"I co-founded a software company to develop tools that could provide the anonymity necessary to make Bitcoin work as intended," Hill tells the court.

The US Government is seeking the maximum sentence of five years for Samourai Wallet developers Keonne Rodriguez and William Hill, who plead guilty to conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitter earlier this year.

According to the Government, Hill and Rodriguez "solicited criminals" to launder money through Samourai Wallet not as a byproduct but as a feature, claiming that the developers intended for the privacy service to be used to launder proceeds of crime from the outset. The defendants are asking the court to be sentenced to time served.

Two weeks ago, President Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao following several apparent deals between the centralized exchange and the President's World Liberty Financial, in whose case prosecutors similarly argued that the founder willfully failed to implement an anti-money laundering program to profit from criminal proceeds. CZ initially received a sentence of 4 months in federal prison.

...read more at therage.co