Coin Center urges Senate to advance BRCA to shield blockchain developers

Coin Center asked the Senate Banking Committee to accelerate consideration of the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act, arguing it would prevent criminal liability for developers who never handle users’ assets. The organization framed the bill as a narrow rule that excludes non‑custodial software authors and infrastructure providers from being treated as money transmitters, thereby reducing prosecution risk and stabilizing the regulatory environment for protocol development.

The appeal arrives after high‑profile prosecutions in 2025 that produced guilty verdicts for contributors to privacy and wallet projects, outcomes advocates say have chilled open‑source work. Coin Center’s policy team warned that weakening key BRCA language during Senate review would perpetuate legal ambiguity and push talented engineers and teams to jurisdictions with clearer safeguards. The group compared ordinary internet intermediaries to blockchain infrastructure actors to argue for parity in liability treatment, linking the bill to a broader market‑structure push to protect decentralized innovation.

Momentum for the BRCA has been complicated by intercommittee tensions: senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee lodged a formal objection to a provision in the Banking Committee’s draft that would clarify non‑custodial developers are not money transmitters. The Banking Committee’s draft runs over 270 pages and generated more than 70 proposed changes ahead of a planned markup; those revisions helped prompt a delayed markup as negotiators seek to reconcile criminal‑law and investigatory implications raised by Judiciary leadership.

Banking Committee staff have defended their jurisdictional choices with parliamentary guidance, but practical concerns remain about potential enforcement gaps for federal, state and local law‑enforcement agencies if carve‑outs are written too broadly. Industry reaction has been mixed: at least one prominent exchange publicly withheld support over related concerns about tokenized equities, DeFi rules and stablecoin mechanics, a move that prompted White House officials to reassess administrative backing for parts of the package.

Coin Center framed its plea to preserve precise BRCA carve‑outs as a response to the chilling effects of recent enforcement actions, which it says deter collaborative, public‑good contributions to protocol code and infrastructure. The bill’s legal test centers on operational control of funds versus mere code contribution or hosting — language advocates argue is critical to avoid treating peripheral participants as custodians subject to money‑transmission rules.

Legislative staff and policy observers expect further rounds of amendment and negotiation focused on narrowly tailored developer exemptions and explicit law‑enforcement safeguards, including potential compromises that preserve investigatory access while protecting routine software development. Parallel executive‑branch activity — including planned SEC–CFTC coordination sessions — has been cast by the White House as part of a broader strategy to keep the U.S. competitive for crypto innovation, even as prosecutorial practice continues to raise developer concern.

Market actors are already responding to the uncertainty: some teams are delaying launches, limiting public support channels, or considering relocation to jurisdictions with clearer licensing regimes such as the EU under MiCA. Observers warn that poorly defined terms like “control,” “custody” and “discretion” could leave wallets, validators and other core components exposed to enforcement or regulatory obligations that do not map neatly to permissionless networks.

Coin Center emphasized that preserving the BRCA’s core exclusions is essential to keep developer risk calibrated to actual control over funds and to prevent a migration of non‑custodial protocol work overseas. The organization also positioned the statute as complementary to other congressional and regulatory efforts aimed at clarifying crypto rules and reining in prosecutorial overreach.

Advocates point to the convictions and sentences from 2025 as the proximate cause for urgency, arguing those outcomes produced measurable deterrence effects on public blockchain development. The BRCA’s delineation between custody and contribution is central for defense strategies, platform risk assessments by corporate and academic contributors, and future charging decisions by enforcement agencies.

• Developers Convicted (2025): 3
• Prison Sentences: Keonne Rodriguez — 5 years; Will Lonergan Hill — 4 years