Originally published at: Announcing “Bitcoin Pizza Day” @ Little Zoe’s Pizza 2024 | Free Keene
Crypto users gathered at Little Zoe’s Pizza in Keene for Bitcoin Pizza Day 2019.
It’s been a crazy year! With the largest gang in town cracking down on cryptocurrency. Everything from the Crypto6 trial in our very own Keene NH to the arrests of developers writing privacy friendly tools like Tornado Cash. While cryptocurrency accepting businesses and end-users have nothing to worry about the US federal government is doing everything in its power and more to take out cryptocurrency businesses and the technology that underpins it. As was demonstrated in the Crypto6 trial the truth and evidence are irrelevant. Tell a good story and that’s all the government needs for a conviction. That same playbook is now being used to attack (arrest) the developers of the self-custody Samourai Wallet. The way this wallet works is no different than any other fully self-custody wallet. It doesn’t connect to any centralized service. It’s built off standard crypto protocols and yet the federal government is fraudulently claiming it’s a ‘money laundering service’. No such service exists and as the sources are available (the government appears to have missed them) you can still download, build, and use the software despite that the government has censored the developers via stealing their website, domain, and so forth. If that is allowed to stand there will be no ‘legal’ self-custody wallet developers left unmolested by the US government.
Now they’re even trying to extend know your customer legislation to all your favorite cloud services (I’m no fan of the ‘cloud’, but government shouldn’t be undermining the privacy of everyone on bogus security grounds). No, I’m not just talking cryptocurrency cloud services either. Depending on how broadly the legislation is interpreted (and it is broadly worded) it may even mean you have to provide papers like like in Soviet Russia for every online service you use. Get ready to hand over your papers to access YouTube. This would mean you have to give companies your ID/passport/social security number/and the like in order to do just about anything online. If it involves processing, disk space, or network resources which basically means anything and everything internet you’re going to need to ID (assuming the site or the user is in the US). This is the most draconian rule I’ve ever seen proposed anywhere in the world (and normally it’s places like communist China that have this even if not this draconian).
That said come join us for Bitcoin Pizza Day 2024 @ Little Zoe’s Pizza in Keene, NH. The event is scheduled for May 22nd at 5PM. The address is: 149 Emerald St, Keene, NH 03431.