody's ever actually close, but this time of day there shouldn't be too much so much traffic. Doug How's it go man? It's going pretty cool Mike good. Tor and I had an interesting case yesterday. We had a hearing where we're representing a company called Exceptional Media in a showdown against Chanel as their cases so often end up. Doug Yeah, give us the update on that for the for those who are just tuning in. I guess I guess we should allow you to first introduce yourself I'm down again Yeah, we i've uh, obviously been talking to you for years now Uh, we started talking a few years ago when you first started fighting the bitcoin fog case Came down to Monero topia. Doug You you guys were you guys were all stars down there Um, you're participating, uh again this year and since then you've been doing the circuit with different. Um, Cryptocurrency conferences kind of getting the word out on what you guys have been working on The good and the bad, uh, but go ahead give some more detail of uh, who you are and what you're what you're up to Mike Yeah, of course, Michael Hazzard is my name, and I'm an attorney with Tor Acland Law. I work alongside Tor Acland, the criminal defense attorneys in New York, and we represent computer criminals, computer crimes. Mike We sue on behalf of cases involving a lot of code and civil cases around the United States. Mainly we practice federal criminal trials and the federal criminal law and the federal district courts around the United States, but this particular case that I just mentioned is a local case for us, it's down in lower Manhattan. Mike It's a civil case in which we're representing a company named Exceptional Media that had a cryptocurrency staking program that they called Yield Nodes, and it appears that Chainalysis has participated substantially in accusing them of being a scam, so we're suing them on behalf of Yield Nodes. Mike Chainalysis, what they did is they published a crypto crime report every year, which they send around to law enforcement agencies around the world, as well as anybody else who has their software, which is Chainalysis Reactor. Mike In that crime report, they labeled Yield Nodes, our client Exceptional Media's project, as the second largest scam in the cryptocurrency world, with absolutely no proof and no discussion on it or anything. Mike So what happened to them was that after Chainalysis played them as a scam, all of the exchanges stopped dealing with Bitcoin addresses that were related to the Yield Nodes project. So their clients weren't able to withdraw their funds, they weren't able to transfer funds, and it's totally messed up their entire operation, even though they have not been convicted of any crime, there's been no evidence against them. Mike Other than this, a defamatory statement published in the Crypto Crime Report sent to law enforcement agencies and crypto currencies to good changes all around the world. So this lawsuit is pretty interesting because we're suing for defamation. Mike And in their defense, typically when you have a defamation case, the defense comes back and asserts truth as a defense. Doug And they didn't do that. It's not defamation if it's the truth, right? You could say mean things about people if it is, in fact, the truth. Mike Yeah, and the case, I'm trying to remember the name, I don't know how to look that up here, the case that set that standard was actually in New York at the same courthouse that we were in yesterday, when does Blake know the name of the case, but it was a famous one involving, there's Alexander Hamilton coming and saying to some of the judges, when he was the defense director, coming and saying that, Mike hey, look, like this guy's telling the truth. And it was a situation where the jury actually acquitted the defendant and said, yeah, well, if you speak of the truth, how can it be defamatory? And it was a great example of that case. Mike I think the 1780s, 1790s, but it was the first time that, truth became a defense for defamation, to stop these. Doug When men were men back then, right? Exactly. When Liberty was running through everybody's veins back then. Yeah, you know it. That's amazing, man. Well, first of all, it's amazing that you guys are like working out of the same courthouse that's had these historic events, which obviously makes sense here in New York. Doug Also amazing that you and Tor have kind of become the crypto advocates from a legal perspective and are really doing well in that niche and making a lot of headway in different cases. It's fantastic that we had you guys. Mike You know, Torr's experience is representing hackers and started to point out of the Occupy Wall Street protests out here in New York. Did the Andrew Weave on the end of my case. And, you know, when I hopped on board, I had a bunch of cryptocurrency experience and then we wound up with Roman Sterlingoff's case. Mike So that was something else. That's a terrible, terrible situation. Doug Yeah, well, we could we could get into that, get a kind of an update on that. Unfortunately, or fortunately for you, I think there's going to be a lot more, you know, more cases that come down the line as chain analysis continues to, you know, breach basic rights of people and the tool is misused. Doug Let me quickly actually play our intro realizing I didn't play that, which is fine, though. This will work out well. We got our little intro of who you are and what you're up to. And now I'll go ahead and play our our sponsorship intro. Doug We got 42 live listeners right now. Guys, like and share, retweet. Let's get the word out. I'm here talking to Michael Hassard. He will be coming down to Monero topio with Tor Erklin. He was there last year. Doug He's doing amazing work in terms of fighting the good fight for cryptocurrency in various, various different ways from a legal perspective. And we'll get into all the different the case that he's currently working on, the one that he was first working on with Bitcoin five and where they're at with that. Doug And then we'll kind of get his legal opinion on some of the other things that are happening out there crypto. But let me go ahead and run the intro here. Speaker 2 Monero Talk is sponsored by Cake Wallet, a trustless, open source wallet that gives you the keys to your crypto. Invoice, donate, and trade your Monero with peace of mind, peace of cake. And by StealthyX, an instant exchange where privacy is a top concern. Speaker 2 Go to StealthyX .io to instantly exchange between Monero and 450 plus assets without having to create an account or register and with no limits. Making StealthyX a simple way to purchase Monero with crypto anonymously. Speaker 2 Monero Talk is also made possible from contributions by viewers and listeners like you, and supporting us is easier than ever by typing in MoneroTalk .Crypto in your Monero .com or Cake Wallet send address field to send us a tip. Doug Yeah, right. Yeah, I gotta get the sponsors in there, especially Cake Wallet. Now they're called me. Our main stage sponsor at Monerotopia again this year along with Bitmain. I don't know if you heard that. Doug We have Bitmain as our second base stage sponsor, which is kind of interesting considering Monero is built to be ASIC resistant. And the company with the monopoly in building ASICs in Bitcoin land is sponsoring. Doug We'll take it. We'll take it. I got my Monerotopia cup right here from last year. Yeah, it was. Tell the people, man. Tell the people. Was it a good time, Monerotopia? It was awesome. Mike It's awesome. There's a bunch of great people down there. It's a great place and a great space and uh, from what I hear You're doing the same space this year, right name space. It's hope Roma there then. Mike Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Where's the Roma? Quite the time the marketplace with all the vendors taken Monero That was pretty fun and that all the coders everyone all the hacking competitions all the presentations You know we actually that's where we met Francisco and he and that's what I was gonna say, right? Mike That's like that's like the movie Doug true moments. Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, those are the things that make me most excited about like Monero. Those are the stories that I get excited about. I'm like, all right, let's do this again, because that means we're making progress. Doug The fact that we got you together with Francisco, that's amazing, right? And he ended up being an expert witness, right? He didn't end up testing. Mike We ended up having to pull his testimony for various reasons during the course of the trial, but he was there the whole time with us and advising us and giving us a rundown. He sat there every day in court. Mike It was like a six -week trial, so that's not a small job. He was extremely dedicated, so I got to give Francisco Cabana a kudos on that front. He was great to work with. Doug Yeah, I think he thoroughly enjoyed it too, and it gave him a chance to look at Chain Analysis. Obviously, he's always looking at it, but I think he gave him even more insight into it as he had access to the case and stuff. Doug And yeah, I've had some good talks with him about it. I'm sure you saw recently there was a video that leaked where the Chain Analysis supposedly had some tool that that they can use to probabilistically make some guesses about who the sender of Monero Mike I think I have been following that but I think that happened before there was the change to a full chain membership. Yes Yes, of course that was but it was the 16 ring ring signature. Yeah, it won't be there Doug Monero hasn't updated yet, so Luke Parker is going to be at Monero -Topia this year. He's the one leading the full chain membership upgrade. So we still do have ring signatures. I think the FUD was that they were acting like this is some new insight into Monero. Doug People in Monero have been well aware of this, talking about this for many years and working on fixing it. And also the realization that this is one small component of Monero's privacy tech, and that it doesn't give any deterministic way of determining who said what to who, but it allows you to gain potentially some probabilistic insight, which as we know, governments in combination with chain analysis companies then tend to use beyond how they should be using it. Doug Way beyond. In unethical ways to then make assumptions and guesses as who might be doing what, even if they don't really have any good data or proof, right? I think that's where that was my biggest takeaway with the case that you guys did with Bitcoin fog and chain analysis. Doug The takeaway being that these tools are being abused by governments, by prosecutors, and it's just kind of a tool that they have that they now lean on to kind of accuse people of things by showing a bunch of basically gibberish, right? Doug A bunch of, oh, look, we've got this connected to this transaction, this connected to this transaction. So we think it might be this guy, and therefore you should find a real thing, and simplifying it as much as I possibly could. Doug But that's kind of like the big takeaway. Mike There's way too many assumptions, way too many assumptions that are made during the use of these tools that they've created, you know, because when it comes down to everything, it's a probability analysis, right? Mike When you're looking at trying to draw relationships between addresses and cryptocurrency that is the mix, whether on something like tornado cash or through a custodial service like Bitcoin fog, you know, they're having to make some kind of probability analysis, and then they're going to court, though, and that's true. Mike And one of the biggest things that we deal with as defense lawyers is, we call it the CSI effect, you know, the law and order effect, where people have been conditioned through these TV shows about, you know, government agencies and investigative agencies to think that they're always in the right, they're good, that they've got strong sides, right? Mike And in this new field, you know, they don't. And it's being presented as such. And I think that that's a bit of a, you know, I don't think that. Doug Yeah. And you guys explained very well, not only are they using kind of pseudoscience and these tools that aren't really tested or regulated, but that the companies that are providing these tools also happen to be in cahoots with the government, right? Doug The same people that work on the prosecution side end up going to work for these companies, kind of getting the golden parachute when they leave. So it's like they hook up the companies when they're on the inside with all this work that they're getting, right? Doug With being basically funded by the government for purposes of using these tools. And then these same people end up getting kind of golden parachutes going to work for these same chain analysis companies once they leave the institution, leave the government, right? Doug Yeah. Mike That's 100% correct. We saw that in Roman's case, both that early on, and it kind of backfired a little bit in court. The judge was definitely protecting the prosecutors after the stuff that we were going around. Mike It might seem pointing out public information that everybody should know about how the system works, but we got a little stop. Doug of the insight that people that people should have when they're right when they're where they're deciding a court if somebody is guilty or like that you know i think that ties into understanding what's going on here what was the what was kind of the backlash you gave? Mike Yeah. Oh, you know, like when we were in Monero topia last year, we were talking about all the relationships between the agents and the prosecutors and, and, and K analysis where people have gone after working on the case, you know, the Dutch wasn't a huge fan of that, put it that way. Mike You don't even want to say it anymore. Yeah. But you know what you're saying? It's a fascinating and very real issue because like, I'm sure you're familiar with that. The new TD bank settlement that came out over $3 billion settlement. Mike Then they're voting any criminal disposition against their employees, investors, executives in order to settle money laundering charges that there'd be. Yeah, go ahead. So that's a massive case. And if you look at the defense lawyer in that case who negotiated the massive settlement that doesn't have any criminal penalties for the bankers, you know, it's Loretta E Lynch, you know, the former US attorney general. Mike And when she was, when she was coming into power, where was that when she was appointed by Obama to replace Eric Holder, the conservatives made a big deal. Sorry. There's like Canadian coming out, you know, that the Republicans made a big, big slam about her and her relationship to HSBC because they settled a similar criminal accusations for DOJ for $1 .9 billion. Mike So she worked with the prosecution as the prosecutor to help the bank. Right. And then became the attorney general. And then now she's working on the defense side and also helping. She's getting these massive settlements and reaching non criminal dispositions with the government. Mike And you can just see that the influence you have in the government then carries over into private practice. Right. But sometimes it works in a full case that are not so favorable to the defendant when it leaves government, former government employees go to work with investigatory, private investigatory companies like Chainhouse. Doug Scary stuff, man. We see that in all different sectors of government where these private companies are working in cahoots with government regulators, prosecutors, whatever, maybe different branches of the government, and they each kind of benefit off of each other. Doug It's just a wicked system. I think I brought up to you, I always thought RFK Jr. would be somebody who should be sounding the alarm about this in what's going on with chain analysis. That seems to be his real skill set of sniffing out how governments are corrupt and using things like the pharmaceutical companies. Doug He's doing a good job of exposing the food companies that are putting poison in our food. He's doing a good job of exposing that. Chain analysis and what's going on there is just a different version. Doug It's a very interesting being abused by governments and enriching these companies along the way. Mike I mean the government should be working for the people and in this situation it's clearly to me at least very clear that they're not working the best interest of the citizen. They're working the best interest of their own financial situation. Doug Yeah. I mean, a lot of it has to do with the bank in terms of crypto, the bank secrecy act, right? Seems to be where all this power is coming from. And then they're using that to prosecute against basically devs that are building open source tools. Doug That's what we're currently at, right? You're talking about Bitcoin fog case. That's one thing. That's how a chain analysis was being used in abuse to go after somebody and accuse them of a crime by not really having, without really having hard evidence. Doug But now we're seeing them take even greater steps forward against cryptocurrency users and developers, right? And kind of really getting to the point where they're saying essentially developers don't have a right to build open source code if it has anything to do with allowing people to transact, right? Doug It's like getting to that point. It's getting to that point. They're saying free speech doesn't exist in this realm. Developers, if you're building tools that eventually get used to do things that may violate the bank secrecy act, you're doing something illegal. Doug Even though these tools may be 99% of the use cases may be positive things. There's nothing comparable, right? It would be saying those who built Google should be held responsible for criminals that use Google to search for things that they then use to perpetuate crimes, right? Doug Which obviously we wouldn't have Google if that were the case. We wouldn't have much of the internet. But with crypto, there seems to be a different standard because of the bank secrecy act. Why don't you get into that? Doug Kind of the big picture and then maybe we'll talk about specific examples, specifically what's happening with tornado cache and the rulings we're seeing there. Mike Yeah, of course, like there are three main cases that have kind of grown on this. And I think there's a concerted effort, Sowwire, within the federal government to use these criminal charges and prosecutions to line up, you know, America's crypto policy because it's not happening through policy, it's happening through criminal cases, through civil cases against these companies to try to set a precedent. Mike And you can almost see it go in order in timeline as well. And you