Pastors are Being Jailed for Laundering; Bitcoin Might Finally Be A Real Currency

As some of you might know, the Wondrous World of Finance™ has been in something over a dither over the hottest new trend: Bitcoin.

See, it’s value is skyrocketing with a speed and potency rarely seen outside Tesla stock after a bad earnings result. Suddenly, something that only the nerdiest of finance nerds even knew about one year ago is a topic of conversation between retirees and their beleaguered financial advisers. Jamie Dimon hates it, yet his daughter loves it.Goldman Sachs is studying it, and the biggest futures market-maker is now trading it. In Dubai, you can even speculatively overpay for real estate with it.

But that’s all fun and games. See, the real fun with Bitcoin is a fundamental debate over Bitcoin: Is Bitcoin – like – money?

And this isn’t a question for you lawyer types, it’s an existential one. The legality of Bitcoin is amorphous as hell, sure, but that is not really a concern for anyone who really knows how to create profits in the market. What makes Bitcoin’s ineffable mystery of existence so compelling is thatit doesn’t behave like money.

See currencies fluctuate in relative value to one another based on macroeconomic factors and the geopolitical events that shape them. Wheras Bitcoin’s value looks like this:

That chart is what a buttoned-up, data-driven, humorless financial analyst would term “Totally fucking bananas.”

Basically, debating what Bitcoin is, feels kind of like debating what government is with your sophomore year college roommate after 11 bong rips. It’s…murky.

But thanks to the legal justice system, we have a super-helpful new data point in the phenomenological debate over Bitcoin. Take it away, Reuters:

A New Jersey pastor was sentenced to five years in prison for scheming to help an illegal bitcoin exchange escape scrutiny from banks and regulators.

Trevon Gross, 47, was sentenced on Monday by U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan, who also ordered him to pay a $12,000 fine, U.S. prosecutors said.

Holy shit. Bitcoin is money, you guys!

If men of the cloth in New Jersey are getting convicted of laundering it, Bitcoin is behaving more like regular money than we ever dreamed it could. But this being Bitcoin, we have to assume that this plot was some next-level fraudulent thinking. It’s not like something as ingeniously ethereal as a cryptocurrency could be handled by common criminals…

Prosecutors charged that Gross took bribes from Lebedev and the operator of Coin.mx, Anthony Murgio, including $150,000 in donations to his church, HOPE Cathedral in Jackson, New Jersey. In exchange, they said, Gross helped Murgio take over a small credit union associated with the church.

Murgio used the credit union to evade scrutiny of banks wary of processing payments involving the virtual currency, prosecutors said.

Nope, that’s pretty damn stupid. Bitcoin is money!

In fact, maybe it is time for you legal eagles to get in on this action. If Bitcoin is going to end up in the asinine schemes of morons, it’s going to open up a whole new reality for white collar criminal defense lawyers. Have you ever dreamt of a whole new way for your clients to get caught insider trading? Well, how about a whole new form of money for them to get caught doing all the old dumb shit with? It’s a bonanza!

Bitcoin is money. And life is good.

New Jersey pastor sentenced to five years for bitcoin exchange scheme [Reuters]