The Bitcoin Policy Institute, a non-profit organization supporting bitcoin initiatives, has launched the Peer-to-Peer Rights Fund, a project seeking to protect bitcoin’s decentralized nature from regulatory overreach. The fund’s first objective is to aid in the defense of the founders of Samourai Wallet given the relevance of the case for the industry.
Peer-to-Peer Rights Funds to Aid in Defending Samourai Wallet Founders
More initiatives are surging to defend the bitcoin blockchain from government action. The Bitcoin Policy Institute, a bitcoin think tank founded by David Zell and Grant McCarthy, has launched the Peer-to-Peer Rights Fund to defend the decentralization of bitcoin.
For Zell, peer-to-peer transactions using non-custodial and decentralized tools are under attack from regulators, which have changed the legal considerations affecting these. The fund states that the recent legal cases involving Tornado Cash, Samourai, Uniswap, and Metamask, show the shift in the regulator’s attitudes towards decentralization, dealing with developers as if they were financial institutions.
The fund stated:
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The government’s assertion is that anyone who facilitates the transmission of funds should be regulated under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), regardless of whether they control the funds in question.
To counter the effects of this broad law interpretation on the non-custodial crypto environment, the fund will focus on providing resources to help in cases that have a high impact on the crypto industry, aiming to secure “crucial” legal precedents.
The first one of these cases picked up by the fund will be the defense of Keonne Rodriguez and William Lonergan Hill, founders of Samourai Wallet, who were indicted for conspiring to commit money laundering and operating an unlicensed money services business.
By supporting the Samourai founders, the fund aims to explain the intricacies that surround the technology and the legal principles in this case. A victory in this instance might mean that in the future, non-custodial privacy tools would not be able to be held under BSA jurisdiction.
Nonetheless, other crypto institutions might be selected by the institution to receive support when involved in similar cases.
Source: https://news.bitcoin.com/the-bitcoin-policy-institute-launches-the-peer-to-peer-rights-fund-to-help-defend-samourai-wallet-founders/