Privacy advocates say the case has already chilled the development of essential crypto privacy tools in the United States.
President Donald Trump said Monday he was open to exploring a pardon for convicted Samourai Wallet developer Keonne Rodriguez, and noted he was already familiar with the case.
“I’ve heard about it, I’ll look at it,” Trump said of Rodriguez’s case, in response to a question from Decrypt during an afternoon event in the Oval Office.
“We’ll look at that, Pam,” the president then commented to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was also present in the room.
Bondi then appeared to write something down.
Rodriguez was sentenced to five years in federal prison last month for his role in creating Samourai Wallet, a tool that allowed Bitcoin users to keep their transactions private without ever transferring funds to a third party. He is set to report to a federal prison to begin his sentence on Friday.
The Department of Justice last year, during the Joe Biden administration, accused the software developer and his colleague, William Longeran Hill, of operating an illegal money transmitter and facilitating criminal activity.
After President Trump’s return to office this year, his DOJ dismissed numerous Biden-era criminal cases — but kept the prosecution of Rodriguez and Hill active.
Facing 25-year sentences if they went to trial, the software developers opted to plead guilty this summer to one charge of operating an illegal money transmitter. Rodriguez received the maximum possible prison sentence of five years for that charge; Hill received four years.
The case has received particular attention from privacy advocates and longtime crypto users, who fear the case — along with the conviction of Roman Storm, the developer of a similar tool on Ethereum — has had a demonstrable chilling effect on the development of blockchain privacy tools.
These advocates contend the ability to send online transactions privately was the reason Bitcoin was invented in the first place — and they fear the federal government, even now under the crypto-friendly Trump administration, is actively working to undermine that functionality.
Crypto software developers have argued the essence of crypto is at stake when it comes to protecting the ability of software developers to create privacy tools like Samourai. Major crypto policy groups have also put their weight behind the case, noting its significance.
The Trump DOJ does appear to be aware of the importance of the issue of privacy software to the crypto industry. In April, deputy attorney Todd Blanche directed federal prosecutors to back off of crypto privacy tools. Months later, a senior DOJ official told a room of crypto policy leaders that the department would, going forward, refrain from prosecuting decentralized software developers.
And yet, the DOJ continued to pursue its case against Rodriguez and Hill during that time — pressing a federal judge to hand the developers maximum possible prison sentences.
Rodriguez recently told Decrypt he is doubtful the president will grant him clemency, citing his lack of resources compared to the powerful crypto executives Trump has pardoned this year.
“We’re not CZ,” Rodriguez said, referencing Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who Trump pardoned in October. Earlier this year, Zhao’s crypto exchange received a $2 billion investment from an Emirati state-owned firm in the form of USD1, the stablecoin developed by the Trump family’s crypto platform World Liberty financial.
“We don’t have billions of dollars,” Rodriguez said. “We don’t have the same type of influence people like that have.”
