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Bitcoin Not Money, Rules Miami Judge In Dismissing Laundering Charges (miamiherald.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Miami Herald: Bitcoin does not actually qualify as money, a Miami-Dade judge ruled Monday in throwing out criminal charges against a Miami Beach man charged with illegally selling the virtual currency. The defendant, Michell Espinoza, was charged with illegally selling and laundering $1,500 worth of Bitcoins to undercover detectives who told him they wanted to use the money to buy stolen credit-card numbers. But Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Teresa Mary Pooler ruled that Bitcoin was not backed by any government or bank, and was not "tangible wealth" and "cannot be hidden under a mattress like cash and gold bars." "The court is not an expert in economics, however, it is very clear, even to someone with limited knowledge in the area, the Bitcoin has a long way to go before it the equivalent of money," Pooler wrote in an eight-page order. The judge also wrote that Florida law -- which says someone can be charged with money laundering if they engage in a financial transaction that will "promote" illegal activity -- is way too vague to apply to Bitcoin. "This court is unwilling to punish a man for selling his property to another, when his actions fall under a statute that is so vaguely written that even legal professionals have difficulty finding a singular meaning," she wrote. Espinoza's case is believed to be the first money-laundering prosecution involving Bitcoin.
whites are whiter brights are brighter says Judge Pooler
let me get this straight - if someone offers to sell me something of value, if I somehow become aware of intended wrongdoing on their part - say, they've said they're raising money to hire a hit-man, or they're planning on buying a couple kilos of tar opium, whatever - I may not complete my transaction with them despite the legality of our specific transaction because I suspect they may use their gains in an illegal manner? In effect, I must deprive them of their lawful right to seek to do business with me without due process of law.
Does this mean contributors to political campaigns are lawfully culpable for the potentially illegal actions of the political candidates?
"The defendant, Michell Espinoza, was charged with illegally selling and laundering $1,500 worth of Bitcoins to undercover detectives who told him they wanted to use the money to buy stolen credit-card numbers. "
Basically they were giving him cash for bitcoins they could use to buy stolen goods.
"Laundering" here meaning that the bitcoins would hide/obfuscate the transactions. But laundering money doesn't *mean* that. To launder the money the reverse would've had to have happened, using the stolen credit cards to buy bitcoins to get cash that couldn't be traced back.
It's like saying he was laundering money because they were going to give him $1000 to convert to Yen that we were going to use to buy stolen goods. I don't see how bitcoin being a real "monetary instrument" or more akin to "poker chips" applies here because anybody who's played Fallout knows that bottlecaps are just as much a monetary instrument - It's whatever a group of people agree on the value of.
If someone comes into my store and wants to change a 20$ bill for rolls of quarters and tells me they are going to use them to buy something illegal... do I have some kind of obligation not to make the transaction? It seems like a really shaky and bizarre way to entrap someone.
love is just extroverted narcissism
If you take a bitcoin address and print out the hash, you could put that under your mattress and delete the file.
Only that piece of paper would then enable a person to spend the bitcoins.. If they burned up in a house fire, they would be gone forever assuming certain cryptographic primitives remain secure.
Why don't the undercover detectives get charged with:
* Engaging in preparatory acts towards buying stolen credit cards
* Entrapment
Or is everything legal now (in the sense that bribing politicians is legal) ?
Requiem for the American Dream
let's say, instead of bitcoins, the federal agents were trying to buy a 10 ounce bar of gold, which, they told the defendant, they were going to use to make illegal transactions. 10 ounces of gold are not money either. would the transaction be called money laundering or would it be legal?
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
It's only a symbolic representation of value. A bitcoin doesn't have _real_ value, the way, say, a 10 dollar bill does.
Cash money has no real value either. It has value only because a lot of people agree that it has value. Otherwise it is just some slips of colored paper.
Sig for hire.
It's time to release DPR on a technicality, unless he was dumb enough to actually use cash to order those hits... Shesh...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsroom/irs-virtual-currency-guidance
I assume you're being facetious.
Might makes right irrelevant.
Bitcoin Not Money
Why you skip words? Slashdot not newspaper, not have physical limit on headline length.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I don't get this. Most of the monetary value in the world doesn't exist as bills or gold.
It's just numbers created in bank accounts when bank loan out money that they don't actually have. They only have, what is it, 3%, 10% of it?
