The following statement is attributed to Blockchain Association CEO Summer Mersinger:
“A letter from Citadel to the SEC advances a sweeping claim that DeFi protocol developers, smart contract authors, and even self-custody wallet providers should be treated as intermediaries subject to registration under securities laws. That interpretation has no grounding in the Exchange Act, decades of Commission practice, judicial precedent, or the commonsense distinction between those who build software and those who custody assets.
Code is speech. Blockchain Association has always fought – and will always fight – on behalf of DeFi and open-source developers who write First Amendment-protected code. Regulating software developers as if they were financial intermediaries would undermine U.S. competitiveness, drive innovation offshore, and do nothing to advance investor protection. We urge the SEC to reject this overbroad and unworkable approach and instead focus regulatory attention on actual intermediaries who stand between users and their assets.”
