U.S. Lawmakers Push to Clarify Crypto Developer Liability Under Federal Law

• U.S. senators move to protect crypto developers from being treated like banks or exchanges
• New bill says liability should follow control of funds, not writing code

Two U.S. senators, Cynthia Lummis and Ron Wyden, have reintroduced a bipartisan bill called the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act to protect cryptocurrency developers from being wrongly treated as banks or financial institutions under U.S. law. 

This bill can help resolve the issue between U.S. law and cryptocurrency developers. Right now, the law is unclear about who counts and handles the money of the users. Because of this, some developers who only write the code and never handle the users’ money, or don’t even control wallets, are being treated as the money-handling company and being charged. This risk has grown after the recent DOJ cases involving privacy and self-custody tools, and many developers are in fear of building crypto tools. 

Control, Not Code: Lawmakers Push to Shield Crypto Developers From Liability

The bill says that control matters a lot, not the code. If you only write or maintain software and you cannot access or control the funds, and you don’t have legal authority over assets, then you should not be treated as a money transmitter. Only companies that actually control funds should follow strict money laws. 

The bill was urgently reintroduced because the issue became very serious. Developers have already been criminally charged, and this fear for the developers could push them out of the U.S., thus bringing slow innovations and breaking open-source development. So the lawmakers have realized this is dangerous and unfair, and they want to fix the rule before more damage happens. 

Both Lummis and Wyden have played a major role in bringing this bill urgently. Lummis says that there is no use in regulating the developers like banks when they never handle the users’ money. Wyden warns that forcing developers to follow the exchange-level rules is technologically ignorant and harmful to privacy. Both argue that liability should follow actual control of funds.

This law helps to keep the crypto tools open and innovation alive, with developers safe. If the developers are afraid of building the tools, fewer wallets will be built, and there will be fewer innovations and more control by the big companies.

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