start with Roman Skate, Roman Sterlingov Skate. I'm going to be saying Roman, but there's so many Romans who have been accused. Doug I know, that's adding Mike So Bitcoin fog, which is Roman Sterling Ops case, that's the case in which I was representing Roman in DC. And Bitcoin fog functioned as a custodial mixing service. So if you wanted to mix Bitcoin on Bitcoin fog, you would send the money into the Bitcoin fog portal on the Tor network. Mike Bitcoin fog would do its thing and then output it, having obfuscated the input of the transaction, which is important for people for personal privacy reasons. Because if you don't do that, you're sending addresses, it's going to be on the blockchain. Mike Somebody could look that up, do a ranch attack on you, come to your apartment, come to your hotel room, put a gun to your head, put a ranch to your gut, and a forest interest for all your cryptocurrency. Mike In that case, Bitcoin. So Bitcoin fog was a custodial mix. Then you have Samurai wallet. There's another case. And I got their shirt on here for Samurai. So Samurai wallet comes in a little bit differently in the sense that it wasn't a custodial mix, it was a non -custodial. Mike And you could put it on the end of your address and then use it as a protocol to send outgoing funds. They still had control over the Samurai wallet protocol. So it could be changed or manipulated by the people who were running it. Mike And then the third class that we have now with Roman Storm and Roman Sevanov and Alexei Pressval, this is a open source decentralized Ethereum project where they kind of released it into the wild as a smart contract that anybody could use for personal privacy reasons. Mike And that once they put it out there, developers had no more control over it. So Roman Serlingov's Bitcoin fog case was a custodial mixer. The Samurai wallet was a non -custodial mixer, but the devs had some kind of control over the program and the protocols. Mike And then you have tornado cache where it was just kind of put out there. And now it can't be stopped. Anybody is able to use that code and integrate it into their Ethereum wallets to be able to send private transaction. Mike And the government has come down in order, and I think strategically in order, trying to make these kinds of projects that secure financial privacy for cryptocurrency. They're trying to make that illegal without legislating that, without going through Congress to do that. Doug Right, they're slowly chipping their way, making their way towards perhaps something as absurd as labeling something like Monero, a money transmission, a money laundering tool. Mike Well, it would be, it'd be really interesting their legal argument for doing that. I think that would, first of all, that would be outrageous and completely terrible. Doug Now you're going after purely open source code with no company or business that's profiting from it in any way Mike It's a completely different ballgame, but it could be it certainly on their radar, you know, they want to control the system Doug Right. Yeah. I mean, it would be a complete overreach in terms of a breach against free speech and the ability of people to code and build open source tools. But who knows? I mean, seeing what we're seeing, do you think we get to that point or even the government realizes how absurd of a breach that is and what the implications would be? Doug Because it would go well beyond Monero. I mean, at that point, obviously they'd be able to like, why then would Bitcoin not be labeled that as well, right? Especially with layer two coming around. Right. Doug Perhaps that is what is ultimately protecting us, the fact that Bitcoin is now so embedded in the traditional system that a lot of these same people that have the incentive to protect the traditional system now have the incentive to protect Bitcoin itself because they're a part of it in many ways. Doug I mean, that's what I really see as what ultimately could protect Monero is the fact that Bitcoin is already embedded and to label Monero a tool that can be used for money laundering would also, you'd have to give Bitcoin that same label as well. Doug I don't know. That's my thinking there. What is it? Mike I think we need to take a look at the actual criminal charges that were laid because they're slightly different in all the three cases that I explained. So in Bitcoin Phogs case, Roman Sterling was accused of actually money laundering. Mike Now, I honestly don't believe that he ran Bitcoin Phogs. He did not do that. He's been convicted of some element and what the government did was they traced the funds that were used to send up the website, the original creative website for Bitcoin Phogs .com and they tied it all the way back to Roman Sterling up using chain analysis tracing tools. Mike However, there were just so many hops in between Roman and like 19 hops, I think at one point. And then when the funds were sent to pay for a domain registration and all those hops could have been in somebody else. Mike The government was alleging that all those hops were through accounts that he had control of, but there was no proof that set that up or established that, which was, that was a shame. But in the Bitcoin Phog case, the defendant was being accused of money laundering. Mike Now with the samurai wallet and tornado cash cases, they're being accused of conspiracy to launder money. And that's because the programs were not custodial. They never actually, like Bitcoin Phog at some point had the funds in their pocket and then transferred it out. Mike But the other two protocols that are added on the blockchain wallets, they're not custodial. So the government was not able, those two, these two cases, tornado cash and samurai wallet are purely conspiracy. Mike So they're the main evidence it's going to happen in a Roman storms trial, for example, it's going to be about like communications and intent and what was there an agreement and these kind of issues. Mike But unfortunately, trust defense lawyers, you know, we call it conspiracy, the prosecutor's friend for a reason. That's because the bar is so low for them to establish. Doug Yeah, I mean, the government's a bunch of conspiracy theorists, right? The irony, right? Anybody who puts the pieces together of what the government may be up to is labeled a crazy conspiracy theorist. Doug Yet it's one of the tools that the government often uses against the people, right? They theorize these conspiracy and then abstractly accuse people of crimes that may be committed with these tools and that they may have had the will to perpetuate these crimes abstractly. Doug It's quite bizarre and it just gives them so much leeway to be able to accuse people of different things, of basically even thought crimes, right? I mean, it gets to the point where it's like, well, they brave new world out there and they may have been thinking of the tool will be used for this and therefore they're guilty of it. Doug It's scary stuff. So, I mean, so, so right. So like with, if Monero ever were to be attacked in that way, right? It would be that they'd be attacking the devs, right? And say, I think they would. Mike have to. They don't seem to go after the users ever. So I think using Venero brings substantial aspect, you know. Doug It would be terrible if it's such a stretch, such a stretch. I mean, because the other major difference too is the profiting, right? So samurai wallet, that's another thing about them, right? And all these, right? Doug There was profit involved. Mike They're making the same argument with the tornado cash case. Right. Doug They were making money off of people using these tools. Whether it was directly, indirectly, they were making money off of it. Much harder to make that argument, something like Monero, where devs are just building open source code and they're not directly receiving any funding, they're not receiving any dev tax. Mike And when they're trying to prove conspiracy, everyone's trying to prove conspiracy, they have to go communications between people. So if people are developing Monero, they should not be talking about agreements to money laundering or acknowledgement of money laundering because these kinds of communications are the news against them in court by the prosecutors. Mike They're trying to establish the conspiracy because in order to establish the conspiracy, you need to have an agreement, which is to have some kind of communication, and that's what they use. So that's some of the main evidence that they're using in Roman Storm's case. Mike And I think it's ridiculous that the court denied the defense attorney's request for motion to compel information related to communications between the US and Dutch government as part of the MLAT treaty because one of the tornado cash developers, what's his name? Mike The Roman, sorry, Alexei Prestov was tried in the Dutch court and recently sentenced to 56 months. And there's been loads of communication between them. And I find it interesting that the court denied the motion to compel. Mike I would think that will come out during tense disclosure anyways, the government would want to disclose it. If they're fighting it so hard, there must be something different to the defense there. Doug We got a Monero Super Chat, not really related to the content, but I have to pull up the Super Chats, because people are using XMR Chat to set it up. Oh, nice. Kanagorin tipped $0 .50 in Monero