Hawkins v. Comlth.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that bitcoin is “money” because it “can be easily purchased in exchange for ordinary currency, acts as a denominator of value, and is used to conduct financial transactions.”
• explaining that the administrator of Silk Road, another Darknet market, had some control over funds in the market users’ accounts
• observing that “Congress designed the statute to keep pace with such evolving threats, which is precisely why it drafted the statute to [broadly] apply to any business involved in transferring ‘funds . . . by any and all means’”
• finding defendant’s activities constituted “transmitting” money under 18 U.S.C. § 1960 in part because he “sold Bitcoin as a product in and of itself” in exchange for “cash deposits”
• \Defendants in this case are charged in connection with their operation of an underground market in the virtual currency 'Bitcoin' via the website 'Silk Road.' \
• “Bitcoin clearly qualifies as ‘money’ or ‘funds’ under these plain meaning definitions” for purposes of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1960

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).