Jack Dorsey proposes a Bitcoin legal defense fund to protect developers

Jack Dorsey, former Twitter CEO and founder revealed new plans to create a Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund in association with Alex Morcos, founder of Chain-co labs, and Martin White, a computer science teacher from the University of Sussex. The following fund aims at protecting Bitcoin developers against litigation. 

Jack Dorsey proposes a new fund to protect Bitcoin developers

The announcement was sent on a mailing list for Bitcoin developers, bitcoin-dev at 00:13:45 UTC. The email address appears to belong to Jack Dorsey. 

The announcement describes Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund as ” a nonprofit entity that aims to minimize legal headaches that discourage software developers from actively developing Bitcoin and related projects such as the Lightning Network, Bitcoin privacy protocols, and the like.”

an email to the bitcoin dev mailing list from @jack explaining the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund pic.twitter.com/y1XY3XG0IR

— Zack Voell (@zackvoell) January 12, 2022

The fund aims to defend developers from lawsuits regarding their activities in the Bitcoin ecosystem. The announcement stated that the new fund will protect Bitcoin devs who are facing “multi-front litigation” by providing legal defense.

As per the announcement, the fund will assist developers in finding and retaining legal counsel, developing litigation strategy, and paying legal bills, in a bid to support devs in the time of legal crisis. 

Initially, the fund will comprise volunteers and part-time lawyers to assist developers. The announcement also states that the board of the fund “will be responsible for determining which lawsuits and defendants it will help defend.”

The fund will begin its first official proceeding by helping Bitcoin devs embroiled in Craig Wright’s Tulip Trading Limited over an alleged “breach of fiduciary duty.” 

The announcement further states that the Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund, at present, is  not seeking additional money for its operations, but it may change its decision “at the direction of the board if needed for further legal action or to pay for staff.”

Jack Dorsey, who recently resigned from the post of Twitter’s CEO has long been a staunch Bitcoin proponent. Dorsey is known to actively voice his opinions in support of cryptocurrency and has tweeted multiple times in support of Bitcoin.