On Thursday, Congress took a small but significant step toward ensuring that the United States remains the best country in the world to build upon. The bipartisan legislation — the Advancing Innovation in Blockchain Development Act of 2026 — would protect software developers from Penal Code Section 1960, a statute designed to launder money, not innovate. For developers who are sincerely committed to open source software, this legal gray area brings a chill to America’s competitiveness.
This is a bill. But the principles it embodies are deeper than any single piece of legislation – and it comes at a crucial time.
As the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States approaches this July, it’s easy to look back, commemorate milestones and celebrate victories. But America’s most important moments rarely come from protection alone. They come from renewal: building new systems that enable countries to adapt to a changing world.
Every century in America has been defined not just by ideals but by infrastructure. Canals and railroads fueled industrial expansion. Telecommunications connects the mainland economy. The Internet has reshaped business, culture and capital markets. Every era rewards those who are willing to build.
Today, the next layer of infrastructure is taking shape in the code.
Software developers are the architects of modern economic systems. They determine how money flows, 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, opportunity and the regulatory environment. Open source development allows anyone, anywhere to contribute the underlying code. This work has produced billions of lines of software that are collectively maintained and power modern commerce and coordination.
At the same time, the nature of financial infrastructure itself continues to evolve. While previous generations built physical railroads, today’s builders are creating digital railroads—protocols that can transfer value, build trust, and operate at Internet speeds. These layers increasingly underpin payments, financial services, identity and ownership.
One example of this shift is the growth of the Solana-based developer ecosystem. According to the latest Electric Capital Developer Report, Solana is the leading ecosystem for new developers in 2024, with 84% year-over-year growth. The Solana ecosystem demonstrates how fast, low-cost, open infrastructure can attract and retain talent willing to invest in solving real problems—from payments and decentralized finance to large-scale identity and decentralized applications.
This has nothing to do with hype or token prices. It’s about where infrastructure is deployed and whether the future builders who write the code that defines digital markets view a country as welcoming of innovation or hindering it.
Across the globe, governments are waking up to this reality. Several jurisdictions have developed 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, Thursday’s bill aside, there are encouraging signs of progress. Under the leadership of SEC Chairman Paul Atkins, the Commission is moving from a primarily enforcement-focused position to one focused on engagement, clarity, and constructive rulemaking.
Developers and market participants don’t expect a lack of regulation – they expect rules that are easy to understand, durable and consistent with how modern technology actually works. Recent efforts to engage industry, solicit public input, and differentiate between bad actors and good-faith builders are an important step in restoring confidence that the United States intends to lead, not lag behind, the development of digital financial infrastructure.
We’ve seen this dynamic before. The early days of rail, aviation, and the Internet were characterized by experimentation and ambiguity. Regulation follows innovation, not the other way around. This order is not a flaw; This is a characteristic of leadership. It enables the United States to set global standards rather than inherit them.
The same principle applies when we look ahead to America’s next 250 years. Protecting the freedom to build—especially in open, general-purpose technologies—is a core American value. Writing code, without the intention of harm, is a form of expression and exploration. A country built on free speech and enterprise should be wary of criminalizing innovation simply because it is new.
This moment is also an opportunity to restore U.S. leadership in capital markets. Blockchain-based systems can enable faster settlements, broader participation, and more resilient market infrastructure—an evolution some are calling “internet capital markets.” These ideas are not about disruption overnight, but about upgrading the trajectory of 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 didn’t think their experiment would ever succeed. They designed it so that future generations could improve it. As we celebrate our 250th anniversary, we face a similar responsibility: not to allow the past to remain unchanged, but to ensure that future builders still view America as the best place in the world to build.
America’s next century will be written in code. The choices we make now determine where the code is written.
