FinCEN Guidance Confirmed Non‑custodial Status

Today I talk with Keonne Rodriguez, co-founder of Samourai Wallet, who is set to report to prison on December 19 unless he gets a pardon from President Trump… In April 2024, two Bitcoin software developers, Keonne Rodriguez and William "Bill" Lonergan Hill, were violently arrested in their homes in a pre-dawn militarized raid by the FBI for running Samourai Wallet—a non-custodial Bitcoin wallet—despite no prior warnings and full compliance with the law as they and their advisors understood it.

Keonne on X: https://x.com/keonne

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They spent the next year and a half in the crippling uncertainty of home arrest, fighting against an adversary with unlimited resources. Keonne was sentenced on November 6, 2025, to the maximum five years in prison, plus an additional fine of $250,000, plus three years of supervised release. Bill was sentenced to four years in prison on November 19, 2025. He will also be responsible for a $250,000 fine, and three years of supervised release. Both men are facing serious time in jail for writing code that supported the privacy and security of Bitcoin users.

This case exemplifies DOJ overreach through a dangerous legal theory that criminalizes open-source code for legitimate privacy purposes. Developers should not be held liable for bad actors using their software.

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