Bitcoin Not Money, Rules Miami Judge In Dismissing Laundering Charges (miamiherald.com) 150
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.
use Bitcoin in your laundry (Score:2)
Re:It's not money... not unlike US green back (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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 Chi
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Tell you what: pull out $100 US anywhere in the world and see if you find any takers. THAT'S how much credibility the US treasury and the Federal Reserve have. I've got a 500,000,000 dinar note from when Serbia was in hyperinflation (Nicola Tesla's picture!) and people were burning them for fuel. That's never happened, and will never happen, in the US (with a particular caveat mentioned below).
Right now, Euro bonds are paying negative interest. At least at the moment, the
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Except for the US Dollar being the standard reserve currency for every single country on the face of the planet.
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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.
Re:It's not money (Score:5, Insightful)
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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
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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 g
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...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...
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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 o
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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 i
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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. Wi
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The value of everything comes from the agreement of a lot of people.
Re: It's not money (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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No. Not only must you know that your transaction will be used to carryout an illegal act you must also intend that it promote that illegal act.
I guess in your hitman scenario, we'll be general here since there are numerous parts to the statute, buying a item from a person and knowing that they might do something illegal with the proceeds isn't enough. You'd probably be convicted if you were buying the item for $100 and the guy tells you he needs $500 for a hitman and then you say, "here, I'll help you out.
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I think you missed the point.
"... 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."
The assumption here by detectives was that merely claiming the proceeds would be used for illegal activity made the transaction money laundering.
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Re:Even if you disagree with the judge . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
The general thrust is: You can't help people commit crimes.
In many countries (and I will probably now be disappointed to find that the US isn't one of them) you don't get to just roll up with $5 million of bank notes in a truck and buy something expensive like land or a company. If you do that, and later somebody asks the lawyers "So, what's with the $5M in cash?" and they shrug and say "I didn't ask" they lose their licenses and their offices are crawling with investigators. Even if it turns out you got that $5M through some unlikely but entirely legal means, their failure to ask reasonable questions makes them guilty.
In my country if you ask the "bank of mum and dad" to help pay for your first house, they need to write a letter explaining who they are, and why this big sum of unexpected money appeared with no strings attached, because otherwise your lender, or your lawyers, or both will freak out and everything stalls while this mysterious money is explained. If instead of "mum and dad" the money comes from "Uncle Albert" who like, isn't actually an uncle but he knew you from when you were a baby, expect that to get crawled over even more. Who is this "Uncle Albert" dude? Does he end up with control over the property in practice despite you owning it on paper? Where did _he_ get the money from?
Right now in the press you might see fuss about a company called British Home Stores or BHS. The guy who owned it sold it to someone they knew was a fly-by-night terrible business person, so that he could walk away saying it was fine when he left. It collapsed, as he will have known it probably would. Did the politicians say "Oh, well, you sold it, so not your problem" ? No, they're demanding he pay off its pension fund and they're tearing into the other directors, the auditors, and so on. Because all those people had a DUTY not to just say "Oh, whatever, if the owner wants to sell it to some scumbag let him".
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But, can they gift me bitcoins (not money) instead?
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In my country if you ask the "bank of mum and dad" to help pay for your first house, they need to write a letter explaining who they are, and why this big sum of unexpected money appeared with no strings attached, because otherwise your lender, or your lawyers, or both will freak out and everything stalls while this mysterious money is explained.
Really? Not my experience.
Everything had to be aggregated in one place before it was transferred wholesale to the seller. Naturally, the aggregation came from a bun
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I'm in the USA btw. I didn't have to write a letter, but IIRC had to give a bit more account details upon getting my mortgage since I had recently moved money _between my own accounts_ to make the down payment.
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That wasn't the case for my previous mortgages, but underwriting has gotten much more strict in the US since 2008.
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The general thrust is: You can't help people commit crimes.
In many countries (and I will probably now be disappointed to find that the US isn't one of them) you don't get to just roll up with $5 million of bank notes in a truck and buy something expensive like land or a company. If you do that, and later somebody asks the lawyers "So, what's with the $5M in cash?" and they shrug and say "I didn't ask" they lose their licenses and their offices are crawling with investigators. Even if it turns out you got that $5M through some unlikely but entirely legal means, their failure to ask reasonable questions makes them guilty.
In my country if you ask the "bank of mum and dad" to help pay for your first house, they need to write a letter explaining who they are, and why this big sum of unexpected money appeared with no strings attached, because otherwise your lender, or your lawyers, or both will freak out and everything stalls while this mysterious money is explained. If instead of "mum and dad" the money comes from "Uncle Albert" who like, isn't actually an uncle but he knew you from when you were a baby, expect that to get crawled over even more. Who is this "Uncle Albert" dude? Does he end up with control over the property in practice despite you owning it on paper? Where did _he_ get the money from?
Right now in the press you might see fuss about a company called British Home Stores or BHS. The guy who owned it sold it to someone they knew was a fly-by-night terrible business person, so that he could walk away saying it was fine when he left. It collapsed, as he will have known it probably would. Did the politicians say "Oh, well, you sold it, so not your problem" ? No, they're demanding he pay off its pension fund and they're tearing into the other directors, the auditors, and so on. Because all those people had a DUTY not to just say "Oh, whatever, if the owner wants to sell it to some scumbag let him".
It's not just country (I assume you are not in the US.) My wife and I live in Florida, and when we bought our first home, we had to write letters to the bank (BoA) explaining all our sources of income or wealth, including a generous cash gift we got from our in-laws. And before we got a loan with BoA we were trying to get one via NACA, and that organization had us write regular letters explaining our cash flows (which got annoying at times since we traveled abroad every year to see my in-laws, which incurre
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"we got a loan with BoA"
and
"paying a property with cash"
You're being grilled about sources of income so that BofA can judge how likely you are to be able to make your payments. In particular, without special help from others.
Either scenario, the seller gets a check for the selling price. Empty-nesters downsizing are often able to pay for a smaller house in full without needing a new loan, so this is hardly rare or crooked.
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It can get silly. When I was going back to grad school, we bought a house. I had to write letters explaining that I didn't quit my job and go to grad school to get benefits from a housing program, and exactly why, as a two-adult family, we only needed one car.
I don't think they cared much about our reasons, just that we had some.
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The general thrust is: You can't help people commit crimes.
True, but if you do help someone commit a crime, then you should be prosecuted for conspiracy to commit a crime, not money laundering. This guy was prosecuted for money laundering and the judge said "this ain't money laundering". If they want to prosecute him for conspiracy, they may have more luck. My guess is they went with money laundering because they thought it was easier to prove or because it had heftier penalties.
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How does your anecdote invalidate his claims? You told the bank where the money came from (even when you claimed that no one cared), they registered it and some one in the back checked that the money actually where sent from the accounts mentioned (i.e from your parents to you) and that this was money that your parents had access to legally.
If you could have just appeared in the bank and threw 100k GBP on the table, refused to disclose where the money came from and they still would be ok with that then you
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Bank motives are universal. Some laws may scrutinize their actions more, but the aim of a bank is to hold and make money. They don't give a shit in GBP, USD or TSH in Zanzibar.
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The reason banks care is that they want to make sure you didn't borrow your downpayment from another bank. So the red flag for them is not the amount or the claimed source, but how recently you got the money. If the cash has been sitting in your bank account for several months -- and doesn't show up as a loan on your credit report -- they're happy to assume it's yours.
So, if the AC's parents gave him the 100K and it sat in his account for a few months, the bank probably wouldn't ask many questions about i
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Knowledge of a crime without reporting it is called accessory. Even if they tell you about the crime after they've done it you are still an accessory after the fact.
So yes, if someone tells you've they've committed a crime or are going to commit a crime you are obligated to report it to law enforcement and refuse the transaction. To think otherwise would either make you extremely naive or stupid.
This is basic common knowledge, you can't help people commit crimes. It's ok to be ignorant of their crime (but y
Re:Even if you disagree with the judge . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Knowledge of a crime without reporting it is called accessory. Even if they tell you about the crime after they've done it you are still an accessory after the fact.
Not exactly. You'd have to help conceal the crime to be charged with accessory after the fact.
http://criminal.findlaw.com/cr... [findlaw.com]
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Conducting a monetary transaction intended to conceal the proceeds of a crime is the very definition of Accessory after the fact. His question was about a monetary transaction where he's been told that it's the result of a crime.
