Free Talk Live | How to go to jail while freeing the world - Mark Edge | ETHDam III - 2025

Welcome to East. [Music] We're getting some things set up, but uh before we do, I just want to uh congratulate all the hackers for finishing the hackathon, especially the uh four incelss from California. Congratulations on your Zeno powered sex robot. I think you're going to win, guys. But she doesn't love you though.

She's just in it for the Zeno. She was built that way. She can't help it. Are you ready to go? Excellent.

Um, let me pull this out. Got three things I got to hold. Try to do all this. All right. Donald Trump said that he has ended the war on crypto and I'm here to beg him bring home the prisoners of war.

There are people sitting in jail right now. Roger Ver Ian Freeman my business partner um and they haven't hurt anybody and they need to be let out. Their simple crime was the possession of Bitcoin, the spreading of decentralized currency to other people. On a cold day in March 2021, Keen, New Hampshire, the Federal Bureau of Investigations in the United States drove a tank towards my radio studio. Two tanks, two SWAT teams, a drone.

Many attempts have been made to infiltrate the Free State Project. This is a concept of moving 20,000 libertarians to one state, New Hampshire. And the FBI sent in people to try to buy illegal guns and drugs and god knows what. And they always got turned away. Nobody was ever arrested.

the FBI was never able to infiltrate because they're not criminals. Ian Freeman began to uh spread Bitcoin and they found their opportunity. So, Free Talk Live is a radio program on 300 up to 300 radio stations in the United States and we're libertarians. It's amazing that we were able to get on as many stations as we did with the ideas that we had. The kind of discussion that just went on up here, those are the kind of discussions we had nightly.

The FBI had never been able to take us down. They just rammed a tank through our window. Everybody got taken away, taken into custody. Ian, my business partner, right here with his little dog, six o'clock in the morning. Bonnie, his wife, well, at the time she was his girlfriend.

Matt, Arya, our trans host. Colleen, little old lady that helped us with Bitcoin transactions. Renee, Ian's ex-girlfriend, Andy, her husband. Why Andy was included in this list of people um that were arrested. Because he talked to the FBI.

Don't talk to the police without your lawyer present. And finally, a man named Nobody. He changed his name to nobody to run for governor so that you'd have the option of voting for nobody because nobody cares about you. Nobody's going to listen and nobody gives a crap about your opinion in politics. Again, two tanks, two SWAT teams.

Now, two treasure wallets. It was heard over the radio. Red team to red team leader. We have jackpot one and jackpot two. 51 to your 20 that means on their way to you.

Ian Freeman had a lot of Bitcoin. Roger Ver was our advertiser from 2012 2013 and all this Bitcoin was well we got it from selling ads on Free Talk Live. not selling drugs, not selling sought-off shotguns, radio advertisement, but the FBI had it now. They had those treasure wallets. Let's go back just a little bit to explain what Free Talk Live is.

So from 20 2002 to 2010, we're just a libertarian radio program started by two guys that were trying to figure out the world, trying to find out things, trying to interact with other people. And I didn't even start the show as a libertarian. I started Free Talk Live as just your average guy who listened to talk radio. It was the callers. It was them.

It was you who radicalized me by asking good questions and bringing up ideas like privacy that I'd never heard of before. Now, one of the ideas that uh became integral to my journey was this guy called in and I think it was 2004 to talk about when the US dollar was backed by gold. how at some point World War II when the United States wanted its citizens to support the war effort, they said, "Buy war bonds." In 2002, 60 years later, when a reporter asked George W. Bush, "How do we support the war on terror if we're good Americans?"

He said, "Go shopping." Something dramatic changed in those 60 years. Did I mention that I'm a trillionaire? Got it right here. I'm a trillionaire.

10 trillion. Now, there's Zimbabwe dollars and you can buy this on uh eBay for 20 bucks. When a government has unlimited printing ability, they have unlimited irresponsibility. They can wage unlimited wars. And they do.

Look at that. All that brown [Laughter] hair. So I was radicalized by this concept of sound money. When a caller called in in 2011 to free talk live to talk about man magic internet money. Actually it was 2010.

Excuse me. With the first thing we said is is it backed by gold? You know it's 2010. We didn't know much. But Gavin Andre heard that call.

