Crypto firms urge Congress to rein in DOJ’s interpretation of money transmission laws
A coalition of 34 crypto industry organizations has sent a joint letter to congressional leaders urging them to address the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) “unprecedented and overly expansive” interpretation of the federal statute governing unlicensed money transmission.
The letter, signed by firms including Coinbase, Kraken, Uniswap Labs, Ledger, Consensys, Paradigm, and the DeFi Education Fund, focuses on the DOJ’s recent application of 18 U.S.C. §1960 to software developers.
The DOJ’s interpretation first emerged in the August 2023 criminal indictment of Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm. Prosecutors charged the open-source developer under Section 1960, which criminalizes operating an “unlicensed money transmitting…
