Trump, Samourai Wallet and the Future of Privacy Tools Under U.S. Law

In late 2025, a story that might once have looked niche even inside crypto suddenly broke into the broader political conversation. President Trump indicated that he would consider the possibility of a pardon for the chief executive of Samourai Wallet, a privacy-focused Bitcoin wallet whose founders were recently sentenced in U.S. federal court.

At first glance, this is a story about two individuals: Keonne Rodriguez, the former CEO of Samourai, and William Lonergan Hill, the former CTO. In November 2025, a federal court in New York sentenced Rodriguez to five years in prison and Hill to four years, after both men pleaded guilty to operating an unlicensed money-transmission business. They accepted a plea that avoided harsher charges which could have carried sentences of up to 20 years.

Critically, they were not convicted of money laundering and did not admit to personally moving illicit funds. The case instead centred on licensing and compliance: whether the way Samourai operated brought it inside the definition of a regulated money-services business under U.S. law.

Alongside the prison terms, the court imposed three years of supervised release, a 250,000 USD fine on each founder, and forfeiture of more than 6 million USD in fees that the business had earned. Prosecutors argued that Samourai’s advanced privacy tools were used by criminals to hide the origin of more than 237 million USD linked to illegal substances, underground online markets and financial misconduct. The sentencing, however, was formally tied to operating without the required licenses rather than to direct participation in those activities.

Trump’s willingness to publicly entertain clemency immediately turned a complex legal and technical question into a political flashpoint. To understand what is really at stake, it is worth unpacking the case and its implications for Bitcoin, privacy technology and the regulatory climate that builders will face in the years ahead.

1. What the Samourai Case Was Actually About

Samourai Wallet has long positioned itself as a Bitcoin wallet focused on privacy. Its products made it easier for users to obscure transaction flows on-chain by using techniques such as coin-joining and transaction structure randomisation. For many Bitcoin advocates, tools like this are part of a broader push to make digital money behave more like cash: usable without broadcasting one’s full financial history to the world.

From the perspective of federal prosecutors, however, Samourai crossed a specific legal line. The core allegation was not that the founders themselves traded on illicit markets, but that they had:

• Operated a business that accepted fees in connection with movement of value.
• Provided services designed to deliberately obscure the source and destination of funds.
• Failed to register and comply with the licensing and reporting obligations that apply to money-service businesses in the United States.

The plea agreement reflected that framing. By admitting to running an unlicensed money-transmission business, Rodriguez and Hill accepted responsibility not for the specific actions of end users, but for failing to operate their service within the existing regulatory perimeter. In exchange, they avoided trial on more severe charges connected to alleged use of the tools by third parties.

This distinction matters because it demonstrates how regulators increasingly view infrastructure providers. In their eyes, there is a meaningful difference between publishing open-source code and running an ongoing business that actively facilitates financial flows while collecting fees. The closer a service looks to a financial intermediary, the more regulators will expect it to follow the same rules.

2. Privacy, Responsibility and the Legal Crossroads

Samourai’s founders have been portrayed in very different ways depending on who is telling the story. Some privacy advocates see them as developers who built tools that anyone could use, arguing that code is a form of speech and that individuals have a right to protect their financial privacy. Prosecutors, on the other hand, emphasised that the platform was presented as a way to evade surveillance and that the operators knew or should have known that a portion of their user base included people trying to conceal unlawful activity.

The reality is more nuanced than either extreme. There are at least three overlapping questions:

• Is privacy itself legitimate? In most democratic societies, the answer is yes. People have long used cash, private banking arrangements and other tools to avoid broadcasting every transaction to the world.

• Can privacy tools be misused? Absolutely. Just as encrypted messaging can be used by both journalists and criminals, privacy-enhancing financial tools can serve both legitimate users and those trying to evade the law.

• Where does responsibility fall for misuse? This is where legal systems are still catching up. The Samourai case suggests that when a company turns privacy into an organised service, charges fees and markets itself with messaging that regulators view as encouraging evasion, the risk of prosecution rises sharply.

The judgment does not say that any developer who contributes to privacy code will automatically face prison. But it does make clear that running a business that sits between users and the network, while ignoring licensing rules, is becoming legally untenable in the United States.

3. Why a Possible Presidential Pardon Is So Controversial

Against that backdrop, President Trump’s statement that he will “look at” a potential pardon for Samourai’s CEO has several layers of significance.

First, it fits into a broader pattern of pro-crypto signalling. The current administration has courted digital-asset voters and donors by talking positively about Bitcoin, expressing support for innovation, and criticising what it portrays as overreach by some agencies. Considering clemency for a high-profile figure associated with Bitcoin privacy is a powerful way of reinforcing that message.

Second, it raises delicate questions about how far political leaders should go in intervening in cases where courts have already weighed the evidence and applied existing law. A full pardon would not only shorten an individual’s sentence; it would also risk being interpreted as a political statement about the legitimacy of the underlying prosecution.

Third, it highlights a tension that will increasingly shape the regulatory treatment of crypto infrastructure:

• If developers and entrepreneurs fear that any association with privacy technology could lead to criminal charges, they may choose not to build such tools at all.
• On the other hand, if policymakers appear to endorse businesses that regulators believe facilitated large volumes of hidden activity, critics will argue that this undermines efforts to maintain market integrity and to combat serious crime.

From an educational standpoint, the key point for readers is not to predict whether a pardon will actually occur, but to recognise how politicised this area has become. The intersection of privacy, digital assets and law is no longer a purely technical discussion; it is firmly part of broader debates about national security, civil liberties and the role of the state in financial life.

4. The Line Between Software and Money Transmission

One of the most important lessons from the Samourai case is the distinction regulators draw between publishing code and acting as a financial intermediary.

