Hello. Good morning or noon.
Really glad to see the response to Roman's video. Thank you all who shared it and appreciate the sport.
This is my first time co-hosting a space, so bear with me. Is anyone else talking? Because I can't hear anyone else.
Hi, I mean, yeah, hi. This is Matthew from Geespox and we also have Briley who will be speaking and will help guide the convo a bit.
And yeah, we'll just give it a few minutes so that people can trickle in and join.
Alright, let me share the link and stuff.
I just penned the post that Roman made earlier today with his video.
I think that's probably the number one place that people should go first thing, listen to that video. I know that it definitely hit home for me. And yeah, we'll share some other links in the pin tweets as well.
Yeah, for sure. I think people forget that we're people. And it's a helpful reminder that, like, the stuff has a human cost.
People's lives we're talking about. It's not just, like, not just some code or something abstract. So I appreciate you doing that, Roman.
I know he can't talk because he's probably been advised not to. So I'll just, we'll do our best to talk, you know, in his place.
Yeah, so from what I understand, Roman isn't able to speak, but we really appreciate him being here and joining us and for posting his message earlier.
I think maybe just a heads up to everyone that we will record this space. So it is being recorded. So if you do want to speak, just be advised that it is being recorded.
And I think before we get started, we'll also offer just a couple of disclaimers before we get started. So maybe we'll give it another minute or two before we get rolling.
But yeah, it should be good to start soon.
Yeah, I saw the news with Nocturne today, too. It's a privacy protocol decided to pivot. So it's rough out there for devs who are just trying to build stuff and make it useful to navigate this landscape, for sure.
The regulators have not made our jobs easy.
Yeah, there's no doubt. So maybe before we get started, just wanted to get this out of the way that we are here to talk about the fundraiser, which has been organized by We Want Justice Dow.
So nothing that we say here represents either Roman or Alexei or their legal team, where it's just our own opinion. So Matthew, Briley, Amin, or anyone else who's speaking.
So just wanted to get that out of the way that we're not speaking on behalf of anyone. We're just here to support the fundraiser for Roman and Alexei's legal aid.
So yeah, just wanted to start with that disclaimer.
I'll add a disclaimer to that, and that's just that I am here representing my own personal views as a person who is not party to this case, but has opinions about it.
So yeah, exactly. So yeah, just wanted to get that out of the way. So I think maybe a good place to start is we could maybe just have Amin, if you could introduce yourself a little bit and give some context as to the history of tornado cache and how it got started in relation to Moloch Dow.
Certainly. So I am Amin Soleimani. I've been e-dev for, I don't know, six years, seven years now. Started at Consensus, built some payment channels, built some other payment stuff, built Moloch Dows, one of the first Dows.
We gave a lot of the early grants to the tornado cache project, trying to build a public goods privacy tool.
And for us, the important thing to remember is the context of what we were trying to accomplish in terms of privacy.
Like where we started was basically all of Ethereum payments and transactions are like setting the, you know, like using Venmo and keeping your settings on public, which is like crazy. Nobody does that.
We all make fun of, you know, people who do that. But that was all we had in Ethereum.
And so we wanted privacy for our transactions to keep people safe, to, you know, be able to protect yourself from people who might want to take advantage of knowing how much money you're getting or how much you have.
And so we were actually jealous of Zcash early on because we thought that was really cool and they deployed the first ZK-SNARK system in history.
And so we wanted to build our own.
And so tornado cache came out of a Moloch Dow grant. We were trying to get like a UI for the Argin Hopper, which was like their own little privacy tool.
And that was it. And like, we just thought that this would help contribute to the zero to one of privacy, which is like an important thing if you want to have resilient digital systems.
You know, we like talk about private voting. And for example, like when Andrew Yang is like, we should put voting on the blockchain.
Everybody knows that they talk about it. No, because we know that doesn't work without privacy.
