The history of the state is a history of the Agent Provocateur. From the Okhrana in Tsarist Russia to the FBI’s COINTELPRO, the playbook never changes: if you cannot stop a revolution, you must infiltrate it, radicalize it, and then "expose" it to the public as a criminal enterprise.
The arrests and subsequent "guilty pleas" of Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill in 2024 and 2025 were not a victory for "law and order." They were the final act of a deliberate Psychological Operation (PSYOP) designed to provide the Deep State with the legal precedent it needs to kill Bitcoin self-custody forever.
I. The "Black Bloc" of Bitcoin: Reckless Agitators by Design
In a peaceful protest, the agent provocateur is the one wearing the mask, shouting for the crowd to throw bricks at the pharmacy. In the Bitcoin movement, that role was played by Samourai Wallet.
While other privacy tools like JoinMarket or Wasabi operated with the quiet, neutral dignity of technical infrastructure, Samourai adopted a "fed-baiting" persona that was radically inconsistent with the goal of long-term survival. Prominent Bitcoiners, most notably Giacomo Zucco, warned for years that Samourai was a "toxic" outlier. Zucco argued that their "edgelord" marketing wasn't just poor taste—it was a strategic liability that invited the very crackdown we are now seeing.
Like the "Black Bloc" vandals at the Montebello summit, Samourai’s actions seemed calculated to benefit the police narrative:
The Intentional Paper Trail: They didn't just write code; they wrote marketing copy that read like a DOJ indictment. "Launder like a pro," they boasted. Why would any legitimate privacy advocate use the word "laundering"—a specific legal term of art—unless they were generating evidence for future prosecutors?
The "Dave Coles" Red Flag: Just as union leader Dave Coles unmasked provocateurs by spotting their police-issue boots, Bitcoiners spotted Samourai’s "boots": their aggressive internal infighting. They spent more time doxing and attacking other Bitcoin developers than building decentralized resilience. This "divide and conquer" tactic is a hallmark of state infiltration intended to fragment a movement from within.
II. The Perfect Pretext: Building the "Criminal" Brand
The DOJ didn't have to work hard to build a case because the Samourai devs handed it to them on a silver platter. The 2024 indictment was filled with screenshots of Samourai’s own social media posts—content that served no technical purpose but functioned perfectly as a public confession of criminal intent.
By highlighting that $100 million in "darknet" funds passed through the wallet (while ignoring the billions used for legitimate privacy), the government used Samourai as the "vandal" to justify "kettling" the entire Bitcoin ecosystem. They used the developers' own reckless rhetoric to paint "Bitcoin Privacy" as synonymous with "Terrorist Financing."
III. The "Controlled Fall": Why They Pleaded Guilty
The ultimate proof of the "Samourai Trap" is the July 2025 guilty plea. If these men were true cypherpunks—warriors for the cause—they would have fought this to the Supreme Court to defend the principle that "Code is Speech." The entire industry was behind them.
Instead, they folded. By pleading guilty, Rodriguez and Hill:
- Prevented Discovery: We will never see the internal FBI communications or know if "parallel construction" was used to monitor their private dev chats.
- Established a Legal "Fact": Their plea created a settled narrative in the public eye: Privacy software = Unlicensed Money Transmission.
- Bypassed the Constitution: They gave the government a win without allowing a judge to rule on the First Amendment protections of software development.
IV. The Strategic Harvest and the Chilling Effect
The goal of a provocateur isn't just to arrest one person; it's to disperse the crowd. The "Samourai Trap" was spectacularly successful:
The Chilling Effect: Immediately following the arrests, Phoenix Wallet fled the U.S. market and Wasabi shut down its coordinator. The "vandalism" of two developers was used to scare the entire industry into compliance.
Capital Re-acquisition: The $237 million in Bitcoin forfeited by Samourai wasn't sold to the public. As of January 2026, it is being folded into the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. The state used a provocateur operation to seize the very assets the movement was trying to protect.
Conclusion: The Unmasking
Keonne and William weren't martyrs; they were the Pretext. By acting as the "bad boys" of Bitcoin, they gave the DOJ the perfect avatar of "illicit crypto" to parade before a terrified public.
They wore the masks, they carried the rocks, and when the cameras were off, they walked right back behind the police line into a comfortable plea deal, leaving the rest of us to deal with the "national security" crackdown they invited. The Samourai developers didn't build a shield for the movement; they built the hammer that the state used to smash it.
anon out here fighting psyops with psyslop
The marketing was their biggest problem.
I'm skeptical they would have been targeted otherwise.
The marketing was not the way it was by mistake - it was integral part of the trap.
Very interesting take
Could you explain the $237 million in BTC, please? Had it been in possession of Rodriguez & Hill and they gave it to US? Or the amount is yet to be collected (how)?
The numbers are irrelevant. Probably AI hallucinated them. The key insight is that bitcoiners shouldn't be naive. We're on a new level now - a real threat to the powers that be.
I agree that the most important is the message not to be naive. Very good article, thanks.
The number is not hallucinated: "an order to forfeit $237,832,360.55" - https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/founders-samourai-wallet-cryptocurrency-mixing-service-sentenced-five-and-four-years. Let us know if you know how they intend to collect it.
The whole samourai thing was a gov operation from the beginning.
Now they try to cover it with smoke and mirrors.
I've said that many times here: #520773
No matter the marketing, i liked samurai mixer functionality integrated in sparrow wallet. It was great.
anon can make these assertions and they could be true but but they cannot be made with absolute certainty.
What we do know is that the state has every incentive to go to any lengths to protect and preserve its fiat debt slavery monopoly.
It is also certain that the state will have placed operatives within Stacker News and that @DarthCoin perfectly fits the profile of the masked protestor egging on others.
The guy afterall is an obvious screaming hypocrit claiming to be a BTC Maxi 'living on the bTC standard' yet does not even attach LN wallets.
Never waste your sats on zapping anyone who lacks a gun and a horse.
What if the ultimate psyop are these defeatist conspiracy theories, trying to make us believe that bitcoin cannot win, that the state always wins and that we are doomed to live in slavery forever.
nobody here is saying bitcoin can't win - just need to stop being naive and pay attention
Thanks for replying. Of course the state wants to slow down adoption for as long as they can and they use all tricks at their disposal. It's what I see as a defeatist tone that I don't like; I get similar vibes from Whitney Webb, as an example.
It is perfectly reasonable to expect the state to go to any measures to protect the fiat monetary system by which the state enjoys the majority of its monetary power.
It is woefully naive to believe otherwise.
Of course that does not prove anons assertions but it does make then plausible.
Same. #1414784
I would argue being naive about the probability of the state taking all measures to slow and obstruct adoption is more likely to lead to defeat.
It is not inevitable Bitcoin triumphs.
If we are aware of and respond to the states obvious agenda then Bitcoin has a chance.
If you only want to here NGU hopium then ok, but its delusional hype a lot of the time.
Bold claim, but @anon doesn’t do much in the way of backing it up.
You can wait 100 years to be allowed to view the evidence after doing a FOIA request - or you can adjust your mental model of what's going on to be tad more adversarial thinking.