On Thursday, Congress took a small but significant step to ensure that America remains the best place in the world to build. The bipartisan legislation (the Blockchain Development Innovation Promotion Act of 2026) would protect software developers from being dragged under Section 1960 of the criminal code, a statute designed for money laundering, not innovation. For builders working in good faith on open source software, that legal gray area has chilled American competitiveness.
It’s a ticket. But the principle it embodies goes beyond any law alone and arrives at a crucial moment.
As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary in July, it’s tempting to look back to commemorate milestones and celebrate triumphs. But America’s most consequential moments rarely come from preservation alone. They come from renewal: the construction of new systems that allowed the country to adapt to a changing world.
Every American century has been defined not only by ideals, but also by infrastructure. Canals and railroads fueled industrial expansion. Telecommunications connected a continental economy. The Internet reshaped commerce, culture, and capital markets. Each era rewarded those who were willing to build.
Today, the next layer of infrastructure is taking shape in code.
Software developers are the architects of modern economic systems. They shape how money moves, how markets work, and how people coordinate on a global scale. Unlike builders of bygone eras, many are globally distributed and highly mobile – choosing where to work and innovate based on clarity, opportunities and the regulatory environment. Open source development allows anyone, anywhere to contribute critical code. That work has produced billions of lines of software that are collectively maintained and power modern trade and coordination.
At the same time, the nature of financial infrastructure itself is evolving. Where previous generations built physical rails, today’s builders are creating digital rails: protocols that move value, build trust, and operate at the speed of the Internet. These layers increasingly underpin payments, financial services, identity and ownership.
An example of this transformation is the growth of the Solana-based developer ecosystem. According to the most recent Electric Capital Developer Report, Solana was the leading ecosystem for new developers in 2024, with 84% year-over-year growth. The Solana ecosystem shows how open, fast, and low-cost infrastructure attracts and retains talent willing to invest in solving real problems, from payments and decentralized finance to decentralized identities and applications at scale.
These are not exaggerations or symbolic prices. It’s about where infrastructure is deployed and whether the builders of tomorrow, who write the code that defines digital markets, feel that a country welcomes innovation or obstructs it.
Globally, governments are recognizing this reality. Several jurisdictions have moved forward with clear frameworks for digital assets and blockchain-based systems, providing predictability to developers and entrepreneurs. This sends a signal: construction is welcome here.
In the United States there are encouraging signs of progress beyond Thursday’s bill. Under the leadership of SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, the Commission is shifting from a posture defined primarily by law enforcement to one focused on engagement, clarity, and constructive rulemaking.
Developers and market participants do not expect the absence of regulation: they expect rules that are understandable, durable, and aligned with how modern technology actually works. Recent efforts to engage the industry, solicit public input, and distinguish bad actors from good-faith builders are an important step toward restoring confidence that the United States intends to lead, and not lag behind, in the development of digital financial infrastructure.
We’ve seen this dynamic before. The early days of railroads, aviation, and the Internet were marked by experimentation and ambiguity. Regulation followed innovation, not the other way around. That sequence was not a flaw; It was a characteristic of leadership. It allowed the United States to set global standards rather than inherit them.
As we look ahead to America’s next 250 years, the same principle applies. Protecting the freedom to build – especially in open, general-purpose technologies – is a fundamental American value. Writing code, no harm intended, is a form of expression and exploration. A nation founded on freedom of speech and enterprise should be wary of criminalizing innovation simply because it is new.
This moment is also an opportunity to renew American leadership in the capital markets. Blockchain-based systems enable faster settlement, broader participation, and more resilient market infrastructure, an evolution some have called “Internet capital markets.” These ideas are not about overnight disruption, but about improving the rails that support existing institutions so that they remain globally competitive.
The question before us is not whether these technologies will shape the global economy. They already are. The question is whether the United States will lead its development or watch as talent, standards and capital consolidate elsewhere.
America’s founders did not assume that their experiment would succeed forever. They designed it so that future generations could improve it. As we celebrate our nation’s 250th anniversary, we face a similar responsibility: not to preserve the past unchanged, but to ensure that future builders continue to see America as the best place in the world to build.
The next American century will be written in code. The choice we make now determines where that code is written.