And so a lot of this came out of fundamental research at the Ethereum Foundation and other open source projects.
And so we just saw the payments as a zero to one on this tech tree of privacy that is useful for pushing humanity forward, building democratic systems for voting and things like that.
And so we've got as far as the MVP and then, well, the rest is history, so to speak.
So could you maybe say a few words about sort of like the recent history of the OFAC sanctions and the subsequent arrests?
Yeah. So getting into it, last August, the tornado cache program itself was sanctioned by the OFAC Office of Foreign Asset Control.
Department of the U.S. Treasury. So they made it illegal for U.S. persons to interact with the program.
They also separately, not OFAC, but the Netherlands police arrested Alexei Pertsev.
So this is August 2022 that they did this. And then they kept Alexei in prison without bail for eight months.
Didn't even really explain what the charges were until about six months in. And so now he's finally been out on bail, but awaiting trial in March.
Last August, so a few months ago, the Treasury followed up by also arresting Roman Storm, which is, in my view, pretty aggressive because Roman was also cooperating.
According to his lawyers, public information, been cooperating with the investigation for some time. And so they busted down, I don't know exactly the details, but they went to his house and threw their guns and arrested him in front of his daughter six in the morning when he'd been cooperating the whole time.
And so that's, you know, he was able to get out on bail, but is also putting trial on September of this year.
Yeah, I mean, one of the scariest things about the situation for me is that it feels like the regulation by enforcement tactics that are being employed here are more about sending a message to developers and less about actually solving criminal behaviour or wrongdoing.
So in my opinion, targeting developers is not an effective way to cut down on the paper that we're trying to prevent. And it really does feel like that authorities are trying to scare developers away from developing privacy-preserving software that regular, everyday people will use and need as part of their fundamental rights to privacy.
Yeah, we agree. The regulation by enforcement regime is not ideal. Like, they can just talk to us, you know, they can ask us questions instead of hauling people off to jail.
Not only that, it seems that they're at the limits of their understanding of the systems involved because, like, you know, I hate to break bad news, but, you know, with all of the developers in jail, with no US people involved, with all of it sanctioned,
the eth in tornado cache is actually up 30% over the last year or so. So I think the claims that are made by the defendants, in the sense that they didn't have much control, are accurate in the claims that are made by, you know, the Department of Justice that they have total control.
And they were, you know, facilitating this stuff is not real, really based on facts. So I'm hoping this stuff is, you know, litigated properly and accurately in the courtroom, and so that we can challenge the claims that are being made.
Yeah, you gave a great talk at ETH Damn, I think it was in 2023, about why privacy matters and you got into sort of the history of tornado cache and, you know, how it got started and the, you know, just the generally the development of it.
I'm wondering if you could speak a little bit about what you see as the, you know, as the use cases for tornado cache that are legitimate that people would want to use to preserve their privacy. Like, how do you see something like tornado cache being used for just everyday users of Ethereum and sort of why you see it as important?
Yeah, I don't think people get it. Like, this stuff, I use this stuff for payroll, you know, like, for protecting the privacy of the recipients from their, like, coworkers to know how much money they're making, you know, how much money they have made, what they're doing with their assets after they get paid, right?
It's just a practical, useful thing. Nobody would ever, you know, go down and it's very uncommon for somebody to, like, do their payroll in public, right? And then there's higher stakes use cases as well.
Vitalik Buterin famously donated to Ukraine using ETH. And, you know, as a Russian, basically defector, he wants to protect his privacy in terms of how much ETH he's sending to Ukraine, right?
I would love to see, you know, how much people in the US Department of Treasury have donated to Ukraine. I don't think it's as much as Vitalik. And further, I have been, you know, running Iran on chain, which is a nonprofit to legally, uncompliantly, following the OFAC, you know, exemptions of humanitarian aid, democracy and stuff, send money to Iran. And like, I send them reports and so forth. But still, protecting privacy is a good thing.