This is the former head developer of Bitcoin. He came up to Keen, New Hampshire. He explained it to us. We were the first ad venue in excuse me, we were the first media in the world to discuss Bitcoin. We were the first ad venue in the world to accept Bitcoin for ads.

That night we talked about Bitcoin on the air. Roger Veer heard that show and he and Oh, there's my$10 trillion dollars. Just proof. He and some other u important people either heard about Bitcoin through free talk live or used free talk live as a method to uh perpetuate Bitcoin. Gavin Andre said that we were this is my favorite quote of all of them.

Uh you know Charlie Shrim said Bitcoin wouldn't exist without us. I don't know but Gavin Andre called us the first stage in a multi-stage rocket that shot Bitcoin into the stratosphere. And I think that's a fair estimate of what happened. And I think the FBI agrees and I think that's why they're going after Ian Freeman. Ian did something else.

I didn't do any of this. Ian went around to small businesses in Keen, New Hampshire, and he got Bitcoin adoption. He got them to accept it. You could go into Keen, New Hampshire. I'm not saying you could.

I'm saying I did. I went and got my haircut. I bought cups of coffee. Remember the coffee problem that we talked about? We had it solved in Keen, New Hampshire in 2014.

I went to nurseries and bought plants. I bought apple trees. I got my haircut at Moa Salon. I I I got my car repaired at at a weer car repair. I mean, everywhere you could do everything in Keen, New Hampshire, and you could do it with Bitcoin onchain.

We did it. We had a functioning Bitcoin economy until well just want to mention um at that time we re reorganized Free Talk Live. We decided that Free Talk Live wasn't a political show. I don't like George Bush. I don't like Bill Clinton.

These aren't my heroes. I don't talk about how Nancy Pelosi is going to save us or how Angela Merkel is the uh savior incarnate. We're a moral teaching platform. I believe in your right to privacy. I believe in your right to freedom.

I believe morally that you are obligated to keep your word. So, Free Talk Live looked more like a church than it did a radio program that talked politics. So, we decided to reorganize into a church. We also became founding members of Bitcoin Not Bombs because we're a peace church. We don't believe violence is a good solution.

We're not pacifists. We're non-interventionists. We don't want to see the United States government or any other government for that matter around the world dropping million-dollar bombs on $10 tents. Ian's uh activism was to get Bitcoin into the hands of as many people as possible. What he wanted to do was to see everybody with cryptocurrency.

When I say Bitcoin, remember ladies and gentlemen, this is 2015. there weren't a lot of altcoins. Um the he had 5,000 five-star reviews on local bitcoins.com. Now I know today local bitcoins.

com might be a good way to go to prison, but in 2015 it just seemed like a really great way to get more people to adopt Bitcoin. I remember coming in on two different occasions. I'd come into the studio, Free Talk Live, and I heard Ian talking on the phone to some people that he would be selling Bitcoin to, and I remember him having conversations with people. He'd ask questions like, "Are you buying these coins in his investment? Have you met your boyfriend in real life?

Do you know what a romance scam is?" All right. So, Ian ends up at trial. The federal government tries to say that Ian's victims are people that believe that Nigerian princes had fallen in love with them. And they lied to Ian.

They said, "Yes, I've met my boyfriend in real life. Yes, I'm buying this Bitcoin as an investment. Yes, I know what a romance scam is." But the fact that they were pathetic people, pitiful people, and they are pitiful. I do pity them.

The fact that they were pitiful made the jury want to give them something. Ian was uh brought up on eight charges. Money laundering, conspiracy to commit money, four counts of tax evasion, unlicensed money transmission, conspiracy to commit unlicensed money transmission. There were two weeks of trial. I sat through 80% of this.

Understand Ian wasn't my friend. He was my business partner. I just felt like he was being unfairly prosecuted. There are dozens of people in that courtroom. They were supporting him.

I just believe that I've always been along to report on this story of freedom, the struggle for freedom. And that's what I continue to do. Well, I think the most important testimony in this besides the uh New Hampshire state official that said, "Yes, the Shy Free Church is a church. All their paperwork's filled out." was the IRS official.