directly to us using XMRchat .com. Doug I made a kuno for humanitarian aid in Gaza in collaboration with BTC Palestine. Consider to share it, please. It's also good advertising for Monero. Yeah, I'll leave it up there, please. Check out kuno in general if you haven't. Doug Easiest way to find it is just Google your search kuno on Monero, and you'll find it, because it's not kuno .com, but you'll find it, and there's tons of amazing fundraisers happening there that are Monero -based. Doug So yeah, let's get into the tornado cash a little bit. So the Dutch government already, basically the trial already happened, Alex, was it Alexey Perciv? Alexey Perciv. Yeah, he was found guilty of, I guess, right? Doug Same charges, conspiracy to commit money laundering. It's not the US government. It's the Dutch government. But in this day and age, there seems to be one world government, especially when it comes to things like the Bank Secrecy Act, right? Doug They all seem to be following these same rules and working together to kind of push things forward, right? Mike Which is why those communications between the US government and the Dutch government coordinating these processions, I think that's where the kind of information that should be disclosed to the defense. Doug Can you give us some insight, kind of remind us of what the ruling was and what we really learned from that case? I know I'm kind of asking offhand here, but what were some of the insights, the legal insights or what were really the rulings that came out of that in terms of what this now means in the eyes of the Dutch government of how they're viewing these tools? Doug They're basically all these things we're saying, right? They're basically saying, yeah, free speech, these concepts of free speech, well, writing software does not exist if you're building tools that people may use to commit money laundering. Mike I think before we dive into that, we've got to talk for a second about when and through what cases code became free speech. Because there wasn't always that way. It was born in the 90s, the US heavily restricted the export of cryptography. Mike They were worried that their computer scientists at places like Berkeley and Stanford were building these cryptographic tools that could be used against them and the US government considered that a national security concern. Mike There was a guy, I think the guy's name was David Aaronstein and he had a last name is Berenstein and he had this big case. The EFF stepped in and they built a team of lawyers, computer lawyers, all legends who sued DOJ regarding the federal government's export controls of cryptographic computer codes. Doug Yeah, that was with the guarding PGP, right? Mike Yeah. Yeah. And other things as well. But this guy, Berenstein, he was a computer science student who was developing cryptographic computer code, and he was trying to export it for profit. He was trying to participate in the global capitalist marketplace. Mike And the US government was saying, hey, now that you can't, because I think they actually called cryptographic code back in the nation in the same category as a nuclear warhead. You didn't know we were saying something that you wouldn't want to get in the hands of your enemy, but you have to. Doug Just math they're trying to label math illegal munitions that you know, you can't share with other people you got Mike But I think that when you take a look at the judge's decision, but nothing is laughed at and very clear decision favoring computer code and protecting it as free speech in the United States. But just like we ran into is Roman Sterlingov's case, there's almost like the courts are like 10 years behind on their understanding of technology, which you and me and these people listening, we can have a conversation about how these programs work in a way that you can't really have in court. Mike Because they're still stuck in this brick and mortar world and they're trying to fit the round peg of computer law into the square peg of traditional brick and mortar law. And they keep bringing up like they're using statutes from the 1900s, 1800s, sometimes the 1700s to try to fit in these issues that are arisen in the internet age and they don't always fit. Mike And I think the judge, I think her name was Judge Patel. I'm gonna try to bring it up here. But she had a great quote about why computer code is speech. I'm just trying to find it. Doug Yeah, let me correct myself. Yeah, this PGP wasn't involved. It was the snuffle encryption system at the time. But this is also when the PGP wars were all tied in together, right? Similar to what we're seeing now with the prosecutions that are happening with these tools that are allowing people to transact peer -to -peer, open source software that's being built for these purposes. Doug That was happening in the 90s, pretty much completely analogous with just encryption tools that were being used for purposes of encryption for communication, which is really the same thing, right? Because cryptocurrency is a communication tool. Doug But go ahead. Mike It is a communication tool. And I got the quote here from the judge back in 1996, when she held that computer code is protected free speech. She says, this court can find no meaningful difference between computer language, particularly high level languages as defined above and German or stress, like music and mathematical equations, computer language is just that language. Mike And it communicates information either to a computer or to those who can read it. So I think they have a pretty concise explanation. And, but then again, you do see how the judge is relating it to something really old, you know, she's trying to relate it to the language and then an understanding that you have in this old brick and mortar world. Mike She's not actually taking and looking at it and justifying which is the correct, she has the correct answer, but I think her reasoning could be more tuned to the internet world. And back in the nineties, I would just come on about, but here in Romans, Roman storms case, you have a complete opposite shift now, because Roman storm truck, his lawyers tried to dismiss the criminal action against them. Mike You have a Southern district of New York for operating tornado cash. And the judge said, I don't have to quote in front of me right now, but something very opposite to what the judge said in the nineties, they're saying, you know, there are limits to the free speech that code has and the code cannot be used to participate in money laundering schemes or something like that. Mike That is basically the ethos of what they're saying in the Roman storms case. The judge is denying the motion to dismiss, trying to articulate the limits on freedom of speech when it comes to computer code. Mike And I think that there you, again, you have the issues of the court relying on old school, you know, brick and mortar ideology and understanding of the world and then applying it to Peter law, which it totally doesn't fit, which is why I think that computer law is becoming its own area of law the same way that real estate law or criminal law or civil law. Mike And I think it's gonna just continue to develop. Speaker 2 Do you love coffee and Monero as much as we do? Consider making gratuitous .org your daily cup. Pay with Monero for premium fresh beans and if you like what you taste, send a digital cash tip directly to the farmers that made it possible. Speaker 2 Proceeds help us grow this channel, gratuitous and Monero. Doug For sure, for sure. I mean, so that this is so that there was a motion to dismiss based on free speech grounds, basically making this Bernstein argument and that motion was was dismissed that doesn't apply because they were basically they violated the Bank Secrecy Act. Doug And so if you violate they're being accused of violating the basic they haven't been found guilty of that. But because they're being accused of that that these essentially these free speech arguments don't even exist. Doug That that's kind of my boil down understanding of that. Is that kind of accurate? Mike Well, I think there's another element to it, and that's that they're conspiring, is that providing privacy for people, something that is much needed in this industry for everybody at all, you know, whether you're a government or a big corporate player is a regular individual who's involved in cryptocurrency. Mike You want privacy. You know, the second that you make a transaction out of your wallet and that somebody can look up to see how much money you have, you just lose complete negotiating. Imagine if you're a big company like Pfizer, based in the United States, and you're making a big purchase of something with cryptocurrency and the person that you're trading with can see exactly how much funds, how many funds or how many coins you have at your disposal. Mike You know, that's not good for the economic environment in the United States. And as we transfer away from fiat currency into cryptocurrencies, particularly for international trade, it's going to completely hamper American industry and American businesses that they're trying to make deals and make money. Doug I mean, one of the other chilling effects is, especially with the ruling that we saw in the Dutch version of this case, is basically saying that the devs are responsible for how these tools are ultimately used. Doug So if a crime is perpetuated with some tool that