Consider three simplified categories of activity:

1. Pure software development. Writing code, publishing open-source repositories and explaining how a protocol works without actually taking custody of funds or running a business that moves money.

2. Non-custodial tools with minimal coordination. Building wallet software that connects users directly to the network, without the provider taking control of keys or actively arranging transaction flows.

3. Operated services that coordinate and process transactions. Running servers, designing transaction flows, matching counterparties, charging ongoing fees and positioning the service as a layer between users and the blockchain.

Regulators tend to view the first category as closer to speech and innovation, where the threshold for criminal liability is high and usually tied to direct participation in wrongdoing. The third category, by contrast, looks much more like a traditional financial intermediary — especially when it involves ongoing commercial activity and deliberate design to obscure flows.

According to the government’s theory in the Samourai case, the company did not merely publish code and step back. Instead, it operated an ongoing service that coordinated activity and collected revenue while failing to register as a money-services business. That combination, in the view of prosecutors, triggered licensing and reporting obligations similar to those that apply to more conventional payment platforms.

For builders, the practical takeaway is that architecture and business model matter. A tool that leaves full control with the user, charges no ongoing fees and does not route traffic through central servers is more likely to be seen as pure software. A service that actively manages flows, settles payments and markets itself as an intermediary is more likely to be pulled into the regulatory net.

5. What This Means for Bitcoin’s Privacy Ecosystem

Beyond the immediate human impact on Rodriguez and Hill, the case sends a signal to the broader privacy ecosystem around Bitcoin and other open networks.

On one hand, it may create a chilling effect. Some developers could reasonably worry that even non-custodial privacy tools will attract heightened scrutiny, especially when they become popular or when prosecutors can point to examples of misuse by bad actors. That could slow the pace of experimentation in advanced transaction-structure techniques or coordinated mixing protocols.

On the other hand, the case may push the ecosystem toward clearer separation between software and service. Projects that focus on open-source tooling, encourage users to run their own infrastructure, and avoid centralised fee-taking may be better positioned to argue that they are closer to free speech than to financial intermediation.

For long-term Bitcoin users, it is also a reminder that privacy on public blockchains is not a binary switch. There is a spectrum:

• Basic wallets offer convenience but limited privacy.
• More advanced tools can make it harder to link transactions, but may attract more attention from regulators.
• Some users may decide that the highest levels of anonymity are not worth the increased legal and operational risk.

The educational message here is not that users should avoid privacy altogether, but that they should understand the legal environment in their jurisdiction and recognise that no tool removes the obligation to comply with the law. Privacy features are not a licence to engage in prohibited activity, and developers cannot guarantee that authorities will ignore how a tool is marketed or used in practice.

6. Reading Trump’s Signal Without Overreacting

How should investors and builders interpret Trump’s comments about potentially considering a pardon?

First, it is important to distinguish between campaign-style signalling and actual policy. Politicians often express sympathy for individuals or causes without ultimately taking formal action. A pardon would require a deliberate process and would almost certainly provoke strong reactions from both supporters and critics.

Second, even if clemency is eventually granted, it would not automatically rewrite the legal framework. The statutes under which Samourai’s founders were prosecuted would remain on the books. Other companies that resemble money-services businesses would still be expected to obtain licenses and comply with reporting obligations.

Third, the episode underscores that digital assets have moved from the edges of the financial system into its political centre. Decisions about enforcement priorities, appointments at agencies and the tone set by senior officials now directly influence how entrepreneurs weigh risk and where they choose to build. A public debate over whether to pardon a privacy-wallet founder would have been almost unthinkable five or six years ago; today, it is part of a much larger conversation about the role of open networks in the global economy.

7. Practical Takeaways for Long-Term Participants

For readers who use or invest in Bitcoin and other digital assets with a long time horizon, several practical lessons emerge from the Samourai case and the surrounding political discussion.

7.1 Separate technical admiration from legal reality

It is possible to appreciate the ingenuity of privacy-preserving protocols and at the same time acknowledge that deploying them as a commercial service in certain jurisdictions triggers complex legal obligations. Celebrating the elegance of a tool should not blind anyone to the regulatory framework in which that tool operates.

7.2 Recognise that compliance is part of the infrastructure

As digital assets integrate into mainstream finance, compliance is becoming an unavoidable layer of the stack. Payment platforms, exchanges and wallet providers that operate at scale will increasingly be expected to obtain licenses, monitor activity within legal boundaries and cooperate with regulators.

For investors, that means assessing not only technology and tokenomics, but also how seriously projects treat legal risk. For builders, it means engaging with legal counsel early and designing architectures that reflect the regulatory environment they plan to operate in.

7.3 Understand the difference between solvency, law and politics

Samourai’s case is not about financial insolvency. It is about the intersection of software, financial regulation and political priorities. That intersection will be messy. Enforcement actions may not always be perfectly calibrated. Political actors may send mixed signals. Long-term participants need to be prepared for this volatility in the policy landscape, just as they are prepared for volatility in prices.

7.4 Stay focused on education and risk management

Finally, episodes like this are reminders of the value of education. Understanding how wallets work, what counts as self-custody, where the line is between personal use and operating a financial business, and what local regulations say about money transmission can help users avoid unintended risk.

Privacy and security are important goals, but they should be pursued alongside respect for the law and careful risk management. That balance is uncomfortable, and debates about where to draw it will continue. But ignoring the legal dimension altogether is not a sustainable strategy for individuals, companies or the ecosystem as a whole.

Disclaimer: This article is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute legal, investment or tax advice. Laws and regulations vary by jurisdiction and may change over time. Always consult a qualified professional before making decisions that could have legal or financial consequences.