A coalition of crypto companies has encouraged Congress to press the Department of Justice to change an “uninterrupted and excessive extensive” interpretation of laws used to charge the Crypto Mixer Tornado Cash developers.
A March 26th Letter Signed by 34 crypto companies and advocates sent to the Senate Banking Committee, House Financial Services Committee and the House and Senate Judiciary Committee said the DOJ takes unlicensed money-licensed business means “essentially every blockchain developer can be prosecuted as a criminal.”
The Defi Education Fund letter and signed by Kraken and Coinbase-Adds that the interpretation of the Department of Justice “creates confusion and ambiguity” and “threatens the flexibility of US-based software development in the digital asset industry.”
The group said the DOJ had been dedicated to its position “in August 2023 by criminal accusation” -at the same time it was charged Tornado Cash Roman Storm and Roman Semenov developers with money laundering.
The storm was released on bail, requesting that he was not guilty and Wanted to get off the charges. Semenov, a Russian national, is great.
Source: Defi Education Fund
DOJ has filed a similar charge Against Samaurai wallet co-founders Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, both of whom asked for non-guilty.
The Crypto Group letter argued that the two sections of the US code would specify a “Money Transmitting Business” – Title 31 Section 5330, which specified who should be licensed and title 18 section 1960, enabling the operation of the unlicensed.
It added that the 2019 guide from Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) has provided examples of what activities that make money and said that “If a software developer does not get owned or controlled customer funds, the developer does not run a ‘money that sends business.’
The letter argued that the DOJ has earned a position that the meaning of a money sending the business under section 5330 “is not related to determining whether a person runs an unlicensed ‘money -sending business’ under section 1960” despite “accidental uniformity” in both Fincen’s and guides.
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The group accused the DOJ of ignoring both Fincen’s guidance and the laws of the law to pursue its own interpretation of a business that releases money when it charges Storm and Semenov.
They said the result saw “two separate US government agencies with the opposite interpretation of ‘Delivery of Money’-an unclear, unfair position for industry participants and industry builders.”
The letter said that if not met, the interpretation of the Department of Justice would expose software developers who were non-custodial “to reaching the US to criminal liability.”
“The resulting, and very reasonable, fears of developers will effectively end the development of these technologies in the United States.”
In January, Michael Lewellen, a fellow of the Crypto Advocacy Group Coin Center, Sued Attorney General Merrick Garland To express his planned release of non-custodial software declared legal and to hinder the DOJ from the use of money that sends laws to be prosecuted him.
Lewellen said the DOJ has “initiated the persecution of people for the publication of similar cryptocurrency software,” he claims to have expanded the interpretation of laws that send money “beyond the constitutional allowance.”
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