you built that's completely open source, some software, that you could be held accountable for the misuse of this tool, which is like in the saying in the beginning, right? Doug That'd be like holding Google accountable for the crimes that may be committed with the use of Google or any of these internet platforms that are communication platforms that are used, right? Maybe terrorists are using WhatsApp to communicate. Doug Is WhatsApp now considered a terrorist organization? A conspiracy to commit terrorism because a couple of terrorists used it to send communications? It seems to be just as absurd as that. Mike So back in the 70s and 80s when there was some political unrest in the United States, and a couple of federal courts were blowing up. There were bombs at federal courts, but nobody in the federal government at DOJ went to go arrest the author of the anarchist hookpot. Mike That was protective free speech. It doesn't matter what you're writing it. That's free speech. What somebody else does with that knowledge, you don't go to the author of that, and in the space of computers, if you're preventing American developers from being able to develop code that does something that the government takes issue with, you're hindering the advancement and development of the entire industry, Mike and America will get left behind. It's not a smart thing for America to heavily regulate this particular area. The only reason there was that .com boom in the late 90s is because they determined internet code to be free speech, and the cryptography allowed websites to be able to add things like checkouts and payments and online banking. Mike And Silicon Valley grew because code was determined to be free speech. If the US government now wins these kind of cases, is able to curtail the freedom of speech, and it will ruin the computer industry in the United States. Doug Scary stuff. Scary stuff. I mean, politically, do you think people are better off with Trump or Kamala in that respect, or... Mike At the Bitcoin conference and I saw RFK speak and I thought great You know, I think it's a shame then that he never had a chance of winning in the first place But I'm at the Democrats and Republicans up to that's in the same drag, you know, all right, right Yeah, I learned about this stuff, you know open Pepsi, you know I think it's funny when you go on TV don't see so many ads like both for this guy Both for the Republican vote for the Democrats But what you do see is go and vote, Mike you know, I think no fuck that Why would I vote for somebody who's not in my best interest? It's a it's a choice between two different parties that have been pre -selected. I'll make sure that all their potential Decisions that they'll make have been pre -filtered, you know, I don't want to participate in that that's not a democracy You know democracy does the veil this use to legitimize the corruption the more votes they get the more legitimate their election So I wouldn't vote in the first place. Mike Yeah 5% 5% of the electric go and vote, you know, they're they're ruling their governance is very legitimate Doug the crypto -anarchist way Let me go ahead and quickly play a little ad we have here for Monero topi We have 104 lives viewers right now guys like and share you got my casserd in here He's gonna be down in Monero topia this year with Tor Erkland his partner. Doug They were down last year Stay tuned guys Speaker 4 Yes. Are you interested in privacy, freedom, technology, and Monero? Come to the conference that has it all, Monerotopia 2024. Join us in our world -class of cypher -funk speakers to discuss all things freedom. Speaker 4 Engage in the Monero circular economy. Go shopping at the open -air Monero marketplace. Join a workshop. Enter a hackathon. Opt out of dystopia and into Monerotopia. At Huertor Roma Verde, Mexico City, Mexico, November 14th through 17th. Speaker 4 For only one easy payment of $89 for general admission. Or get the VIP ticket for one easy payment of $249, payable in Monero. And enjoy discounted drinks at the bar and dinner with the speakers. Get your tickets now, while supplies last. Speaker 4 This deal won't last forever. Get your tickets now at merotopia .com. Enter promo code 1 -800 -MONEROTOPIA to get 10% off your order. Doug Alright, Monerotopia guys, Monerotopia .com, grab your ticks, we'll be down there in basically a month from today. It's going to be fun. Oh yeah. It's going to be a good time. I was just down there a couple of days ago, I went for a long weekend to do some prep down there and get things ready. Doug Mexico City is a beautiful place, we're at the Rome of the venues, it's beautiful. A little chilly guys, I know you think Mexico, you think hot, Mexico City is at 7 ,000 foot elevation, beautiful weather, clear skies, kind of like desert like weather, so hot during the day, dry, it's not the rainy season, so quite dry, cactus is growing, that type of deal. Doug But then it gets chilly at night because you're at your 7 ,000 foot elevation, so bring a sweater. It's definitely sweater weather in the evening and beautiful, clear skies during the day. Last year was in what? Mike July. It was in the summertime. Doug Last time it was in May May or April. Yeah. Yeah Mike So I was sitting there rain hot being so hot down there. Yeah, that's awesome Doug I gotta get the word out like it's not gonna be as hot this it's beautiful though. It's like perfect chili like clear skies You know fresh air loose guys. It's actually quite nice Mike I love the trees in that park, those massive trees, the big roots breaking open. Doug And so there's stuff that you feel like you're in like a little utopia, right? It's you're in a Monero topia and not in the heart of Mexico City. So it's very cool. Mike Speak of that, how does the Monero, or Copa Monero do it? Copa Monero? Doug Copa Monero is fantastic, man. Copa Monero really worked out well. We just had the semi -finals were played last weekend. So it started off with 12 teams. They'd been playing each other, and now we just had the semi -finals. Doug So we're down to the last two teams, which is Firo is playing Cake Wallet. So each team had a sponsor, basically a sponsor from the, we use the money from the conference to basically do Copa Monero. And it wasn't cheap, there was a lot involved, right? Doug We had a higher security for the game. Hundreds of people have been attending these games, by the way, in this little town in the middle of nowhere. Soccer's big there, football's very big there. It's like the main thing they have going on. Doug So word got out about this Copa Monero and people have been coming into these games. They're expecting almost a thousand people. He's saying 900 people he thinks will attend the finals, which is super cool. Doug The most exciting element of all this is that they're all learning about Monero. They all have already naturally been learning about it because Monero's kind of organically growing there in this area for various reasons. Doug Mostly because Alessandro, the guy who's running Copa Monero for us, really kick -started it in his community. They started using it, him and his friends and other people for actually gambling on soccer, on football, using Monero out of a pure need. Doug And then from that, they figured out they started a WhatsApp group where they were chaining pesos from Monero. And then from that, they started getting their little local stores to accept Monero because they had their winnings that they wanted to use. Doug And then out of that group, Copa Monero. So it's actually, I think it's the most underrated story in crypto that we're seeing this Monero organically gain adoption in an actual town in South America. Mike Do you think there's a town, there's a town, Terminaro, the same way that El Salvador's got it? Is there an equivalent city in the world, Terminaro? This town, I would say, for most of it. Doug Yeah, Iberate. It's a tiny little town in the Formosa district of Argentina. You know, it's not as sexy maybe as the Bitcoin town where you could go, you know, surfing and you got the beach. This is a real, real town where it's, you know, it's the middle of nowhere in Formosa. Doug I went there. I've been there. I traveled there to check it out last year when I went down to Argentina and we were considering doing the conference down there. I had to go check out Monero Town and sure enough, you know, the bakery accepts Monero. Doug I got my hair cut in Monero. I rented my hotel room for Monero. So it's organically being adopted there, which is very exciting. It's interesting that it kind of started to blossom there for various reasons. Doug But yeah, it's happening. I would say that is Monero Town, Iberate, in Formosa. So yeah, it's working out well and then the finals will be aired and played during Monero -Topia. Essentially a month from today on the last day of Monero -Topia conference. Doug So we'll put it on the big screen and we'll all watch as a thousand fans watch live. Copa Monero will get played out. So exciting stuff. But I'm trying to think, you know, maybe ways we could tie in. Doug Obviously you'll be down there talking. We'll have Lola Leitz. I'm sure you follow her. She does a lot of things. Yeah. Yeah. I've never met her in person. She has very good OPSEC. She stays anonymous. Doug So she'll be presenting remotely. But she's been following all this stuff very closely and does very, very good analysis, legal analysis of