- A senior Department of Justice official says writing code “without criminal intent is not a crime.”
- The pledge follows the conviction of a Tornado Cash developer.
- The Department of Justice promises not to use prosecutions as a backdoor method to regulate cryptocurrencies.
Standing before an audience of anxious crypto innovators in Wyoming, a senior U.S. Department of Justice official delivered the exact message they had been hoping to hear: the perceived government war on software developers is over.
In a notable speech, he made clear that the mere act of writing code, when done without criminal intent, is not a crime.
The official, Matthew Galeotti, acting deputy assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s criminal division, offered these strong assurances on Thursday at an event hosted by the new crypto advocacy group American Innovation Project.
His remarks, met with enthusiastic applause, marked a deliberate change in tone from a department whose recent actions had chilled much of the developer community.
A firm line after the storm
Galeotti drew a clear line, promising that the Department of Justice will not use the criminal justice system as a means to indirectly regulate the digital asset industry.
“The department will not use federal criminal statutes to design a new regulatory regime over the digital asset industry,” he said.
The department will not use indictments as a legislative tool. The department should not leave innovators guessing about what might lead to criminal prosecution.
At the heart of his address came an unambiguous statement: “simply writing code without criminal intent is not a crime.”
This was not a vague promise. Galeotti explicitly addressed the statute used to convict developers connected to Tornado Cash and Samourai Wallet, stating the DOJ would not bring charges under that provision unless prosecutors have “evidence that an accused knew the specific legal requirements and deliberately violated them.”
He went further, extending protection to projects where “the software is truly decentralized and merely automates peer-to-peer transactions, and where a third party does not hold custody or control over users’ assets.”
The shadow of the Southern District
Those reassurances were delivered against the chilling backdrop of recent legal history.
The remarks come in the wake of two high-profile and controversial wins for federal prosecutors.
The most prominent was the conviction of Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm for operating an illegal money transmission business—a verdict many in the industry saw as effectively criminalizing open-source software.
This is the conflict that has haunted the industry: an apparent disconnect between top DOJ leadership and its most aggressive prosecutors.
An April memorandum from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche had already signaled a more cautious approach under the current administration, even disbanding the national cryptocurrency enforcement team.
Despite that memo, the powerful U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York pressed ahead with cases against Storm and the Samourai Wallet developers, creating a climate of deep uncertainty and fear.
A cautious sigh of relief
Galeotti’s speech was a direct attempt to quiet that fear and to reaffirm a unified, top-down policy.
“Developers of neutral tools without criminal intent should not be held responsible for the misuse of those tools by others,” he asserted.
If a third party’s misuse violates criminal law, then that third party should be prosecuted, not the well-intentioned developer.
For an industry that has felt besieged—spending millions on lobbying efforts to protect its innovators—the remarks felt like a possible turning point.
They represented a public validation of the central argument many in the sector have long made.
“The fact that the Department of Justice acknowledged developers should not be held responsible for others’ misuse of their code affirms what we have been advocating for years,” said Amanda Tuminelli, executive director of the DeFi Education Fund, in a statement.
Let’s celebrate this as progress and remember there is still work to be done to secure permanent legal change.