So if my method of money laundering is just moving and splitting this "virtual number money" around among a confusing number of accounts, then by this judge's logic that's not money laundering because, by her logic, mere numbers in accounts are not money?
Really confused here.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Have gnu, will travel.
The same is true for most non-fiat currencies though. Sure you can always use gold or silver industrially, but it's not worth much otherwise as it's just some shiny metal. You could hypothetically make some kind of money backed by the entirety of all commodities or other human economic activity, but good look accounting for all of it accurately. Fiat currencies are largely a good enough approximation as long as you don't give some idiot control of the printing press or let the people decide to vote themselves bread and circuses without working to produce any of it.
Every country in the world is trying to put their wealth in dollars. US government credibility (or rather, the credibility of the US treasury and the Fed) is pretty goddamn high.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You can launder money with shit, literally, pieces of turd. Buy manure from a provider and then sell it back to a farmer, and you successfully have layered and integrated the funds as legitimate. Nobody will debate that manure isn't money, and that is not the point. The point is that money of illicit origin has been laundered.
The value of everything comes from the agreement of a lot of people.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If it is not a money, then VAT should be paid on it.
Several people have already been prosecuted for running an unlicensed money transmitting business and money laundering, including people using the localbitcoins website. If this judge just ruled that Bitcoin isn't money, then how does that affect those other cases?
In many parts of the world, and especially in India, gold is indeed widely used as an "ultimate" store of value.
Go to Dubai and you'll see the immegrant workers buying "genuine guaranteed" ingots to take back home
If only we had massive machines keeping track of the world economy every possible moment in nano second scale time, we could totally keep track of the entire worlds economic activity.
Oh well, such machines are clearly impossible pipe dreams; better just listen to what the rich bankers with all the money tell us what that money is worth.
Ummm... that is everywhere in the world. There is a reason the Federal Reserve reserves gold along with every government in the world. People who get burned on gold get burned because they buy while the market is "booming." This is actually extremely uncommon. During the recession you'd have been a very happy man if you kept your wealth in gold.
There are certainly investments which grow faster buy they also carry a lot more risk.
All that said there is another reason people get burned with both dollars and gold on a regular basis. Counterfeiting. Counterfeiting is mathematically proven to be impossible with bitcoin and that is why it has innate value. That is also why the banks are trying to build systems based on its technology. All this "I can't hold it in my hand" people are just luddites.
No stolen credit card numbers were going to be bought. Detectives were pretending they were going to buy stolen credit cards. These types of set ups are a waste of taxpayer money.
Because to buy oil for heating, making gasoline to drive cars, making diesel to drive trucks or persecutors for plastics you need dollars. US dollars.
The US governments, both one for the rich and the one for the poor, have been mighty stable compared to many poorly managed governments. But that's only because its economy moves in lockstep with most everybody's economy now. Thanks to international trade the US economy can feel any Chinese slow down or European Union financial stress. But to get or sell that fuel oil you need greenbacks even when your petro-nation is circling the $20-a-barrel toilet.
And every time some uppity nation of non-white people tries to sell oil for Russian Rubles or Chinese Renminbi guns and bombs with American flags painted on the side go raining down on them until they change their mind.
"You cannot have a General Will unless you have shared experiences. You cannot be fair to people you don't know."
...Sure you can always use gold or silver industrially, but it's not worth much otherwise as it's just some shiny metal.
In many parts of the world, and especially in India, gold is indeed widely used as an "ultimate" store of value.
Go to Dubai and you'll see the immegrant workers buying "genuine guaranteed" ingots to take back home
Alvinrod is saying is that gold or silver doesn't have inherent worth because it doesn't meet any fundamental requirements for human survival (food, water, shelter, heat, clothes, etc.). You can't eat gold. You can't drink gold. Gold is not an appropriate material to make clothes or shelter. You can't warm yourself with gold. So, a person must be part of a functioning society that provides the minimum for human survival before it can ascribe any value to a rare shiny metal. Or another way to think of it... if you were stranded alone on an island with no hope of rescue and trying to survive, which would you prefer to have: a handful of gold or a handful of viable seeds for crops? Obviously the latter, because outside of society gold has no value.
Gold is not an appropriate material to make clothes or shelter.