It's important. So, you know, even just like daily life, payroll, and also like helping American foreign policy, both are things that benefit from privacy.
Vitalik Absolutely. I wonder, do we have, like, could you maybe give us sort of like a update on the current status of both Alexei and Roman's case? So right now, Roman is waiting until the fall, I think, for his trial to go ahead. But Alexei's trial is actually coming up very, very soon.
It's coming up at the end of March, I want to say. I'm just wondering if you have any updates to share so that people can get a sense of the urgency of this campaign.
Roman I mean, I don't have a specific update. I'm not privy to any like inside information about the case. You know, all I know is that that's that's when it's happening and that both of the legal teams are working very hard to prepare the defense and that, you know, Alexei goes first.
And we expect that Alexei's case will also, you know, potentially have implications for Roman's case. And so it's important to, you know, start out strong in protecting Alexei and also finish strong and, you know, protecting Roman.
I don't know, you know, how long the cases will go. We just know that this is what's on our radar for 2024. It's going to be an important year that we actually have to fight these legal battles and with any luck, you know, win.
And to the extent we can get the best outcome possible for both.
Can you speak a bit to what you see as the implications of both Roman and Alexei's case for, you know, both developers who are working in Ethereum or other blockchain ecosystems or also from the perspective of users?
Like, what are the long term ramifications of these cases? And like, why is it important that we come together to fight for Roman and Alexei?
If we don't stop the government overreach in the regulation by enforcement regime, it will continue to overreach further. And so it's important that we don't, you know, allow, I mean, those of us who want privacy generally and think it's an important value to protect.
Well, this is where we have the opportunity to protect it. If the precedent is set that developers or privacy protocols are imprisoned, that's not a very good, you know, doesn't bode well for private tools being made in the future.
And further, there is also a question of custody.
We want to build noncustodial systems. We see in the news, I think it was Europe trying to go after noncustodial systems recently in the last week.
I heard something about Elizabeth Warren going after noncustodial systems in America also in the last week.
And so, Tornado wasn't like other privacy tools because it was a noncustodial system.
They never had custody of the funds. And so the designation, there's, you know, FinCEN guidance that existed prior to the legal actions that explained that noncustodial privacy tools were not to be considered money services business.
And then all of the crimes that they are accused of in the indictment are related to operating money services business. And so this is an example of the government providing unclear guidance and then trapping people with it.
And so that is not a great environment to live in because the same could be done for, you know, DeFi, same could be done for staking, same could be done for, you know, MEV or any of the other systems that we're building today.
We don't, we have to fight the system and we have to fight this battle in particular and protect Roman and Alexei today in order to make a difference in this.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that.
So maybe before we invite some folks up to speak if anyone has questions or things that they want to talk about.
I just wanted to just quickly mention that the fundraiser on Juicebox, we do have a few NFTs that are available. So if you do contribute, there's a few different tiers starting at point one and going all the way up to 10 ETH.
If you do want one of the commemorative NFTs, they don't have any, you know, financial or tradable value, but they're just like a nice commemorative, you know, thing for your wallet.
You definitely feel free to grab those. That said, you can also just input a amount of ETH that you feel comfortable with. So if you don't want to purchase a specific tier, you can just write whatever, you know, point three or whatever amount that you want to donate.
So you're not obligated to receive the NFTs or like subscribe to the tiers that we have there. You can contribute as much or as little as you want to.
So yeah, just wanted to throw that out there. We have the campaign set up right now, such that 100% of the funds go to the multisig that was set up by the We Want Justice Dow team for this purpose.
So 100% of the funds withdrawn from the project will go there. And that's hard coded at a contractual level. So that cannot change.
And the campaign is set up to run for around 30 days. So be running until February 22nd, basically right up until East Denver, more or less.
So yeah, we definitely appreciate everyone's help to share the campaign, you know, in your networks on Twitter, Farcaster, anywhere else, Telegram, Discord.