what's going on specifically. I would say like a crypto legal journalist. Doug Right. Mike She's the best journalist that I've ever spoken to on this front about this subject. And yeah, she's a special person. She used to work for Forbes. She was a journalist for Forbes. They wouldn't publish all the stuff that she was writing, which was on points. Mike It was amazing. It was like, so she created her own journal called The Rake. So go check out The Rake. We've got great pieces about cyberpunk stuff, privacy. Yeah. Doug You wanna really learn what we were talking about today in great detail, check it, yeah, the rage. She's doing a fantastic job of that. She'll be, yeah, she'll be giving a presentation at Monero Topia, super excited for that. Doug I don't think I've ever officially seen her present anything yet, so, we're excited to kind of debut her down there, and maybe eventually I'll get her to come on this show too, but she doesn't really, she doesn't do interviews. Doug Very exciting that she'll at least be presenting remotely. But yeah, I'm trying to, I'm thinking if there's anything else we could do to kind of highlight what's happening here with these different cases and these victims, right, of the Bitcoin Five case, the Samurai devs, the Tornado Cash devs, even Roger Vare, right, different thing, but he's being attacked for tax evasion, even though he paid his taxes when he left the U .S., Doug whatever it is, 10, 15 years ago. So all these victims, there's others to list. I'm wondering if there's maybe some way we could highlight them and bring support to them as we're all together, just kind of throwing that out there as an idea. Mike percent. You know, all these cases are part of the same themes. You know, their government's cracking down on freedom and the internet and the ability to transact privately. That Roger Verghese is bizarre, you know, because he reached out, he tried to pay all of his tax. Mike Now, one of the problems here is that the regulatory framework is completely unclear. You know, when I was at the Bitcoin conference in Nashville, I did a CLE beforehand with continuing learning education opportunities for lawyers. Mike You've got to give a certain amount of them per year. So all these other lawyers in this conference, this presentation, and I talked to a lawyer whose client is being sued simultaneously by the SEC and the CFTC under competing theories that in one case Bitcoin is a security, in the other case Bitcoin is a commodity. Mike Because even that base identification of whether Bitcoin is a commodity or a security, nothing came through Congress about that. It's all going through these cases, right? And the government knows their chances. Mike Unfortunately, more than 99% of federal criminal trials that go to trial end up in a negative result or conviction for the defendant. Now, what I see the lawyers doing in Roman Storm's case, the tornado cash case, is very similar to what Paul and I have done with Roman Sterling out of this case, the Bitcoin fog. Mike And that is that you know you're going to lose a trial level. You do your best to fight it. You fight everything you can, but you know the odds are stacked against. So part of our job is to lay the foundations for a sound appellate argument. Mike You've got to lay appellate landmine all along, right? So you make particular arguments. Like I seek the argument by Roman Storm's lawyers requesting and trying to compel the communications between the Dutch government and the United States government pursuant to their ad -lib agreement. Mike You know, I think that that's one of their appellate landmines because that's an issue that is ripe for appeal, could potentially succeed on the appellate court and lead to a reverse. So the defense lawyers who are playing these, they're playing these games, but doing these cases, right, I have to play all these games with their arguments in order to lay a foundation for an appeal. Mike And that's something I think people should really understand. If they're wondering, if they're watching the case from afar, they're wondering, oh, why did the defense lawyers in this case say it that way? Mike You know, if you start thinking about it that the defense lawyers would lay this foundation for appeal, you can understand the case a lot better. Doug Fantastic. Fantastic. Maitra was saying it's unclear on purpose. Yeah, yeah. They're purposely leaving these things unclear because then it gives them the ability to go after people and basically create new law through the legal system as opposed to through the congressional representative system. Doug So creating new law through basically prosecution. Mike But we can change the law too, you know, the defense can change the law too by winning on appeal and winning on specific arguments on appeal. And that's typically where you see the greatest changes in the law. Mike So, you know, I can swing both ways. And I think that the government is, you know, they're not taking the wisest approach. I think there should be an open discussion to create a regulatory framework that everybody can play with and obey the law and make money together. Mike You know, that's the American way. And they're he's right. They're avoiding the tough questions that Congress and they're trying to try to develop the American law on it through these criminal cases. Mike And it's at the expense of these freedom of these developers, you know, the American justice system, the criminal legal system, because there is no justice in this system, you know. But in America, just the sentences are out. Mike You know, you're looking at the contrast between Holland in in Roman or Alexei Preslov's case. And he got five years. That's a substantial sentence. Right. But Roman Storm and S .D. and Y. Here in New York, he's facing like 46 years. Mike It's just it's way over the top. The sentences that are being handed down because, you know, they calculate the sentence by the damage of stock. Right. So you're looking at now there's other factors as well. Mike But that's one of the main factors. And with these cryptocurrency cases, Bitcoin cases, Ethereum cases, the numbers ramp up really fast because there's a lot of value being sent to these mixers, whatever they may be, the protocols. Mike So when the government comes back and they say, oh, Roman Storm conspired to launder like one point six billion dollars, you get convicted out of the United States. That's a rages sentence. You know, we're fighting this. Doug And that's like what we saw with Ross Albright, right? I mean, like, you know, they basically gave him a double life sentence because of all the crimes that were committed using his platform, right? Once again, that would be like holding Google accountable for all the crimes that have ever been committed through their platform. Doug They would be serving, you know, a thousand, a hundred thousand life sentences, right? I mean, people, to hold people accountable for the crimes that may be committed for tools that they'd build is horrible, horrendous precedent to be set. Doug It basically will slow down our evolution, not allowing us to create new technology if those that create them are then held accountable for how they might be misheeding, right? Mike 100% and you don't see banks being held accountable in the same way, you know cartels launder hundreds of millions of dollars every year in u .s Dollars through banks and the government doesn't seem to care whatsoever Because they need the banks to be as this industry as the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency industry grow You know, like you said earlier the government's gonna be in the exact same position there with banks They're not gonna want the Bitcoin developers to fail not the mineral developers to fail because it becomes such an important part of our economic Doug but planto is saying and guys by the way please use xmrchat .com slash Monero talk to send in your comments send in Monero super chat so you don't need to send us ten dollars although some people do which is super generous you can send ten cents you can send five cents but at least we're using Monero and you'll be surprised at how easy it is to do you don't need to create an account just go to xmrchat .com slash Monero talk you type in your comment it'll ask you to send us a Monero uh tip along with it super easy it's fun to do you're using Monero uh please do that law is made by people and not God at the end of the day yeah uh but but but but math is made by it is math is made by God right and that's what crypto is built upon that is the like the crypto -adarchist the cypherpunk philosophy right is we just we'll just build we'll just build code using math um and basically ignore the powers that be ignore these governments and build things that they can't stop right things you know whether or not they may think they're illegal uh the real the real way to win is to opt out of their system use these tools that are open source that essentially can't be stopped or co -opted a lot of percent Mike And I think that everybody involved, both in the US government and the US economy, kind of realized that this open source model is eventually going to pay off and it's going to win. The same way that... Mike Well, I think it's kind of similar maybe to when Pirate Bay came out and everybody started downloading music and then the entire music industry changed because of that and I have Spotify and