There's a camera on a pole near you right now, tracking every car that passes. Your city bought it to catch stolen vehicles. It's already been used to track romantic partners, reach into immigration cases, and build a national database that runs warrant-free searches across tens of thousands of cameras.

Your bank account is the same machine. It's just older, and nobody built a satirical Darth Vader bit about it yet.

Adam O'Brien, CEO of Bitcoin Well, joins us to make that case in full. We get into why surveillance infrastructure never stays limited to its stated purpose, what actually happened during Canada's 2022 trucker convoy account freezes (257 accounts, no court order, a ruling that took four years to arrive), why Elizabeth Warren's crypto AML bill targets law-abiding self-custody users while stablecoins account for the vast majority of actual illicit crypto volume, and why Adam believes a modern-day Executive Order 6102 wouldn't need to touch Bitcoin's code at all — just a letter to five custodians and a database query.

We also talk about the darkest part of this: how KYC databases and physical wrench attacks are connected, why a data breach today is a home address that doesn't expire, and what it actually looks like to build a private Bitcoin stack in a way that's completely legal.

Watch the full clips referenced in this episode:

Adam's blog posts: https://bitcoinwell.com/blog/jump-out-of-the-pot

Darth Vader at San Diego City Council: https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/darth-vader-san-diego-city-council/

Learn about Bitcoin Well Infinite: http://bitcoinwell.com/infinite

Follow Adam O'Brien: https://x.com/adamobrien

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Bitcoin Well is Canada's non-custodial bitcoin company, established in 2013 and publicly traded since 2021 ($BTCW.V). We offer Bitcoin ATMs, personal bitcoin services, and an online bitcoin platform.

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