Two U.S. Senators from Major Parties Propose Outlining Legal Liability for Crypto Developers

BlockBeats News, January 13th, according to Decrypt, U.S. Senators Cynthia Lummis and Ron Wyden stated that they have reintroduced a bipartisan bill aimed at clarifying the specific circumstances under which cryptocurrency developers and infrastructure providers would be considered money transmitters under federal law. The bill, known as the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, seeks to differentiate developers writing or maintaining blockchain software from financial intermediaries controlling customer funds.

Under the bill, as long as developers and infrastructure providers do not have the legal right or unilateral ability to move user digital assets, they would be excluded from the federal legal definition of money transmitter. Cynthia Lummis stated that developers solely writing code and maintaining open-source infrastructure should not be classified as money transmitters when they do not touch, control, or access user funds. Ron Wyden stated that imposing the same rules on code writers as on exchanges or brokers is technically infeasible and could infringe on privacy and free speech.