So is there anyone that wanted to come up and discuss something in particular or ask Amin a question?
I see Matt Wyatt is in the audience. We've talked before on the Juicecast, on the Juicebox podcast about ZK proofs and other stuff.
I don't know if anyone wants to come up and talk.
I don't see a lot of hands right now, so I guess we can maybe carry on until people have questions.
Amin, was there anything that you wanted to go on, anything that you wanted to add to what we've discussed so far?
I think just another reiteration that, like, Roman and Alexei deserve our support.
They have not had the same year that the rest of us had. Alexei sat in a cell for eight months for, you know, without bail for much of 2023.
And, you know, while we're all jumping on whatever meme point, like, it would be really cool if we could support some of the more real and impactful, you know, causes in the space.
And I think this is one of the most important ones.
So just, you know, hope that we're able to rally. And I also wanted to thank you guys for hosting this.
And by you guys, I mean, Juicebox for hosting the fundraiser and for promoting it.
It's cool to see that there's already, you know, some money raised and it's going to make it to the lawyers.
So happy to see the support. And I was really happy to see people sharing Roman's video.
The video is really good. It's on the top tweets. If you haven't seen it, please watch it.
I saw the Lido guys sharing it, Constantine. And I saw the Ferris and a couple other folks sharing it as well.
So I had over 100,000 views and like an hour.
It's cool to see the Lutheran community coming together to support the people who need it and deserve it.
So thank you all who contributed and looking forward to getting more contributions and helping them out.
Yeah. So looking at the project, we've raised about 15 ETH so far.
So a little bit over 33,000, give or take, which I think is a good start.
I definitely want to see that number go a lot higher.
But it's a great show of support at the start of the project.
I know that from the Juicebox side, like just for some context, Briley and I are Juicebox DAO contributors.
So we both help projects succeed on Juicebox. That's kind of what our role is.
So we definitely see this project as by far the most important project happening right now on the protocol.
And we're very committed to helping it succeed.
So we're going to be spending the next few weeks talking about Roman and Alexi's story, talking about the case,
talking about what it means broadly for crypto and helping to do outreach to get people involved,
either to donate or even just to write a post or talk about it on their feed.
So we'll definitely be sending a lot of DMs over the next few weeks.
So I would say anyone who's in the space, the main thing that I think would be really helpful would be to share the campaign
in your group chats, in your communities, in your networks where you have people that would be able to contribute.
I think that makes a huge difference if we're able to share this as much as possible.
So yeah, definitely circulate these links in your group chats and Telegram or Discord or wherever.
So yeah, I would really appreciate that.
Yeah, I've been posting and spamming around a bit.
Hope everybody does the same.
Today we can be a little annoying if we need to be.
Let everybody know that this is what's up.
I think Matt Wyatt asked to come up and speak.
So I just added you as a speaker, Matt, if you want to say something.
Yeah, I was just going to give a huge shout out to Amin and the Juicebox effort guys.
I know that we tried running a campaign for advocating for privacy and awareness with Constitution Dow 2 last year
and wanted to just share that one of the biggest things we found through that effort was that it was going to have to be community-led
because we worked with groups like Genesis, we worked with groups like YouTube,
we also worked with people's audit and security teams,
and all of them were looking for cases of why we shouldn't be using privacy and why privacy was unsafe.
And it almost killed that entire Constitution Dow 2 effort.
So I just want to give a huge shout out to you guys for leading this charge
and helping fund and fight the legal battles that need to be won
before I think we can make real movement on the privacy front and just privacy tech in general
because it's not going to start from the top down for sure.
And I think you guys are spot on that everyone's eyes are going to be on this case
and what it means for the space as a whole. It's super important.
So quick question is, what is the target goals for amounts for the raise?
I would say like $500,000. That would be cool.
That's good. All right. Sweet.
I mean, if we hit a million, I'm not going to complain, but
something I just wanted to add sort of separate is
I have a pretty high conviction that we're on the right side of history.
What I mean by that is that
they tried to ban encryption, like HTTPS,
any sort of encrypted communication over the wire.
Encryption algorithms were banned historically.
They were considered military weapons.
This is 20, I guess 30 now years ago that they tried to do this.
And they imprisoned developers.
They imprisoned people publishing this stuff on T-shirts, on disks.
And it took some time for them to understand
how their own systems even were going to be architected
and that this is going to be something for everybody.
And so I see the tornado devs as sort of promethean figures
taking fire from the gods, this ZK tools that we have.
They're going to be everywhere, right?
On a long enough timeline like this is just how we're going to build everything, right?
We're going to have private voting, private money, private all of the stuff.
We're going to have to figure out how to make it safe and we're working on it.
But this is just how it's going to work.
And so you can't put the genie back in the bottle, right?
This is one of the things.
It's like you can't jail two tornado devs
and you think that the ZK Snarks is going to go away.
And so I fully expect to be on the right side of history on this point.
I think in five, I don't know how many years, hopefully not as long,
the powers that be, government, communities, will come around.
And they might even mandate that we use private money systems
because they don't want there to be honeypots of personal financial information
just sitting around places.
And so we can see that that's where we're going
and we can see that people are going to resist
and governments are going to try to, you know,
they're anxious about their control systems not being quite as effective
and so they have to figure out how to, you know, figure out the compliance.
But ultimately, I think the goal is righteous
and I hope that I get to live in that world as soon as possible.
And I don't think anybody's going to stop building it.
It might just stop building it in America.
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think ultimately this is a fight for our individual sovereignty and power.
And ultimately, there are a lot of government forces that will push back on that
because they know that self-custody is powerful and that privacy is powerful.
So we need to, like you said, stand on the right side of history on this issue
and fight for what we actually believe in even if it's difficult.
So I think we owe a lot to Roman and Alexei for his shouldering the incredible burden of that
because without their sacrifice in this situation,
we probably wouldn't be able to make the progress needed to make this tech available to people
whether they're in the United States or elsewhere.
I think in terms of the campaign goal,
one thing to keep in mind is just like a general context is that the legal fees
that we're trying to help Alexei and Roman afford are in the realm of $90,000 to $100,000 per month.
Like it varies, but that's the type of money that we're talking about.
So we should definitely be aiming to raise as much as we absolutely can.
And it's really important, especially with Alexei's case coming up in late March,
it's really important that we raise as much as we can as soon as possible
because there is an urgent need to help cover those costs.
So I just really want to convey to everyone that there's like a short term,
like a very near term need for these funds and that we really need to come through for Alexei and Roman.
It's really important. So yeah.
Yeah, I think 2 million would be a good number to have.
If we can make that all through this specific fundraiser, that would be great.
Yeah, it brings me back a little bit.
I don't know to what extent everyone was online during the summer,
but there's this kind of on-chain summer that took place with the meme coin cycle and all that shit.
And I remember there was a point in time where there's an influencer who goes by Ben.Eth
and he was launching some, I forget what the coin was,
but he launched a coin and basically told people to just send ETH to his public address
and then they would get like an airdrop of this token.
And he raised like, I forget how much it was, but I think it was over 2 million,
maybe possibly a little bit less, but 1 to 2 million, let's say.
So I feel like if we can send these brand-ed influencers a million or 2 million dollars,
surely we have to be able to come together to raise money for something so important,
like Alexei and Roman's case.
So I know that we have the capital in this ecosystem to come through for these developers.
It's irrefutable that we can do this and we can make this happen for them.
So I would just really love to see this as a moment to come together
for a really important cause that isn't speculative
and can make a tangible difference in the lives of both of these developers
and then just crypto more broadly.