As a general rule you are not required in some states to report crimes you are aware of (though in some you are, know your states law!). But if you assist the perpetrators in the crime, such as through concealment or laundering of funds you are an accessory after the fact. Your link
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So yes, if someone tells you've they've committed a crime or are going to commit a crime you are obligated to report it to law enforcement and refuse the transaction.
That's certainly not universally true.
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Where I live in the U.S., the only things required by law to report are child and dependent adult abuse.
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"Conducting a monetary transaction intended to conceal the proceeds of a crime..."
You are assuming that the transaction is money laundering when that condition has not been met.
"...is the very definition of Accessory after the fact."
It's the "very definition"!?! Who's being "extremely naive or stupid" now.
"His question was about a monetary transaction where he's been told that it's the result of a crime."
You are completely off the deep end here.
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You are never obliged to report crimes to the police unless you're a mandatory reporter (basically, doctors, social workers and teachers) and the crime is on the mandatory reporting list (child abuse, and that's about it). If you're not a mandatory reporter, then you don't have to report anything for any reason ever. It's actually constitutional, by the way. It's part of the fifth amendment. Basically, the fifth amendment means you can always keep your mouth shut in case you accidentally say something incri
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and the crime is on the mandatory reporting list (child abuse, and that's about it)
There are lots of things, multiple lists, but they only apply to certain jobs. In addition to crimes involving children, often elder and disabled abuse. Engineers are required to report certain things that create physical dangers. A lot of types of licensed inspectors or auditors have lists of things they are required to report if they find it. Some types of accountants.
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"To think otherwise would either make you extremely naive or stupid."
No it wouldn't, but regardless it wouldn't make you a money launderer.
"but you need to understand you may have your profits taken away"
Some more hand waving. Profits?
"For example, if they'd committed a robbery and killed someone in the progress and you laundered the money you could be charged with murder."
Just for example ;)
If you loaned your friend some cash to buy gas for his car and he subsequently drove 30 mph over the speed limit (a
Right ruling, wrong reasons... (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Even if it is money, I get it.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Even if it is money, I get it.... (Score:5, Informative)
I believe the correct answer is not only do you not change the money, you are obliged to contact the police and report the person. Knowingly changing the money could make you an accessory to a crime (I believe they have to tell you the crime they intend to commit).
Incidentally, Bitcoin probably can't be considered legal tender - it would violate the Constitution, which allows only Congress to print money and denies states the right to have their own currency. It does fall into a category not thought of by the founding fathers, though, which is non-printed money (so Bitcoin basically is a loophole).
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I suppose that non-conforming exhaust system I bought COULD be used as a piece of art. I didn't actually SAY i would install it on a car even tho it asked what car it was for.
Same as buying a bong was legal as long as you didn't call it a bong cause then it's not.
Thankfully, that is no longer illegal here in Oregon. Now at the smoke shops, they can freely refer to their bongs as bongs, and tokers as tokers. And on that note, the vaporizor should be warmed up, so now for tonight's first 420 moment. :D
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I believe the correct answer is not only do you not change the money, you are obliged to contact the police and report the person.
Yes and no respectively. But if the cops ask you, you have to answer honestly or you're an accessory... unless they're asking about your spouse, then you don't have to answer. Whee!
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The US Constitution:
Section. 8.
The Congress shall have Power...
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin...
Section. 10.
No State shall ... coin Money; ...; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts....
My take: The federal government has been granted to power to coin money and make it legal tender, but has not been granted a monopoly. Nothing in the Constitution prevents the People (not the States) from coining money.
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The courts will find that if the states can't print money, then people can't either.
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Your right, in the sense that the general rule of "The constitution is the rules for the government to follow, not the people" (And the language also appears explicit).
However for the government to *recognize* the bitcoins as money, it enters a huge grey area where its not US money (because constitution), but whos money IS it?
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You are never obliged to report crimes to the police unless you're a mandatory reporter (basically, doctors, social workers and teachers) and the crime is on the mandatory reporting list (child abuse, and that's about it). If you're not a mandatory reporter, then you don't have to report anything for any reason ever. It's actually constitutional, by the way. It's part of the fifth amendment. Basically, the fifth amendment means you can always keep your mouth shut in case you accidentally say something incri
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Incidentally, Bitcoin probably can't be considered legal tender - it would violate the Constitution, which allows only Congress to print money and denies states the right to have their own currency. It does fall into a category not thought of by the founding fathers, though, which is non-printed money (so Bitcoin basically is a loophole).
