Samuel Armes, a political strategist and supporter of cryptocurrencies, said last week that he is arranging a wargame in Miami to coincide with the Bitcoin 2023 conference.
Armes was questioned by a House select committee last year on his suspected ties to the Proud Boy plot and the January 6 uprising.
Armes said that the conference would be “a follow-up to two highly successful war games I hosted last year,” citing the danger of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), financial technology legislation, and the Wells warning issued last week to Coinbase.
Two days before Armes’ declaration, Florida Governor Ron Desantis introduced legislation prohibiting using a federally approved CBDC on March 20. The development of a CBDC, according to Florida’s top financial officer Jimmy Patronis, would be an effort by the federal government to “track every transaction that occurs in the world.”
However, Desantis’ proposed legislation is a project of the Florida Blockchain Business Association (FBBA), which Armes created in 2017. The FBBA is a ‘chamber of commerce’ that works to develop web3-friendly regulations in the state.
Armes co-founded the FBBA with Erika Gemma Flores, a fact that surfaced during his last year’s appearance with the House select committee investigating the January 6 uprising. Armes authored a tactical brief utilized by Enrique Tarrio and the Proud Boys in their effort to halt the certification of the 2020 presidential election in response to an investigation into a second war simulation.
Armes informed investigators that he knew the connection between Flores and Tarrio. Despite his links to the Proud Boys via Flores and Joel Greenberg, Armes prefaced his upcoming war game with condemnation of the United States government’s practices of mass imprisonment, imperialist wars, and state monitoring.
After publishing his interview with House investigators, Armes’s credibility among Florida Republicans seems to have been preserved. This is the case, although right-wing conspiracy claims that the January 6 uprising was fostered by agent provocateurs inside US intelligence and special forces, for whom Armes says he served and was trained.
Armes offers a newsletter, a podcast, war games, and a chamber of business that impacts Florida’s crypto policy. However, other initiatives have vanished in recent months.
Before the news surfaced regarding Armes’ interview with the January 6 investigators, he worked with Gary Sheng and attorney John Montague on a political non-profit named Sunshin3. However, all material has been taken from its website, and creators’ social media accounts no longer mention it.
In May, Armes will conduct his second war game in Miami, the crypto environment that brought him to Flores and Tarrio.
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