Peer-to-Peer Rights Fund

Our mission is to safeguard the decentralized, peer-to-peer integrity of the Bitcoin ecosystem by defending non-custodial tools and their developers from regulatory overreach.

We are committed to protecting innovation, privacy, and user autonomy through strategic litigation and advocacy. By supporting pivotal legal cases and providing essential regulatory guidance, we aim to establish a fair legal framework that ensures the continued growth and resilience of Bitcoin’s open-source community.

The Importance of Peer-to-Peer Transactions

Bitcoin succeeded where other attempts at e-cash failed because it works on a truly peer-to-peer basis. It is a decentralized, open-source tool powered by its users for their own benefit, immune to the pitfalls of greed, corruption, politics, or overregulation. Building on this characteristic, developers around the globe have crafted an array of non-custodial tools that preserve Bitcoin’s peer-to-peer essence.

• Multi-signature wallets enhance security against theft by requiring multiple keys for access, reducing the risk of physical attacks.
• Lightning Service Providers empower users in developing countries to execute daily transactions and remittances at minimal costs, while maintaining control over their private keys to protect against economic instability.
• Coinjoin coordinators offer essential privacy for users like journalists and activists in repressive regimes, complicating the tracking of their financial activities.

Peer-to-Peer Transactions are Under Assault

Until recently, U.S. regulators recognized the peer-to-peer foundation of Bitcoin and its non-custodial tools, refraining from regulating them as money service businesses since they are user-operated. However, recent legal actions—including the cases involving Tornado Cash, Samurai, Uniswap, and MetaMask—indicate a troubling shift in enforcement perspective, putting the entire non-custodial ecosystem at risk.

This new stance treats developers of these tools as if they are financial institutions, akin to banks or exchanges. This is a misunderstanding of the technology, as it is the users, not the developers, who engage in financial activities. If courts set unfavorable legal precedents in these cases, particularly as argued in the Tornado Cash case, the implications could be dire.

The government’s assertion is that anyone who facilitates the transmission of funds should be regulated under the Bank Secrecy Act, regardless of whether they control the funds in question. This broad interpretation has no limiting principle, and could extend to a wide array of non-custodial Bitcoin tools, from developers of hardware wallets used for signing transactions, to nodes that broadcast transactions, miners who add transactions to the blockchain, and even collaborative custody services where providers hold a minority of keys in a multi-signature setup.

What We Do

To address these challenges and safeguard the future of Bitcoin’s decentralized ecosystem, the P2P Rights Fund is designed to defend against regulatory encroachments on non-custodial, peer-to-peer tools. The fund will:

• Provide critical resources to subsidize defense counsel and sponsor amicus briefs in pivotal civil and criminal cases.
• Strategically support and finance affirmative impact litigation in judiciously chosen cases to secure crucial legal precedents.
• Offer free or subsidized regulatory advice to entities developing open-source code for non-custodial Bitcoin tools.

Your support is vital in this endeavor to ensure that innovation and privacy in the Bitcoin ecosystem continue to thrive under a fair and just legal framework.