This week’s guilty verdict for Roman Storm on the count of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money service business is absolutely insane.
FinCEN, the regulator responsible for licensing, monitoring, and enforcement actions concerning criminal activity in money transmission has itself explicitly stated that self-custodial tooling that facilitates the transmission of value using cryptocurrencies are not money transmitters and are not subject to the relevant regulations.
So, how did we get here? Eight months after the election of a president who describes himself as a Bitcoin and cryptocurrency advocate, after the Department of Justice themselves have explicitly stated that they are not going to engage in regulation by prosecution, or prosecute mixing services, how was Roman Storm found guilty?
There is nothing to describe this situation except pure, unbridled insanity. Incoherence. Hypocrisy and contradiction. There is a lesson here, though, one that I think it’s time more people in this space learn.
The government’s word is worthless. It means nothing.
They will continue cracking down on privacy, they will continue pushing KYC surveillance through things like the GENIUS Act and through the backdoor, applying them to just stablecoins (for now). They will continue treating the desire for privacy as evidence of criminal intent. They will do all these things while talking out of the other side of their mouth about supporting Bitcoiners and the “importance of self custody.”
This is what the government does. This is what politicians do. It is inherent in their very nature.
We need to stop treating these people as our friends. We need to stop pretending and lying to ourselves that they can be won over and become powerful allies to push the values and tools that we wish to see in the world. They are not our friends. They will not become allies, sharing a common cause with us. They are our enemies.
It is time to stop pretending. These people must be treated as hostile, and dealt with as such.
We need to stop begging them for clauses and riders in bills. We need to take them to court. We need to stop kissing their ass and pandering to their egos and notion of public persona. We need to call them out as the two-faced spineless people they are.
If there is any legitimacy whatsoever to the legal foundations of the United States government, we do not need new laws, we do not need these people’s permission — we have the Constitution. Remind them of that in court.
If, at the end of all of that, this system is so corrupt and hypocritical that it functionally ignores the constitutional rights of Americans (and non-Americans), then we need to ignore them.
Civil disobedience is the last mechanism we have to hold the government accountable to the foundational constraints they are built upon short of violence. It is time to use it.
Free human beings do not ask for their freedom; they take it. In a digital age creeping ever closer to Orwellian totalitarianism, that is the only way you will ever attain it.
