Today, acting assistant law lawyer (AAAG) from the criminal department of the Department of Justice (DOJ) gave Matthew Galeotti a lecture at an event that hosts the US innovation project, where he has harvested at the point that DOJ will no longer prosecute Open Source Crypto developers who have no intention of committing an crime.
Aaag Galeotti began his speech by telling the audience that Deputy General (Day) Todd Blanche had asked Galeotti to talk to the audience about DOJ’s focus on “bondage enforcement of the law” in the digital asset space.
In Aaag Galeotti’s speech, he referred to a memo day blanche issued in April, when Dag Blanche declared that DOJ would end his regulation by enforcement method, popularized by the Biden administration, as it relates to the crypto industry and crypto developers.
Aaag Galeotti repeated and reinforced some of the points from the Blanche memo and produced a number of quotable moments in the process.
Here are some of the high tones he hit:
“The department will not use federal criminal articles of association to fashion a new regulatory regime during the digital asset industry. The department will not use charges as a legislative tool. The department cannot leave innovators guessing what could lead to criminal prosecution.”
“Our view is that it is only a crime to write code without bad intention.
“In general, developers of neutral tools without criminal intention should not be held responsible for someone else’s abuse of these tools. If a third party abuse violates criminal law, this third party must be prosecuted-not the well-meaning developer.”
Prominent voices from the crypto industry published some of these promising quotes on x:
While other prominent figures from the industry expressed their skepticism and highlighted some of the quotes from Aaag Galeotti’s speech that left reason for concern:
After listening to the lecture myself, I would very much like to say that I got away from it and felt optimistic or even gently optimistic. (Maybe I feel a little of the latter.)
But most of the time I feel a healthy skepticism that is most comparable to Van Valkenburghs, as it seems that Aaag Galeotti left the door open to further prosecutors for DOJ.
Put another way, I think, like Samorai developers and novel Storm, co-founder of Tornado Cash, would still be prosecuted in the wake of this oration, especially judging by some of the comments made by Aaag Galeotti in the latter half of it.
These comments included the following (non-initialized parts of quotes are included in context):
“If a developer simply contributes to code for an open source project Without the specific intention of helping criminal behavior, helping or getting a particular crime or attending a criminal conspiracyhe or she is not criminally responsible. “
“As the Day memo makes it clear, the Ministry of Justice will not charge violations of legislative violations in cases involving digital assets, such as unlicensed money that transfers under 1960 (b) (1) (a) or (b), in the absence of evidence that a defendant known of the specific legal requirements and intentionally violated them. [However] We may, in certain circumstances, bring cases under 1960 (b) (1) (c) prohibiting the transmission of funds that the defendant knows are derived from a criminal defense or are intended to be used to support illegal activity.“
“Where the evidence shows that software is really decentralized and only automates peer-to-peer transactions and where a third party does not have custody and control of user assets, new 1960 (B) (1) (c) will not be approved. Although there is criminal intention, other charges may be appropriate-all the behavior of the subject and the services they provide end to end will be considered. “
After covering both the Samorai Tevebogen and the Tornado Content Cases, I saw a lot of the “evidence” used to illustrate the criminal intention of the developers in both cases.
Much of that was rhetoric related to the developers who responded to bad actors using the software they had created in illegal activities, including cases where they seemed to troll.
The most creepy example of this being when Samorai developers invited Russian oligarchs to use their service to avoid sanctions:
Now, if I speak clearly, one of the greatest lessons that crypto developers should have learned from Samorai and Tornado Cash Cases. not even joke about bad actors using your service.
With that said, it is not illegal to joke about it, and in the case of novel Storm he made efforts to prevent bad actors from using Tornado Cash, including the implementation of a chainalysis oracle in the front of Tornado Cash.
But I get a little off the track here …
The point I am trying to do is that Aaag Galeotti’s comments about criminal intention can be interpreted widely, and because of this is the darkness of the many of the more positive points he made about doj that does not aim to prosecute crypto developers.
And then I agree with Van Valkenburgh, as we have to continue to push Congress for Safe Harbor via the language of the Blockchain Regulatory Security Act (BRCA), some of which are included in the recent draft of the Clarity Act and fight keybeds in court.
Because, even in the wake of this seemingly positive speech from Aaag Galeotti, developers are still at risk.
This article is one Take. Opinions expressed are completely the author’s and does not necessarily reflect BTC Inc or Bitcoin magazine.