Samourai vs Monero: A Tale of Two Privacy Models
The Government vs Privacy
The U.S. government just forced two open-source developers to plead guilty for writing privacy software. Not for stealing funds. Not for defrauding users. Simply for building a tool, Samourai Wallet, that let people use Bitcoin more privately.
This wasn't about crime. It was about control. And Samourai became the fall guy for daring to challenge the surveillance state using a blockchain that's not built for anonymity.
How It All Fell Apart
Samourai Wallet was built around Bitcoin and tools like Whirlpool (a CoinJoin implementation) and Ricochet. It never held funds, didn't log users, and avoided KYC. But it ran on on-chain Bitcoin, a public blockchain ledger, where everything is visible to everyone forever.
Enter the forensics firms. Chainalysis and friends used clustering, transaction timing, and statistical analysis to trace flows through Samourai. Prosecutors linked those flows to darknet market usage. Boom...conspiracy to launder money and operating an unlicensed money transmission business.
Now Imagine It Was Monero
Same devs. Same features. Same users. But on Monero instead of Bitcoin. Here's the difference:
- Monero uses stealth addresses, ring signatures, and confidential amounts by default.
- There’s no way to link inputs and outputs, no visible CoinJoin patterns, no “mixer” footprint at all.
- All transactions look the same, and forensic tools don’t work...because the data isn’t public.
Had Samourai been built on Monero, the DOJ would have had nothing to point to. No flow to trace. No evidence to subpoena. Just opaque blobs of encrypted math.
This Wasn't Because of Bad OPSEC
Samourai’s devs were careful. They followed best practices. But Bitcoin itself betrayed them. It’s not private by design, and trying to patch privacy onto a transparent ledger is like taping curtains to a glass house. It might work for a while, but the structure underneath still leaks.
The Humbling Takeaway
Don’t build privacy on a coin that doesn't prioritize it from the start.
If you’re serious about defending user privacy, Bitcoin isn’t enough. It’s pseudonymous at best, and forensic firms have weaponized that transparency. Monero, on the other hand, gives you plausible deniability from the start.
Privacy isn’t criminal. But in the wrong legal climate, transparency is a liability. Choose your chain wisely.