Lawmakers introduce bill to shield crypto developers after Tornado Cash prosecutions
Bipartisan lawmakers introduced a bill to shield noncustodial software developers from criminal liability under money transmission laws.Summary
Representatives Scott Fitzgerald, Ben Cline, and Zoe Lofgren introduced the Promoting Innovation in Blockchain Development Act of 2026, a bipartisan bill intended to protect software developers from criminal liability under federal money transmission laws, specifically 18 U.S.C. Section 1960.
The legislation seeks to clarify that Section 1960 applies to entities holding custody over user funds, not programmers who only write or maintain open-source code, arguing the decades-old statute was designed for traditional financial intermediaries. This move follows high-profile prosecutions, including those against Tornado Cash co-founders Roman Storm and Roman Semenov, and developer Alexey Pertsev, which have raised significant concerns about coder liability in the DeFi space.
Industry advocates point to these cases, alongside the Samourai Wallet prosecution, to argue that distributing software should not be conflated with operating a custody service, intensifying the debate over developer protections.
(Source：Crypto Briefing)