different programs that have adopted to this new paradigm. Mike Now that's not a good example of how it should be because clearly in this new paradigm with Spotify and such, the artists are not making as much money and it's all about the artists. So the money is being channeled into the large corporations that are running these systems, but the open source model nonetheless is much stronger for development and for creating economic value than forcing everything to be owned and add everything inside of it. Doug Yeah, exactly. The way they ultimately win, the way they won there was they took the convenience of... When that happened in the 90s, when we were there, we were downloading music. Maps or Livewire. What's from having to buy the albums at the store where you only get 10 songs and an album to... Doug Now you're sitting in your dorm room and you're downloading 100 different songs. It was convenient. The way they won there was they packaged the convenience of what that offered, allowing people to download this music maybe for a cent, even arguably making it more convenient so you wouldn't necessarily get any viruses when you're doing it. Doug Unfortunately, that's how things kind of tend to work out. We're seeing kind of the same thing with crypto. It gets used for these quote -unquote illegal things and then they try to repackage it and sell to you in a way where it's just as convenient. Doug But what you end up losing out on is it's no longer what it originally was. We're seeing that with the tools that are being built around crypto with Bitcoin. Most people that are using Bitcoin these days aren't even using it peer -to -peer in a non -custodial way where they're holding their own keys because there's not absolute convenience in there. Doug Instead, they're using second -layer tools or apps that basically allow them to transact Bitcoin where they're not really even holding the keys. Unfortunately, this is often what happens. I think the way we fight back with that is creating this culture of understanding why it's important to use these tools in the right way, even if a little convenience is sacrificed. Doug The problem is it's abstract. The convenience part is easy to understand. What's hard to understand is the abstract value that you get from using these tools when you opt out. It's not completely obvious for everyone, especially when you talk to the normies. Doug You're trying to get them to use things like Bitcoin, Bitcoin privacy tools, and Monero. They're like, I'll just use Venmo. Then you have to have these abstract arguments of, no, the government's trying to contribute to transactions, and with that, they'll use that to control all of society. Doug I can just use Venmo, and it's even easier, and it's also free to send. Mike And getting that kind of sentiment and talking about that in a federal criminal trial and giving that education to the jury is outrageously difficult for a defense lawyer to do. Because you try to bring in somebody to explain the culture, okay, the judge is going to deny that. Mike The prosecution is going to challenge that because they want to set the tone of the trial and frame the jury's arguments. You're trying to talk to them about this. We had a really difficult time bringing into a Roman Sterling House Bitcoin file case what a rent attack was. Mike Because everyone we tried to bring in to testify that the government was saying, oh, you're not an expert in rent attacks. You didn't experience the rent attack. They were challenging left, right, and center, different things. Mike But during the course of reference to any Roman Sterling during the trial, so many people came up to me and told me their stories of being rent attacked, like what was going on in Europe around 2010 to 2014. Mike But people realized that you could look at the blockchain and find somebody's address and see which money they have. The Russian mafia was targeting people this way against Belarus for doing the same thing. Mike And that's one of the main reasons why you need personal privacy for your finance. You don't want to show people how much assets. Doug Yeah, unfortunately people aren't gonna learn until they see examples of people getting screwed over by you know The traceability of these. Oh one to bring up so obviously tour is not here today But super excited that you guys will both be down at Monero topia. Doug I saw I saw a tour on Tim pool, which was awesome Oh, yeah. Yeah, I haven't I haven't fully watched it. I gotta maybe maybe I'll even watch it on the way into work today I want to hear what he had to say. Doug I Did he mention Monero I don't think he did but super cool like it's headway Mike Yeah, I think you mentioned I think you met them in our topia. I remember correct. Thanks. They're talking about me in the topia Yeah, well apparently there's not a their podcast set up down there in West Virginia something else Oh, there's all their their standards. Mike They know they got out. I wasn't there but towards tell me that they have like like half pipes everywhere You sign a waiver if you want to use a half pipes and stuff because people aren't themselves a lot of the proof Really? Mike They're pretty big go straight. So Doug That that's that's super cool. Yeah. What was he talking about tour? I mean, I'll give it a listen, but like he was I guess talking about all these things He was talking about the Kate's different cases you guys Mike So talking about these cases, chain analysis obviously, talking about the election. Doug super super important that like there's an example right because we have to win the culture war and So Tim Poole obviously still on the fringe, but much more mainstream than Monero talk, right? Like yeah, he's got two million two million subscribers to his phone, right? Doug So so now you have these two million people learning about the traceability of Bitcoin. It's like Oh, it's a wake -up call Oh, I thought I thought Bitcoin was untraceable digital cash Mike Those are the type of people, the people who are listening at the pool or even at the pool who would love Monero. Exactly. Doug Yeah, yeah, maybe maybe you guys can get me on that show or somebody from the Monero community Maybe you guys can help us get a Monero person on there. I'll see what I can do. Yeah Work your magic, man. Doug You you are you are a very diplomatic Part of the key, you know, you that's one of the roles you play right in this is a little more legal work You're doing I think you're a great connector. I see I see you doing that. Doug You guys are both doing a great job at that Bring bringing the different crypto communities together because you know not to speak for you But I think your viewpoint your vantage point is you see these things as tools And then you're looking them at from a legal perspective. Doug So you're not, you know, you're not a Bitcoin maxi You're not of a narrow maxi You're not that you're you're looking at this from a legal perspective how people's rights are being infringed No matter what what to another maybe using it Mike at the time. One hundred percent. And when we were dealing with Roman Sterling's case in D .C., we had no funds. The government receives all of his money. What were we gonna do? There was no, you know, in the tornado cache they recently set up the justice now, and I think that's great because people can't afford to defend these criminal accusations against them. Mike It is outrageous how much, and even from the lawyer's side, how much we had to spend in order to put on a federal criminal trial for six weeks over the course of two years of pretrial arguments, everything like that. Mike Like, these cases are outrageously expensive to put on. True defense is gonna cost like two to five million dollars, and we had none, right? So we went, we got invited by Lucas Berchet, shout out to Lucas, because he put this all together for us, but he wanted us to go speak about Bitcoin, do a bunch of Bitcoin meetups in Europe. Mike But I'm gonna sit with the Swiss Bitcoin Association. Bitcoin Association is in Germany. We went to the Bonkuchen Bitcoin Hotel, and something else over there. It's pretty cool. But during that speaking tour where we're trying to talk about Roman's case, we're going out podcasts, we were on Monautopia, you really helped us out through that. Mike And without, I think Lucas actually heard about us from you putting us on Monautopia that first. Oh wow, it's amazing. You kicked all this off, and during the course of going around, that's when I got to meet all these people, and a lot of them had the same concerns. Mike And a lot of people are pissed off that the regulatory frameworks that were being developed in criminal accusations by governments all around the world. And people, you know, stepped up and donated, and we got enough to get through this case. Mike And now that, you know, we see how it's going with the Torino cash case, how they have this DAO set up, and Vitalik Buterin donated a substantial amount to the DAO. So that's gonna keep that case ready to go, because you've got a higher interest. Mike I had no idea how expensive it was to put on that. It's like... Doug You're going you're going against a force with infinite resources, right? I mean then I have all the money about all the real reasons There were others Mike Yeah, yeah the OJ they can bring anybody in yes, you know, we try to bring in extra witness We went through some crazy stuff with that case