Topic: Conspiracy Law and Bitcoin (Read 1534 times)

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While there have been some good thoughts posted above, I don't think the law really matters at all. When thought has become a crime (and it effectively is), anything you do or think or say that doesn't end with you sucking off Uncle Sam (or insert your own national symbol there) will end in arrests and prosecution.

Prosecutions don't even need to succeed to ruin you. They merely need to bleed you dry and put you in debt.

Aaron Swartz anyone?

Adam Kokesh? Arrested for dancing once, and recently arrested for talking.

What are some things that make you a terrorist?

* Paying for coffee with cash
* Having bumper stickers
* Believing in freedom
* etc.

I'm quite certain that some bureaucrap in some office has added "Has bitcoins" to the "terrorist indicator list".

As davidspitzer has already said, you`ve got to have an illegal act, or rather an agreement by more than one individual to commit an illegal act.

So if you do hatch a plan to launder money or evade taxes using bitcoin, and you discuss this with others, who in some way agree to assist you in your laundering or your tax evasion, then you could be charged with conspiracy.  The fact of using bitcoin itself in no way leads to such a charge, however.  There would need to be some evidence that you actively planned to use it for some illegal purpose.

The simple comparison is to cash - if you are given $5,000 in cash in a brown paper bag on a corner late at night, that looks suspicious.  But it could be for a used car or any number of other things.  It could also be part of a sophisticated money-laundering plot, but without some kind of evidence to suggest and support that, a charge to that effect is going nowhere.

It is true that no steps need to have been put into place - this separates conspiracy from attempt in most framework.  Conspiracy is the plan and includes more than one person - attempt is starting to actually DO something, and the measure is whether or not something "more than merely preparatory" to the illegal act has been undertaken.  How that is interpreted varies from place to place, but examples include: Walking up to a post office holding a gun but being arrested by police before entering - these steps were "merely preparatory", whereas had the arrest taken place once *inside* the post office, the charge might have stuck.

With conspiracy, you don't have that hurdle, but you need to prove that the defendant conspired with others to commit whatever the illegal act is.

For bitcoin, you're looking at money laundering and tax evasion primarily.  Debasement of some other currency is a little bit much - even if that was your ultimate goal, you aren't in a position to substantially debase it unless you have real, unsupervised access to the Federal Reserve / Central Bank printing presses.  Undermining a currency (even assuming that you have clearly communicated that this is your goal) is not in and of itself a crime.

In any case, if you want to accept peanut shells, Campbell's soup labels, or bubblegum as payment there's nothing that stops you from doing so.  National fiat currencies are propped up by the obligation to pay taxes with them, which means that even if you switch to bubblegum, you need to declare your capital gains (if you buy bubblegum at $1 per gumball and sell at $5) or declare a barter tax when you trade 1 gumball for $5 worth of fresh duck eggs.

So, using / holding / accepting bitcoin is nowhere near adequate for any kind of conspiracy charge.  Using it, amassing a sizable fortune in it, and crowing about your intention to overthrow the state or avoid paying taxes on it potentially would be, depending on how readily those statements could be retrieved and how convincingly they could be attributed to you.

According to that link they are still supposed to be minting gold eagles!

debasement is normally confined to physical alteration of a minted coins or printed bills - Bitcoin is an alternative barter / security mechanism and it would be quite a stretch to argue that Bitcoin's primary purpose is to devalue normal currency.

People mint private silver and gold coins,  and as long as they are not purposely imitating US currency their is no issue. Bitcoin would have an even more tenuous connection due to it's nature.  I would be happy to argue this in front of a federal court

And you are going to explain that to a federal judge?

I was not able to find anything else on the currency law besides this...

Section 19...

http://www.constitution.org/uslaw/coinage1792.txt

So to apply this to "modernity", the crime here is debasement of US dollar and the "conspiracy" is involvement of everyone to commit just that.

Conspiracy is know as an inchoate crime (Inchoate = Just begun and so not fully formed or developed)

The main inchoate crimes are:
Attempt (specific intent to commit a crime)
Solicitation (Enticing others to commit a crime)
Conspiracy (agreeing with others to commit a crime)

A person generally is guilty of conspiracy to commit a crime if that person does one of the following:

with the purpose of facilitating or promoting its commission, agrees with another person to engage in conduct that constitutes a crime or an attempt or solicitation of a crime;

or

agrees to aid another person in planning, committing, or attempting to solicit a crime.

The key element is that the proposed endeavor must be illegal, so, for example, one cannot have a criminal conspiracy to throw a surprise birthday party. There is nothing facially illegal about Bitcoin, so any enterprise or group working together with Bitcoins would probably not be guilty of a criminal conspiracy. Certainly there are crimes that can be done with Bitcoins and would be subject to conspiracy charges, e.g. a ring of people hacking and stealing wallets, an agreement  between to or more people to hide or evade taxes etc.

Normal day-to-day Bitcoin activities such as mining, selling Bitcoins and trading Bitcoins for goods are not criminal and any agreement to do so would not constitute a conspiracy

Interesting. How does a conspiracy differ from premeditation? Premeditation is usually proved by the parties having carried out some kind of planning to commit a crime.

Is a conspiracy charge different in that proof premeditation is not required?

Is a conspiracy the forerunner to premeditation, like just talking to a friend that it would be nice to plan to rob a bank, but not actually starting yet making sketches?

If conspiring to support free trade were a crime, every government in the WTO would be guilty.

Welcome to thoughtcrime, bro.

http://criminal.laws.com/conspiracy

According to this, we are all fucked in the face of law.