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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.
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.
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.