And if anyone has access to people who are in control of DAO or Treasuries from ICOs
or what have you, this would be a great way to lobby them,
a great time to lobby them to support the project,
maybe by one of the higher-end NFTs and demonstrate their alignment with the values of the community.
This is Briley, by the way, Matthew's voice didn't just change.
I had a question, Amin, if you could talk about how Justice DAO got started
and maybe the relationship between like We Want Justice DAO and Moloch DAO and all of that.
Yeah, Justice DAO is just a new group of activists and lawyers.
I'm one of the public members.
There's, I think, two or three public members, 11 or 12 members total.
So DAO, it's a Wyoming, like, unincorporated nonprofit association.
It's not super relevant, but the point is that
it's a nonprofit intended to help fundraise for this and potentially other, you know,
legal defenses focusing on this one right now.
And we are, we emptied Moloch DAO.
So about 100 ETH last year, another 100 ETH this year into the legal defense.
And so Moloch DAO will be winding down.
There's some members who are overlapping between Moloch DAO and Justice DAO,
but Moloch DAO have many more members.
And so we are hoping to use Justice DAO as the entity vehicle for the fundraiser,
both the Juicebox and our, on our own website, the We Want Justice DAO.org.
So we're, yeah, that's the gist of Justice DAO.
It's not intended to, like, I don't know, hold any money, make any money,
just sort of help administer the fundraisers for the legal defense.
Yeah. Yeah, I really appreciate the contributions from Moloch DAO
in order to make this possible.
And I agree with you that we can definitely reach out to other DAOs
and other companies to get their support.
Because as you said before, like, Roman and Alexei's fight is our fight.
Like, it has implications for everyone.
So, like, you can't just turn a blind eye to what's going on
and, like, think that it's going to be fine.
Like, it really, truly affects all of us.
And, like, I really hope that people understand that
both in this space and more broadly.
So, yeah, I really appreciate, like, the work that went into making this possible.
Like, it's not an easy journey, but I know that together, like, we can get through it.
Yeah, I want to encourage folks to follow the free Alexei and Roman account.
I have their at LinkedIn, one of the tweets and my posts.
And then you can find out more information.
And they have a Discord you can join.
They have answers to the questions.
And some of the people in that team don't want to be necessarily named,
but you know who you are, and they did a lot of great work in coordinating this.
And so, thank you very much for helping make it happen.
Yeah, I think there's also two good questions that should probably be answered in the chat one.
I think the first one is, like, just really, I think I remember a bunch of fud going on about the case
whenever it first came out, like, towards the end of last year on the arrest charges.
So, I don't know with Amin or Matthew Barley, if you had any.
I guess my question would be which one?
That's true. There's, like, 10 different pieces.
But I think there was fun around.
Was it when Secretary of State Anthony Blinken tweeted that the developers of tornado cash was North Korea itself
and we had to correct him and be like, ah, no.
I think it was whenever the Treasury put out a formal press statement
that alleged that Alexei and Roman knowingly facilitate it.
The Treasury put out their press release that said that there was basically 100% of the money in tornado cash was money laundering and crime.
Seven billion something, eight billion dollars. Which fud are we talking about?
It looks like the comment is specifically the narrative that Alexei and Roman knowingly facilitated non-compliant transactions.
So, what would it have looked like had they not, like, my answer to that question is, like, what did you want them to do, right?
Like, this is something that's going to come out in court that we're going to have to work on explaining.
There wasn't actually very much that Roman and Alexei could have done.
Even if you shut down, like, the UI or whatever, like, people are still going to be able to use the protocol.
It's immutable. It's a smart contract.
You know, even if you don't use the UI at all, you can still use it through etherspan or use the command line tool or other stuff.
So, yeah, I think the devil is in the details on this one.
Yeah, I also think that's a really good point, too, that, like, that's exactly the type of thing that any contributions towards this should help fund legal defense.
That, like, you know, it's a shame that that's a good point.
I should mention the compliance tool.