For those of you who are in here in Europe don't know what the IRS is, the IRS is the Internal Revenue Service. The way most people in the world feel about the United States military is the way the United States citizens feel about the Internal Revenue Service. They are a terrifying group of people. The IRS agents stood on the stand and they said something very important. They said that Ian Freeman, they did not know what Ian Freeman's tax burden was.

They did not know how much he owed and that in fact he may owe zero for four of those eight charges. Tax evasion. It is an integral element that they know the tax burden. There must be a tax burden. If there's no tax burden, there is no tax evasion.

That didn't matter to the jury. The jury would have convicted Ian of assassinating JFK. They didn't care. They just wanted those little old ladies to feel better. Ian's found guilty all eight charges.

I lost whatever hope I had in juries that day. As an American, we're told juries are great. This is your opportunity as an individual to hold the government in check. What I saw was a study in group dynamics. I'd rather have six judges judge me, six government bureaucrats judge me than 12 ignoramises trying to interpret the law.

You wouldn't go to a group of 12 random people and have them do brain surgery. I don't recommend having 12 random people do law for you. At the very least, in this case, it certainly didn't work out. Now, lawyers in the United States are scared to say something like I just said. Then again, I have no law career.

I don't care. Sentencing came in October 2023. And something amazing happened. That judge overturned one of the jury's convictions. Came in there and he said, "Nope, that didn't happen."

I'll tell you briefly what happened. It was a money laundering charge. In order for money laundering to be the case, you must uh you know give Bitcoin to somebody who gives you money. You must know that person is going to do something illegal. This guy, he was had a Russian accent.

He I I've only heard this secondhand. I didn't see this guy at all. Um this guy came to hang out with the activists, you know, smoking pot and drinking and doing all the things that uh libertarian activists might do. And he said that he was a drug dealer. Well, Ian heard him say that and Ian wouldn't sell him Bitcoin when he came and asked for Bitcoin again because he'd said he was a drug dealer and that would be unwise.

That would be illegal. The guy said, "Well, I'll just go to one of your machines and I'll get Bitcoin there." And Ian's like, "Well, I can't stop you, but I can't uh but but please don't." And the guy did go because, of course, it's important for the case that he buy the Bitcoin rather than than just say he could have. And the jury found Ian guilty of moneyaundering even though he didn't sell Bitcoin to this guy.

The judge said, "Nah, that doesn't count." So, he clawed it back. And this almost never happens. So, that's seven charges. Ian's down to seven charges.

Then, earlier this year, February the 5th, oh, I'm sorry. I I' I've missed a couple of things here. Um, in in there was a sentencing bargain for Ian. He stood up at sentencing. The judge expected him to denounce the judge, denounce the system, denounce the jury, denounce everything, you know, freedom.

Instead, what Ian did was he asked the judge, "I'm really in a difficult position. I think I'm innocent, but I don't want the money that was confiscated to me to go to drop million-dollar bombs on $10 tents. I want to give it to the people that were harmed. They weren't harmed by me, but I don't want my money to go to the government. I want it to go to these people.

The judge said, "Sure, be happy to help. Sign this piece of paper. You'll never get your money back if you win on appeal." I wonder why he mentioned that appeal. You'll never get your money back on appeal, but they'll they'll get their they'll get get your money.

So, 100 bitcoins. There was a 100 Bitcoin cassaceious coin in the safe and they uh confiscated that too. Oh, you wanted to know what happened to the treasures? I got the password out of the jail. All Bitcoin, all the the regular bitcoins, not the the uh other ones.

They were they were safe. So, the judge um allowed Ian to write off those 100 bitcoins. It was about $3 million at the time and sentenced him to 96 months. That's eight years. Then earlier this year, we went to the first circuit court of appeals.

This is a big deal. This is about as big as it gets in the US. It's the next step down from the Supreme Court. And I was very hopeful because Ian got something that almost nobody ever gets. Three of the judges on this 12, there was a 12 judge pool from which the three judge panel is pulled.

All three judges had never been prosecutors in their lives. And that's really, really good. So, also they brought up that IRS agent saying that, you know, there wasn't one of the elements of the crime. So, I figured, man, they're ready to uh get rid of those four tax evasion charges, remand it back to the lower court, and force a plea bargain. But that was 13 weeks ago, and that should have been done in two or three weeks.

