Coin Center Claims Crypto Code Is Protected Speech Under the First Amendment

In the realm of cryptocurrency free speech, the cryptocurrency advocacy and research organization Coin Center has formally argued that writing and publishing cryptocurrency code is protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution as a form of free speech; developers only cross into regulatory territory when they directly control users’ funds and execute transactions on their behalf. However, most reports have overlooked a crucial detail: just how broad this boundary truly is.

This is not a niche legal dispute between lobbying groups and regulators. The core issue is whether releasing software—the very foundation behind the creation of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and nearly every open-source tool you've used—can be considered a crime. The court’s final ruling will determine who is eligible to develop in the cryptocurrency space and which tools you can use.

Under this framework, writing and releasing open-source software—even software involving the movement of funds—is a form of expression protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Regulation only applies when developers are no longer authors but operators: when they hold your private keys, control your funds, or execute transactions on your behalf without your explicit authorization.

The organization also cited a 1985 Supreme Court ruling, Lowe v. SEC, which protects non-custodial information publishers from having to comply with investment adviser registration requirements. If you publish information but do not control anyone’s assets, you are an information publisher, not a financial intermediary. Coin Center argues that cryptocurrency developers who avoid asset control fall under the same legal category.

Another case involving cryptocurrency free speech is the Tornado Cash incident, which attracted widespread attention. In 2022, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned the open-source software project Tornado Cash and arrested one of its developers. This sent a clear message to the developer community: writing the wrong code could make you personally liable for how others use it.

Not everyone believes Coin Center’s arguments would withstand judicial scrutiny. A 2023 analysis in the Yale Law Journal warned that extending First Amendment protections broadly to all aspects of DeFi, rather than limiting them to the act of publishing code itself, would likely exceed existing precedent and fail in court. Meanwhile, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has consistently supported a narrow interpretation of “code as speech” since 2014, clearly distinguishing between publishing source code and operating financial services.