like we lined up cypher trace, which is a division of MasterCard at the time Yeah, testifies our expert witnesses on behalf of Roman. Mike They've done an analysis I actually met them at Bitcoin Miami after speaking down there in 2023 and somebody came up to me after the our Presentation and he was like dude what's happening to Roman Sterling? Mike I was really fucked up. No, this is my alibi Well, I will die on this hill. I want to help you guys that he helped us out We lined up cypher trace like we can have before trial There's all all these challenges back and forth chain house is going after cypher trace I've also had council come in and now cypher trace doesn't exist anymore. Mike Yeah, I don't know what happened I don't know the whole story right that happened Doug During during the during that moment when you guys are we right a week Mike before our trial for Roman Sterling Ops Charlie. These guys are gonna step in and present some pretty solid evidence that would really help the defense. All of a sudden they don't exist anymore. So we're trying to let the last minute try to bring in another extra witness. Mike We tried to bring in Laurence Allat, who has developed OXT, great tracing platform. The government rejected him because, or sorry, the court rejected him because he lives in France. And she knows the information that we found is subject to a protective order. Mike And the judge wanted to make sure that he'd be able to hail the potential expert witness into court. The potential expert witness explodes any of the sensitive data that's in the protective order, and France doesn't allow itself a sentence to be extradited to the United States. Mike So that was a fascinating legal argument as to why we couldn't bring in one of the leading experts. So then we brought in another one. We tried Bishop who's a Bitcoin core developer. And he was rejected because not only is he a Bitcoin core developer, but he's also a biohack. Mike So he's, we're looking at doing some very interesting stuff. But the government made him, made him out to be some kind of conspiracy theorist. He's probably one of the most brilliant people I've ever spoken to. Doug So they just they just missed him on those like on some like rounds about his character or something like Mike I mean, these are all great appellate issues, right? This is part of the reason we brought in these extremely qualified people. See, and we are taking Roman Sterling Obscuse to appeal. We're working on that, right? Mike We're building a team. We've got a great lawyer down in Florida who's a Daubert expert. He's won multiple times on appeal on Daubert. And for those who don't know, Daubert is the case that sets the standard for extra witnesses to come in. Mike You know, the work that the extra witnesses does, if they're going to be an expert, it needs to be, like, published, peer -reviewed, accurate, you know? It's not that stuff. Everything is done internally. Mike There's no peer review. There's nothing that meets the Daubert factor. So I think that's an excellent appellate issue and a very interesting story that will go going forward. We've also brought in a lawyer to Boston, formerly rep El Chapo. Mike So he's an expert money laundering lawyer. So he's coming out on the appeal. We're putting together a dream team, trying to save from it. This is terrible what's happening in Rome, and I'm afraid the same thing is going to happen in Rome. Mike You know, 99% plus chances of losing at a federal criminal trial. How the hell do you call that system just, you know? Doug Scares, scares, scares man and we appreciate that you guys are on the fight front lines of fighting from a legal perspective Right. There's a there's a bunch of different battlegrounds, right? There's the the site the cypherpunk crypto kind of anarchist battleground, which is building the code building the software There's the battleground of getting people to adopt it and use it There's the political battleground you guys are fighting on the on the legal legal front Which is very very important very important. Doug We appreciate that you're doing it Mike When these three cases make their way to appeal because I don't see how they appeal look at the night I think all three cases out there like I'm talking about the big web fog It's a semi wallet case the tornado cash screen So I think all three of them have really good appellate issues in there somewhere I think I'd love to collaborate more with the other because I think that we could maybe have a discussion Present like a coordinated approach this to how we're gonna conduct the appeal So I think this I would love to reach out or have them. Mike Yeah, it's me Doug Right, use each other's resources, right? That's a great idea, right? Unite. Unite in the fight. Mike For what I understand, the justice now that was set up to help the tornado cash guys is going to be used to support other coders who are being accused of similar things. Doug Oh, okay. Yeah, so yeah, it's like Adafrid from that as well. Yeah for sure. Yeah Mike You're not allowed to set up, I don't think you can in the United States, it's setting up a legal defense fund for one case, but you can set it up for free speech cases, or yeah, exactly. So I think going forward with this now gets well -funded, it's going to allow potential defendants but resources go battle against DOJ and their unlimited budget and 99% success rate at the problem because it's a really an uphill battle for defense lawyers. Mike But appeal's different, and I'm looking forward to it. Doug anything that people can do that are hearing this now to help help you guys specifically with you know you're out legal funding Mike We're still working on Roman's appeals. So we have donation pages for Roman Sterling up on our website, which is www .torrechlin. I think it's Torrechlin. Laura, Torrechlin, let me take a quick look here. Doug Okay, yeah, you want to get you want to get this right? Mike But yeah, it's cloraclin .com. So let's do our E K E L A M D. The lead engage has a link to the support, uh, Romans, uh, trial and appeal. And he's hanging in there, by the way, his, uh, first of your instance, really inspiring. Doug Yeah, I mean, he must be, you know, you guys are kind of giving him that, that, that, the hope, right? Um, you're the most important people in his life right now, for sure. Mike It's got a set to single be coming up on November 8th in Washington DC. All right, man Doug Well, yeah, well good luck with that and I'm super excited to see you down You see you guys both down at Monero topia and I'm sure we'll get more of an update down there And yeah, man, I love doing these We got to hang out. Doug Yes to consider, you know, you're looking forward to it. You're New York based law firm here I'm in Queens. I know I know we end up paying you. We're all busy people. We end up hanging out You've been down to if you've been out of the sovereign house in it, you know, the sovereign always know in Manhattan That bar the new the Bitcoin bars that Mike That's the key. That's like, yeah, I'm watching square part. There's another place that's fascinating. There's some great people there I think you'd really buy but where's that books are definitely on point dime square down by Chinatown Lower east side it saw not I think the address is 180 East Broadway. Mike It's a good place to set up No, they we spoke there They have like an area where you could present but they also have like a backyard and a bar and it's kind of like there's a lot of like libertarians and Cypher pumps altcoin people, you know, I saw that was actually quite a girl where I was talking to these guys And they're getting like a simp economy. Mike So it's kind of some interesting out there Punky stuff, I think Doug Sounds like Monero would fit in very nicely. Did you see that? Mike Yeah, now they all know they know about you too. Some of them are watching the show. Doug We got to do we'll do a Monero meetup over there. We'll do a Monero meetup over there Always always looking for locations for that. I haven't done one in a long time yet. If you could come out that'd be fantastic I was thinking pubkey, but this sounds even more more Open to Mike You know that you know the old punk scene on the Lower East Side that died, right? Yes, they're kind of bringing that into the 2024 and oh, yeah, it's cool to see that space still thriving I think it started during COVID the guy who set it out made like a bunch of money in the first Bitcoin bull run And then he said this bar. Mike He's had like a lot of hackers speak their Whistleblowers these type of people. Yeah, so sovereign houses Doug I love it. I will definitely check that out and I will definitely check it out. All right, buddy We're rounding out like we're over an hour here our 20 minutes. We have a hundred and thirty five live viewers Thank you guys for joining us. Doug This has been fantastic Michael I'll see you down in Mexico City in a month from now man and any any last words anything you want to get out There before we close it out Mike Yeah, if anybody ever wants to reach out, I'm completely available. You can reach out to me on Twitter, at Mike Hazard, or you can send me an email, michaelattoraklin .com. Reach out guys, I'd love to speak to all of you. Mike Thank you for having me. Doug All right. Cheers, man. Love talking to you as always and see you down in a month with you and Tor and we'll continue the conversation there.