In crypto free speech news, Coin Center, the cryptocurrency advocacy and research organization, has formally argued that writing and publishing crypto code is protected speech under the First Amendment, and that developers only cross into regulatable territory when they directly control user funds and execute transactions on someone else’s behalf. The detail most coverage is missing is how far-reaching that line in the sand actually is.
This isn’t a niche legal dispute between lobbyists and regulators. It’s a question about whether publishing software, the same act that created Bitcoin, Ethereum, and nearly every open-source tool you’ve ever used, can be treated as a crime. And the answer courts eventually land on will shape who gets to build in crypto, and what tools you get to use.
Code is Speech.
New report: https://t.co/SFv7oxX1I7
— Coin Center (@coincenter) April 20, 2026
Crypto Free Speech: What Is Coin Center Actually Arguing and Why Does It Matter?
Under this framework, writing and releasing open-source software, even software that moves money, is an act of expression protected by the First Amendment. Regulation only kicks in when a developer stops being an author and starts being an operator: when they hold your private keys, control your funds, or execute transactions on your behalf without you pulling the trigger yourself.
The legal groundwork runs deep. A 1999 Ninth Circuit ruling in Bernstein Vs. U.S. Department of Justice struck down export controls on encryption source code, ruling that it communicates ideas to programmers the same way human-readable language does, and is therefore protected speech. Coin Center’s 2020 report, Software is Speech, extended that logic, rejecting what lawyers call the “functional code” theory, the idea that code deserves less protection because it does something rather than just saying something.
The organization draws a further precedent from the 1985 Supreme Court case Lowe v. SEC, which protected non-custodial publishers from investment adviser registration requirements. If you publish information but don’t control anyone’s assets, you’re a publisher, not a financial intermediary. Coin Center argues that crypto developers who avoid asset control occupy the same legal category.
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➝ The United States Department of Justice has rejected France’s request for help in investigating Elon Musk’s X.
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Why This Fight Is Happening Now and What’s at Stake
Another crypto free-speech case was the Tornado Cash situation, which was impossible to ignore. In 2022, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Tornado Cash, an open-source software project, and later arrested one of its developers. The message to the developer community was stark: write the wrong code, and you could be held personally liable for how others use it.
That’s the regulatory pattern Coin Center is pushing back against. Legislative efforts like the CLARITY Act aim to draw clearer lines around which crypto activities fall under which regulatory frameworks, but until those lines are legally settled, developers are operating in genuine uncertainty. Write a privacy tool, and you might be fine. Write the same tool and have someone use it for money laundering, and you could face criminal exposure even if you never touched their funds.
If Coin Center’s argument holds, the government would need to meet a much higher constitutional bar before restricting or prosecuting open-source crypto development. That’s a significant check on regulatory overreach. The broader SEC crypto safe harbor debate shows just how actively agencies are still testing the boundaries of their authority over crypto software and the people who build it.
Not everyone thinks Coin Center’s framing will survive court scrutiny. A 2023 Yale Law Journal analysis warned that extending First Amendment protection broadly across all aspects of DeFi, rather than narrowly to code publication itself, is likely to overreach existing precedents and fail in court. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, meanwhile, has backed the narrow “code as speech” position since 2014, drawing a clear line between publishing source code and operating a financial service.
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