This article from the Brown Political Review doesn't specifically address bitcoin, but it gives a preview of some legal arguments that might soon be relevant as bitcoin faces US legal challenges.
Today in the United States, anyone equipped with the right string of 0s and 1s can 3D print an unregistered and untraceable assault rifle. That is thanks to Cody Wilson, a self-proclaimed anarchist who reached a settlement in 2018 with the US Department of State that allowed him to share downloadable, open-source code for 3D-printed guns. While this may seem like an archetypal Second Amendment issue, the printing of such weapons has instead been made possible by recent interpretations of the First Amendment. It’s clear that guns do not qualify as speech. Instead, the settlement was reached on the grounds that prohibiting the publication of this computer code infringed upon Wilson’s First Amendment rights.
This passage refers to the cypher punk victory brought by the EFF:
US Court of Appeals in Bernstein v. US Department of Justice (1996). The case examined whether the government could prevent UC Berkeley graduate student Daniel Bernstein from exporting his code for “Snuffle,” an end-to-end encryption algorithm he created. In an unprecedented ruling, the Court decided that Bernstein’s code could be exported without regulation, as his code was protected speech under the First Amendment. The opinion stated: “This court can find no meaningful difference between computer language…and German or French…computer language is just that, language, and it communicates information either to a computer or to those who can read it.”
By the turn of the century, there was no longer any doubt: Computer code is speech, at least according to US courts. But what of the product of that code? Indeed, whether or not the outputs of code—websites, video games, algorithms, and so forth—are considered protected speech is far murkier.
Thanks for sharing.
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64 sats \ 1 reply \ @freetx 2 May
We need some well-funded BTC-focused lobbyist / litigation group.
Its hard to kickstart that at the pleb-level as it requires some big names (large stack holders) to champion it. Problem is (as I've said before), all the really large stack holders are either: (a) Playing jurisdictional arbitrage thus dont feel threatened, or (b) Already part of WallStreet machine, thus don't feel threatened.
(Obviously the counter to their view is that helping secure BTC in USA is probably the number #1 most important regulatory market in the world. Many positive effects will flow out from having sensible policies in US)
I should have added this to the bottom. The last passage I quoted reads "websites, video games, algorithms, and so forth..." I pulled up a general definition of algorithm, and it doesn't really seem to be outside the idea of code as speech:
  1. A finite set of unambiguous instructions that, given some set of initial conditions, can be performed in a prescribed sequence to achieve a certain goal and that has a recognizable set of end conditions.
  1. A precise rule (or set of rules) specifying how to solve some problem; a set of procedures guaranteed to find the solution to a problem.
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