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Federal Judge Rules Bitcoin Is Money In Case Tied To JPMorgan Hack (reuters.com)
Roughly two months ago, a Miami-Dade judge ruled that bitcoin does not actually qualify as money. Now, it appears that bitcoin does indeed qualify as money, according to U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan. "Bitcoins are funds within the plain meaning of that term," Nathan wrote. "Bitcoins can be accepted as a payment for goods and services or bought directly from an exchange with a bank account. They therefore function as pecuniary resources and are used as a medium of exchange and a means of payment." Reuters provides some backstory in its report: Bitcoin qualifies as money, a federal judge ruled on Monday, in a decision linked to a criminal case over hacking attacks against JPMorgan Chase and Co and other companies. U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan rejected a bid by Anthony Murgio to dismiss two charges related to his alleged operation of Coin.mx, which prosecutors have called an unlicensed bitcoin exchange. Murgio had argued that bitcoin did not qualify as "funds" under the federal law prohibiting the operation of unlicensed money transmitting businesses. But the judge, like her colleague Jed Rakoff in an unrelated 2014 case, said the virtual currency met that definition. Authorities have said Coin.mx was owned by Gery Shalon, an Israeli man who, along with two others, was charged with running a sprawling computer hacking and fraud scheme targeting a dozen companies, including JPMorgan, and exposing personal data of more than 100 million people. That alleged scheme generated hundreds of millions of dollars of profit through pumping up stock prices, online casinos, money laundering and other illegal activity, prosecutors have said.
> So the question stands, how is possessing this illegal?
It's not.
> Has bitcoin been declared the first illegal virtual substance?
No.
The ruling is that operating a business of providing money transfer services using Bitcoin to do it qualifies as one of these:
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provides check cashing, currency exchange, or money transmitting or remittance services, or issues or redeems money orders, travelers' checks, and *other similar instruments* or any other person who engages as a business in the *transmission of funds*
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In other words, the ruling is that Bitcoin is one of the following three things:
A: "other similar instruments" (similar to money orders or travelers' checks)
B: A way to accomplish "transmission of funds"
C: Can be in the same category as the listed examples - it can be used for a money transfer service.
Running a money transfer business, in some situations, requires registration. The ruling is that the defendant ran a money transfer business, using Bitcoins to do it.