And so every week that goes by, I get a little more nervous and a little more nervous and I'm concerned that well maybe they're trying to find an excuse to not let Ian out on an appelllet bond. So what I'm asking you to do right now is go to free Ian. Where's my picture? Can we pull that QR code back up? I don't think it is.

Yep. I'm walking around to the right here on my wrist and nope. All right, let's keep this going. I've got QR codes. I've got stickers.

You can get them from me. Um that just go there and sign up and put put your name on the petition, please. and we'll have um hopefully we can use some pressure of just people to get Ian out of jail. I spoke to Ian yesterday um via uh email and he asked that everybody sign the petition to free Roger Ver also free rogernow.org.

So there you go. There's Ian's um I don't have a uh I don't have a slide for Roger but um please uh free Roger freereroonnow.org org is his website. Thank you very much. I am Mark Edgie.

Mark Edge. [Applause] Yep. Thank you, Mark. Do we have questions from the slido? One question says, "Did any of the jurors speak to Ian's lawyer after the verdict?

Did they give any specific reasons? It's not common for jurors to speak to uh lawyers, but um they did speak to, you know, some of them spoke to an investigator and basically their opinion was that um you know, Ian bad, you know, they they looked at pathetic old ladies and they looked at uh Ian Freeman and they came to the conclusion that one of them needed help and the other one didn't. How is it possible that there are only 650 signatures at the petitions given the number of participants of the FSP and the listeners of Free Talk Radio? Yeah, this is a question I ask myself too. Um, when Roger Vier started his petition and when Ross Albert started his petition on Free Talk Live and it was funny how it took a while.

It took up to like it was hard to get to 2000 and then when you get to 20,000 it got a lot easier after that. I don't have a good explanation as to how these things work, but uh Free Talk live 300 radio stations. We're on maybe 10 now. With Ian gone, we just don't have the technical chops to run things. Um we got, you know, we got destroyed and uh we have an email list and that's basically where we've gotten the um the the signatures from.

I'd say that uh the Free State Project is not nearly as organized as anybody might think it is. It's just libertarians living in a state. Can you elaborate more on romance scams from your perspective? Sure. Um so a romance scam is when uh somebody imaginary on the internet says that they're somebody that they probably aren't and attempts to get you to fall in love with them in the hopes that you will send them money.

um you know, they're done in a variety of ways and they prey on people that probably don't get out enough and um it's sad. I mean, I don't know how to describe it uh any other way. They use the term catfishing, I guess. Um you know, I I I don't know how they're all done, but u you know, it's it's it's an unfortunate situation. top comments.

Is Roger Ver in the room? Um, I also learned about Bitcoin from Free Talk Live. Thank you, Mark. Yeah. Oh, awesome.

Lots and lots of people learned about uh Bitcoin from Free Talk Live, and I do appreciate that. I I I love that you learned about uh crypto from Free Talk Live. And you know what I want? I want a world full of millionaire libertarians. [Applause] Um, I like this one.

Why can't I donate to crypto um in crypto from the petition site? Because we don't want your money. I love you, but we don't need it. We literally don't need it. We were the first ad venue in the world to accept Bitcoin for ads.

We were getting Bitcoin for at $1. Now, certainly 90% of it's gone, but we're fine. We want your signature. If you want to give a bitcoin to our uh project, talk to a hundred people. Post on your social media.

That's what I ask from you. I know it makes me feel disempowered, too. I want to do something substantial like donate, but donate is donating isn't going to do the job. It's sadly it's all about signatures right now. Now, I don't even know if signatures are going to do the job, but I'd encourage you to do it.

Please. I beg you to do it. If Donald Trump sees a h 100,000 signatures like Ross Alberg had maybe he'll pay a little more attention. We are I mean we you know we are getting Ian's name in front of him. I don't know if it's been in front or it's not but we have uh we have people working on it right now.

All right, you heard the man. Please sign the petition. If there's one thing that ETHAM attendees, hackers, speakers, partners can do, make a difference by signing this petition. Mark, thank you so much for being with us. [Applause]