There's always a lot of confusion when the term "legal tender" comes up. "Legal tender" is NOT the same as "valid money" or "valid currency" or whatever. "Legal tender" in the U.S. means precisely one thing -- it must be accepted for all debts, public or private.
And what that means is -- if you incur debt to someone, they must accept "legal tender" to repay that debt. If you don't pay and they sue you, the court can order payment -- and they must accept dollars.
Things "legal tender" is NOT: (1) "Lega
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Farts are not a commodity, *farts have no intrinsic value*, which means that outside of their use as money they have no other uses. They are used to transfer, store, account for stinkiness. It is as pure money as it gets, however because it has no intrinsic value at all (it cannot be used for anything outside of stinking, nobody needs it for anything but for its quality of being money) its ability to store value is questionable.
You can stuff it under a mattress.... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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If you take a bitcoin address and print out the hash, you could put that under your mattress and delete the file.
Pretty sure you meant to say something else, you can print out the private keys associated with the public hashes but if all you have is the hash you got nothing. You can see the Bitcoins are there, but you can't send them to anyone so they're effectively lost.
Here's a thought (Score:1)
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) ?
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1. F.S. Ch. 896.105 grants immunity to law enforcement engaging in a bona fide investigation.
2. Entrapment only applies when your will is overpowered by law enforcement making you engage in an activity you normally would not do. It is not entrapment that law enforcement offers you the ability to do an illegal act and you willingly do it of your own free will. If an undercover officer asks you if you want to buy cocaine and you say yes it's not entrapment. If an officer asks you to do a buy for them (or tell
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Isn't it obstruction if you prevent an officer from making an arrest? So if you prevent an officer from arresting you because you're not buying his coke voluntarily, it's obstruction but if you do buy the coke voluntarily it's not entrapment?
Re: Here's a thought (Score:2)
So they are able to subtly encourage you over the line and that's OK.
I suppose that's how the devil can sleep at night too after a day sat on people's shoulders whispering suggestions to commit misdeeds.
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Conspiracy charges are even sneakier. If the FBI agent provocateur talks a bunch of morons into making a plan to do something illegal, like rob Fort Knox under cover of a pizza delivery, and one of the morons does something perfectly legal that clearly furthers the plan, time to arrest the guys and charge them with conspiracy to do something illegal.
forget bitcoins for a moment (Score:3)
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?
Re:forget bitcoins for a moment (Score:4, Informative)
Ownership of Gold was illegal in the US for a time period as well.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu... [ucsb.edu]
Section 2. All persons are hereby required to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, to a Federal Reserve Bank or a branch or agency thereof or to any member bank of the Federal Reserve System all gold coin, gold bullion and gold certificates now owned by them or coming into their ownership on or before April 28, 1933, except the following:
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Now that was definitely government overreach.
As long as I can find a shovel, there's no way they're gittin' ma hard-dug gold.
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Probably not, in that its an exchange of assets not money. The point with the ruling is the laundering laws refer to money not *stuff* and the judge is saying that bitcoin qualifies as *stuff*
If this logic holds up... (Score:2)
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Department of Pesticide Regulation?
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Seems to be property according to the IRS (Score:1)
https://www.irs.gov/uac/newsroom/irs-virtual-currency-guidance
Bitcoin IS not money (Score:2)
Bitcoin Not Money
Why you skip words? Slashdot not newspaper, not have physical limit on headline length.
Most money is just numbers in accounts (Score:2)
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.
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Those virtual numbers have US$ signs next to them, not BTC.
In related news ... (Score:3)
This judge needs to go back to college (Score:1)
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Wrong. The money was not of illicit origin. But they told the guy they planned to commit a crime with the BitCoin he gave them. That's what makes this case weird.
VAT (Score:2)
People already prosecuted as if Bitcoin were money (Score:2)
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?
Thw whole case is B.S. (Score:2)
She Needs to Do some Homework (Score:2)
The feds have already declared it a currency.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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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.