So what the devs did do is go out of their way to build a compliance tool that people can use to reveal selectively their deposit address to anybody they want.
And so the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis published a report about tornado cash, the best one ever written, by a guy named Bobby Anshar, he's a blockchain professor at Basel.
He made the case for a tornado cash in a compliant financial system, tornado cash as is today.
And the case was that it should be regulated.
And the way it should be regulated is simply that financial institutions should require that people provide that compliance information, you know, reveal their deposit, their specific deposit, so essentially docs themselves to the financial institution when they withdraw.
And so that is a way that, you know, tornado cash could have been regulated as is, right?
And in the article they said tornado cash could be a integral part of blockchain infrastructure.
And I thought I lost my mind when I read that line.
You know, obviously, caveat was if it's regulated, you know, according to our recommendations.
But there was a path there.
And that path still, you know, in theory exists, right?
The clients will still works like they could say, hey, tomorrow, like you can use this thing just like we're docs yourself to the nearest bank, you know, or send your info to Coinbase.
And like, you know, some government monitoring, you know, organizational sort of look at all of these people's data and be able to help make the build the transaction graph trace the funds that they don't want.
Now, I don't love that system, but it's a much better outcome than throwing the devs in jail, in my opinion.
And so I think that what we're dealing with is not regulation.
What we're dealing with is just the enforcement.
And so they don't actually want, from what I can tell, they're not trying to actually make rules that help people.
They're just trying to throw devs in jail.
Yeah, and I think it's quite crap that it has to come down to fighting these legal battles for it.
But yeah, I think that that's a great answer to Pieman's first question in the comments around, you know, just the alleged charges and what needs to be fought in courts and what needs to be brought to attention and what other things in the case.
There are. He's got a second question.
I think we should make it clear, whereas the danger zone for contributors, is there any risk for developers contributing to cryptography projects?
Also wonder, is that a question of is there any risk for contributing to this one either?
As far as I can tell, you're not committing a crime by giving lawyers money.
I'm not a lawyer, you know, but that's my understanding of the situation.
And in terms of privacy tools, well, I can't tell you because the rules aren't very clear.
My blanket recommendation is like, you know, try to not be in America, try to not have American users, try to protect yourself as best you can.
I mean, the ultimate outcome that like, you know, different countries have different appreciations of privacy, like Switzerland is a very sophisticated society.
And they in Switzerland is the only place that I heard a central banker actually make the case for basically ZK enabled CBDCs that would be private, not only from the users, but from the central bank itself.
And you could see, you know, other jurisdictions potentially being more advanced in the US who is more interested in surveillance than protecting the rights of its people.
So it's not a great answer because there is no great answer.
So, Pyman, I think, was the was the person who was asking the questions in the chat and he just requested to come up and speak so you can go ahead now I gave you there.
I really appreciate what you're doing here. And just to be clear, like I am actually like a typographer like really pro-privacy and really care about this, but I think we should be a little like more realist week and more clear about the details.
This is my challenge that I tried to like explain to general public what we are doing and what we are fighting for, like what's our actual ideal work, what's like our values.
Is it a word without any sanctions or like compliance or like a word that we should proactively prove that we are compliant?
And I think like that if you watch like Parliament of the US, they don't know about like even much, much, much simpler take like TikTok or social media and we shouldn't expect that they know about like Trackchains, which is like even not that much clear to the community itself.
So we should, I think, make it clear that what we are fighting for is that technology itself is dangerous. As far as I understand, like working on cryptography and like the libraries is secure is not like a bad thing.
I think we should make it clear that working on that, just on the cryptography and software engineering side, in the universities or like in a company, it's, I think, secure even if you are in the US.
But like as a company, if you are working with like financial transactions, that's a really challenging part. So should we, I don't know, should we have no sanctions, no sanctions?
I don't know, a lot of people are confused about this or like, and others, if you have like food prices, should we just proactively prove that or wait for some kind of replace from the government and then we be created under certain conditions for those people?
