In 1996, a mathematician named Daniel Bernstein sued the U.S. government for the right to publish his encryption code. He won. The court ruled that code is speech, protected by the First Amendment.
Nearly thirty years later, that precedent is more important than ever.
Every Bitcoin wallet, every Lightning implementation, every privacy tool, every node software, all of it is speech.
The developers who write these tools are not money transmitters. They are not criminals. They are the architects of financial sovereignty. And yet, globally, governments keep trying to criminalize the act of writing code that empowers individuals.
The EU's AMLR targets privacy tools. The old SEC tried to regulate developers out of existence. This is why state-level protections matter. In Missouri, we're pushing for a legal framework that recognizes what the courts established decades ago, that your right to write, run, and share open-source Bitcoin software is protected speech.
We need legislation that explicitly protects self-custody, mining, and node operation next. This is the infrastructure of freedom and we're building it.
Nearly thirty years later, that precedent is more important than ever.
Every Bitcoin wallet, every Lightning implementation, every privacy tool, every node software, all of it is speech.
The developers who write these tools are not money transmitters. They are not criminals. They are the architects of financial sovereignty. And yet, globally, governments keep trying to criminalize the act of writing code that empowers individuals.
The EU's AMLR targets privacy tools. The old SEC tried to regulate developers out of existence. This is why state-level protections matter. In Missouri, we're pushing for a legal framework that recognizes what the courts established decades ago, that your right to write, run, and share open-source Bitcoin software is protected speech.
We need legislation that explicitly protects self-custody, mining, and node operation next. This is the infrastructure of freedom and we're building it.