My Interview With Congressman Nick Begich (R-AK)
And The Issue Of Bitcoin Transactional Privacy Is On Deck
This week, I published my interview with the freshly-elected Rep. Nick Begich (R-AK) in Bitcoin Magazine:
I didn’t know much about the Congressman before I saw him speak at the Bitcoin for America Summit in Washington, D.C. last week.
When I heard him talk, though, I got the impression that he was more than just another politician jumping on the Bitcoin bandwagon while topic is hot.
Turns out, my intuition was right. Rep. Begich bought his first bitcoin in 2012 (actually, we bought 7 of them for just $100!), and he seems to very much embrace the Bitcoin ethos (i.e. the right to self-custody and transact freely).
This was refreshing to learn.
In our discussion, we touched on his Bitcoin journey, what’s included in The BITCOIN Act (a bill he recently submitted in the House) and why the U.S. needs bitcoin more than bitcoin needs the U.S.
And we also quickly touched on the issue of the right to transact privately with the help of a Bitcoin or crypto mixer.
I even asked him his feelings about the Samourai Wallet and Tornado Cash cases (neither of which he was familiar with).
I don’t have the time today to get into the details of each case, but, essentially, they both revolve around developers creating Bitcoin/crypto mixers, which help to anonymize transactions — something that I think will become very important as we move further into a world in which more and more transactions will occur on public blockchains.
The Latest Samourai Hearing
And, oddly enough, just hours after publishing my piece on the Congressman, I attended the fourth pre-trial hearing for the Samourai developers.
Updates below:
Not much happened in this hearing aside from more pre-trial hearing dates being set.
But I did leave it with a sense that I/we have to bring these cases to the attention of politicians in efforts to both make sure the developers aren’t jailed on bogus charges and also so that we maintain our rights to transactional privacy — similar to the type that cash currently affords us.
Help Defend Privacy
And so, toward the end of the week, I wrote a call-to-action to piece, asking for help in informing elected officials in the U.S. about the importance of the right to transactional privacy on chain.
In the piece, I included a link that provides you with a template that you can use to contact your elected officials about this issue.
Please do so!
Tornado Cash Sanctions Lifted
In what felt like quite a serendipitous occurrence, just an hour or so after I published the above article on Friday, news broken that the U.S. Treasury was lifting the economic sanctions it had placed on Tornado Cash.
This was a notable win for on-chain privacy.
I’m grateful to politicians like Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) for speaking up about this issue for years now.
I’m hoping to speak with Congressman Emmer as well as a number of other politicians about the importance of transactional privacy in the coming weeks.
Stay tuned!
Markets
Bitcoin is still chopping sideways.
I’m doing some very light DCAing at these levels.
Short newsletter this week. I’m tired.
Hope everyone is doing well out there, and here’s to a fantastic week ahead!
Best,
Frank
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