At least to me, it's not clear that that's the argument, but I mean, you know, that's a lot better than us.
Are you finished? Thank you.
I have a little bit of prejudice against the question, because it's not super relevant for the topic at hand. The topic at hand is how to fundraise for Roman and Alexei on this like current case.
Yeah, we are supporting this for privacy and for an ideal work. That's the goal. I'm not sure what we are fighting for.
Being a co-host is awesome. I can kick people out, right? Yeah, cool. I'm not going to argue with you.
So yeah, we're supporting them because they built the first privacy system and then the government sanctioned it and threw them in jail and accused them of crimes that we would like to be very specific about addressing.
So that's what we're here to do today. I hope future privacy developers learn from what is happening here today.
I noticed that we're coming up on the hour as well. I'm wondering if it might be a good time to wrap up the discussion. But before doing that, like if anyone has any closing thoughts they would like to share, like, please feel free to do that. And then maybe we'll wrap up.
I guess I'll just say thank you all for the support. Thank you for listening. And let's buy some NFTs and spread the word and hopefully get the best outcome we can and fight these legal battles and try to protect the rights for Americans and Ethereum users generally to being able to access private systems.
Yeah, thank you so much for your time, Amin, and for everything that you've done throughout this whole process, like long before this campaign started, like all of your work to, you know, help Roman and Alexi, like, it doesn't go unnoticed.
So, like, thank you so much for that and for taking the time to come to this Twitter space. And also, Matt Wyatt, thank you for coming through. I know you have to run as well.
And thank you, Roman, for being here. I know you can't speak, but it means a lot to have you in this space. And, you know, we're really working towards helping you in every way that we can.
And, you know, like it doesn't end after this Twitter space, it doesn't end after today, like we're going to keep fighting like every day for you and Alexi. Yeah.
Hi, Marina. Hi, I just wanted to say a few things, really enjoyed listening to the podcast, to the Twitter space. And the part that resonated with me the most is that if we can spend, you know, a few dollars here and there on a cup of coffee or some meme coins, this is definitely worth contributing to.
So thank you so much for all your insightful thoughts, for all the information and to Juicebox contributors for hosting this space.
Yeah, so I also just wanted to mention that we did record a podcast episode with Amin talking about the campaign, talking about Roman and Alexi's story and what's happening.
So we'll be releasing that. I think we're aiming to release it tomorrow. You know, stay tuned. But we'll we'll be sharing that it's around 25 minutes, like, give or take 20, 25 minutes.
So it's actually pretty short. So definitely keep your eyes out for that. And yet we're going to be continuing to, you know, post about Ron and Alexi for the next 30 days of the campaign.
So I would ask everyone here, like, please, if you can contribute, please give generously. But also, it helps a lot if you can share the campaign with anyone in your network, like it goes a really long way to share it in a group chat with other folks, or to share it with an organization.
If you do have a connection to a larger organization and you want to put us in touch to work out a contribution, maybe a larger one, please reach out to Briley or myself or Amin.
We're very happy to facilitate that and, you know, do that work to make that happen. So please don't hesitate to reach out to anyone from the Juicebox community or Amin as well.
We're here to help make this happen for Alexi and Roman. And yeah, also just want to convey, because I know that Roman is in the space listening, that we're here to fight for you and you're not alone in this battle.
So please, yeah, stay strong. And yeah, we'll keep doing everything that we can to help.
Thanks for saying that. It means a lot. He can't say anything, but I hope it comes through.
Yeah, I guess we can probably wrap, right?
Other things, cool. Well, thank you for hosting and thank you all for joining, and thanks for everybody who contributed, and please help spread the word.
All right, thank you so much, everyone, for joining. And yeah, please help us spread the word about the campaign as much as possible.
All right, thank you, everyone. Thank you, Roman. Thank you, Amin, Marina, Matt, Riley.