We're no longer going to regulate by prosecuting," Blanche said yesterday. "Which means quite simply that if you are a developer, if you are part of a platform — whether it's in the United States or elsewhere — we are not going to take your liberty away and prosecute you when there's not even a developed regulation that points clearly to a law you're violating, or some maxim you're violating."
"The basic principle is this," Blanche continued. "If you are developing software, if you are a coder, if you were part of that process — and you are not the third-party user, and you are not helping and knowing that the third party is using what you develop to commit crimes — you are not going to be investigated and not going to be charged."
If this is true, do they consider developers like Roman Storm and the Samurai guys "third party users"?
Blanche added, "because if you're laundering money or violating sanctions, the mere fact that you happen to be a coder doesn't excuse you from criminal liability."
Okay, so you can develop software, but if your users use it to launder money -- straight to jail?
In the criminal case against alleged Bitcoin Fog operator Roman Sterlingov, "knowing" constituted a single email sent from a federal officer to the Bitcoin Fog service inquiring about laundering money stemming from illegal MDMA sales.
"Translation: 'If you're operating a non-custodial bitcoin service, a federal agent will send you an incriminating email ('Hi dude, I would like to launder money with your service...') and it will be considered as a 'fact' against you," writes Laurent Salat, formerly of 0xt, on X.
The important part of the speech is this:
If this is true, do they consider developers like Roman Storm and the Samurai guys "third party users"?
Okay, so you can develop software, but if your users use it to launder money -- straight to jail?