You could if it weren't so rare. Gold can easily be extruded into fine thread and woven into cloth, or hammered into thin sheets to make walls or shingles. It's a very versatile material. We don't use it this way because an all-gold suit would require at least a few million dollars' worth of gold, not because the material properties of gold make it unsuitable.
Or another way to think of it... if you were stranded alone on an island with no hope of rescue and trying to survive, which would you prefer to have: a handful of gold or a handful of viable seeds for crops?
If this is a one-time either/or proposition, obviously the seeds. Gold has no nutritional value and little else matters when faced with the prospect of starvation. Given a more flexible situation, however, I might be willing to trade some of those seeds for an equivalent volume of gold for the sake of making tools. As a raw material it's highly ductile, malleable, conductive, and corrosion-resistant; I'm sure I could find some practical use for it even without any prospect of trade.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
The feds have already declared it a currency.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Just another day in Paradise
Because I'm in a mood to argue..
Gold is not an appropriate material to make clothes or shelter.
You could if it weren't so rare.
Gold is rare. The argument is null.
Gold can easily be extruded into fine thread and woven...not because the material properties of gold make it unsuitable.
You need to define "easily." Because most people don't have spare metal extruders lying around or the parts and skill to assemble one. You need a functioning society with relatively sophisticated infrastracture to be extruding metals. Which proves the earlier point that gold has little to no value for basic human needs and only develops value within the context of a society.
Or another way to think of it... if you were stranded alone on an island with no hope of rescue and trying to survive, which would you prefer to have: a handful of gold or a handful of viable seeds for crops?
If this is a one-time either/or proposition, obviously the seeds. Gold has no nutritional value and little else matters when faced with the prospect of starvation.
Exactly.
Given a more flexible situation, however, I might be willing to trade some of those seeds for an equivalent volume of gold for the sake of making tools. As a raw material it's highly ductile, malleable, conductive, and corrosion-resistant; I'm sure I could find some practical use for it even without any prospect of trade.
You're only proving my point that gold only develops value in the context of a society/economy (i.e. your trade) that can provide the basics of survival and has the sophistication to turn the gold into a useful tool.
And consider this... if the world spiraled into post-apocalyptic anarchy tomorrow, people would be trading a handfuls of gold for a handfuls of bullets in a heartbeat. So, how much inherent value does gold have? When discussing inherent value of objects if you're not thinking like a doomsday prepper, then you are missing the point! ;-)
Gold and silver make good *coinage* due to their chemical properties, but a lot of people somehow conflate that into the idea that gold and silver have intrinsic worth.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
And that's because, from centuries of historical practice, a very large number of people think gold is valuable beyond its physical properties. It's just the same as US dollars: both have value because people think it has value, and there's plenty of evidence to show that people will continue to value USD and gold.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
In many parts of the world, and especially in India, gold is indeed widely used as an "ultimate" store of value. Go to Dubai and you'll see the immegrant workers buying "genuine guaranteed" ingots to take back home
Yep, it has worth because lots of people believe it does. Same as fiat currencies... gold just has a longer history of being considered valuable, so people think less about the fact that its actual value, in terms of stuff you can make/do with it, isn't actually that large.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
No. Maryland has been known to stop trucks on the Baltimore beltway from North Carolina with furniture, check the paperwork and they make sure the buyer pays their fair share in sales tax. All citizens of states with sales tax are obligated to pay sales tax on sales.
Does it happen? Almost never.
Gold is rare. The argument is null.
The situation described was that one was offered a handful of gold or a handful of seeds. Under those circumstances gold could not be considered rare. In any case its rarity is orthogonal to its utility as a raw material.
You're only proving my point that gold only develops value in the context of a society/economy (i.e. your trade) that can provide the basics of survival and has the sophistication to turn the gold into a useful tool.
The same could be said of the seeds—or did you think that the knowledge of how to grow, preserve, store, and prepare a proper harvest from a handful of seeds somehow comes by instinct? That, too, is a form of technology learned by society over a very long period of trial and error. Without that knowledge acquired from society you might manage a single meager meal, provided the seeds are of an edible variety.
You need to define "easily." Because most people don't have spare metal extruders lying around or the parts and skill to assemble one.
It doesn't take a great deal of capital equipment to draw wire, and gold has a relatively low melting point. A deserted island would most likely have everything you need provided it's survivable at all. Gold sheets are even simpler and can be hammered out with rocks if you're patient enough.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat