Acting AG Blanche says DOJ won’t charge blockchain devs without “knowing” help
The Las Vegas remarks shift focus to criminal users, but leave the “helping” line undefined for noncustodial tools.
Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche said DOJ and the FBI will not investigate or charge blockchain developers unless they knowingly help third parties commit crimes. The statement signals a softer posture toward noncustodial and privacy tooling, while keeping edge-case liability unresolved.
Key Takeaways
- DOJ and the FBI will shift investigative focus toward users engaged in financial crime, not developers whose code is used by others.
- Todd Blanche said enforcement has “significantly changed” under the Trump administration and that investigators have “fundamentally changed the game.”
- Coin Center’s Peter Van Valkenburgh called the remarks a “better message” than recent years, but flagged uncertainty around what counts as “helping” or “knowing.”
- A Texas court dismissed developer Michael Lewellen’s late-March bid for pre-enforcement clarity, limiting a path for builders to get answers before charges.
Blanche’s ‘Knowingly Helping’ Standard: DOJ Shifts From Devs to Criminal Users
Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche drew a bright-line standard for developer liability: no investigation and no charges unless a developer “knowingly” helps a third party commit crimes.
Blanche framed the principle in practical terms for builders of noncustodial software, meaning software where users control their own funds and keys rather than handing custody to an intermediary. “The basic principle is that if you are developing software, if you are a coder, if you are part of that process and you are not the third-party user, and you are not helping and knowing the third party is using what you developed to commit crimes, you are not going to be investigated and not going to be charged,” he said.
The immediate market implication is rhetorical de-escalation. A public commitment to stop treating developers as default targets reduces perceived legal overhang for DeFi and privacy tooling, at least at the headline level.
Las Vegas Bitcoin Conference Remarks Signal a Trump-Era Enforcement Pivot
Blanche delivered the comments Monday at a Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas on a panel that included FBI Director Kash Patel and Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal.
He said the approach to enforcement has “significantly changed” under the Trump administration and added that “we have fundamentally changed the game when it comes to our investigations.” Blanche also emphasized he does not want platforms to view DOJ or the FBI as entities that will “just cause them a lot of problems.”
Blanche tied the posture shift to a longer arc. He said the change has been taking shape for more than a year, pointing to an April 2025 memo that committed to “ending regulation by prosecution,” a phrase used to describe setting policy expectations through criminal cases instead of clear rules or guidance.
Tornado Cash as the Backdrop: Sanctions, Indictments, and a Developer Conviction
The Tornado Cash timeline explains why traders and builders will treat the pivot as incomplete until it shows up in charging decisions.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the US Treasury office that administers sanctions, designated Tornado Cash in August 2022. Those sanctions were lifted in November 2024. DOJ then indicted developers Roman Storm and Roman Semenov in August 2023. Storm was convicted in August 2025, while Semenov remains at large. Storm has denied wrongdoing.
That sequence keeps developer-risk salient even after sanctions policy moved. For markets, it is the difference between a friendlier message and a durable shift in enforcement practice.
The Unanswered Question: Where ‘Publishing Code’ Becomes ‘Helping’
The uncertainty traders will price is definitional. Blanche’s standard hinges on “helping” and “knowing,” but his remarks did not specify how DOJ will interpret those terms in edge cases like maintaining interfaces, providing user support, running relays, or capturing fees.
Coin Center executive director Peter Van Valkenburgh called Blanche’s remarks a “better message than developers have heard from DOJ in recent years,” then pressed the core ambiguity: “But the real question is where [the] DOJ draws the line between publishing noncustodial software and ‘helping’ or ‘knowing’ about a bad user.”
Van Valkenburgh pointed to developer Michael Lewellen’s attempt to get pre-enforcement clarity, meaning a court ruling sought before any prosecution, on whether publishing an Ethereum-based crowdfunding tool constituted money transmission. Money transmission is a regulated activity involving moving money for others and can trigger licensing and compliance requirements. A Texas court dismissed the case in late March, finding Lewellen failed to show a credible threat of DOJ enforcement.
That dismissal highlights the tension: DOJ can promise restraint publicly while still contesting developers’ ability to obtain legal clarity before the next edge-case test.
Reduced Overhang, But Edge-Case Risk Still Prices the Tape
I treat Blanche’s comments as a sentiment catalyst that can compress the “developer liability” discount in parts of DeFi and privacy tooling, but it is not a clean regime change until the standard is operationalized. The threshold that matters is whether DOJ starts declining cases where the fact pattern is “published code plus foreseeable misuse,” and only moves when there is provable knowing assistance.
The real test is whether follow-up DOJ guidance or new charging decisions define “helping” and “knowing” in noncustodial contexts, because that is where liquidity and valuations stop trading on fear and start trading on enforceable boundaries.
