Texas Federal Magistrate Reaffirms Ruling that Bitcoin is Money
The question of whether Bitcoin can be considered “money” from both a legal and tax perspective in the United States has been in the news a great deal recently, especially with multiple Judges ruling that Bitcoin was indeed money and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) seeming to contradict the courts with a stance that deems Bitcoin as property. The latest chapter comes again from Texas and Federal Magistrate Judge Amos L. Mazzant. The case was filed against Bitcoin Savings & Trust founder Trendon T. Shavers, who is accused by Federal prosecutors of running a Ponzi scheme using Bitcoin.....
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A Texas man charged with defrauding consumers through an illicit investment vehicle has been ordered to pay more than $40m in fines by a federal judge. The Thursday ruling brought to close a case launched last July that drew headlines at a time when many in the mainstream US media were only first learning about bitcoin and its related technology. Trendon Shavers, the founder and operator of Bitcoin Savings and Trust (BTCST) had reportedly accrued more than 700,000 BTC in customer funds, worth roughly $64m at the time of his arrest. US Magistrate Judge Amos Mazzant wrote: "The uncontested....
Bitcoin and Money Laundering: 2014 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill: Federal Bureau of InvestigationBy Brian Cohen and Adam B. LevineOn the heels of today’s news that the New York Department of Financial Services issued a Notice of Inquiry on Virtual Currencies and subpoenaed almost two dozen Bitcoin Companies, last week’s ruling in federal court, and the SEC’s recent action against the infamous Pirate40 (and consequently a Texas Federal Judge declaring “Bitcoin is a currency, or form of money”) and July’s DEA Bitcoin Asset Seizure, it seems Bitcoin is....
There are several high profile criminal and civil cases involving Bitcoin in the United States. In some of these the prosecution is clearly applying law to Bitcoin transactions that might not apply. But in the case of Trenton Shavers and his Bitcoin Savings and Trust this turned out not to be the case, even though his attorneys tried to make it look like it. A US Federal Judge has ruled in case is SEC v. Shavers et al, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas, No. 13-00416 that the Bitcoin Savings and Trust was indeed a criminal enterprise and Shavers was guilty of running a Ponzi....
A federal judge in New York has ruled that bitcoin constitutes a form of money. The ruling comes from the ongoing case involving the now-defunct Florida bitcoin exchange Coin.mx and one of its former operators, Anthony Murgio. Murgio, who was indicted on alleged money laundering charges in July of last year, had sought to dismiss two of the charges against him in part by arguing that bitcoins don't count as "funds" in the context of US law. According to Reuters, Judge Alison Nathan of the Southern District Court of New York rejected that bid, writing that bitcoin is money by....
A judge in Texas has ruled that bitcoin is a currency or form of money, which gives the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the go-ahead to sue Ponzi scheme operator Trendon Shavers. A document signed by US magistrate judge Amos L. Mazzant details the SEC's case against Shavers, founder and operator of Bitcoin Savings and Trust (BTCST), formerly known as First Pirate Savings & Trust. Shavers enticed people to invest in BTCST with the promise of 1% interest per day. Some investors suffered losses, totalling 263,104 BTC, which equates to around $25 million, based on current exchange....