Bitcoin Forum

American Teen Sentenced to 11 Years for Helping ISIS with Bitcoin (http://bitcoinist.net/american-teen-sentenced-11-years-helping-isil-bitcoin/)

Helping terrorist should always end like this. It does not matter if he gave them FIAT or Bitcoins it is a crime. Thinking this situation is bitcoin fault is illogical, bitcoin it is just a tool.
There will be always some twisted humans who do shit like that.

how they tracked back the address to his real name, i'm curious, if ISIS is at least intelligent enough they should change address for every new "donation"

Also his name is "Ali Shukri Amin" and it doesn't sound as american teen name at all lol...also bitcoin has nothing to do with this it's just payment method...it's retardation of that teen and he deserves it.

What the hell is an american teen name? As far as I know the US is a country of immigrants from all over the world.
You have names like Schmidt, Heinz,  Peterson, Mcloud, Amim, Chevalier, Okabe, Kim and many many more names.

Of course, it has nothing to do at all, but pieces of news like this are not the best 'commercial' for Bitcoin among the general public, especially when we hope for a faster adoption.

agree, this is the typical sensationalist newsletter that only want it, in the end there is no matter if he did it with bitcoin ot fiat, thats not the problem at least IMHO.


im curious about that too, sadly they didnt say it ;)

If you research about the incident, then you will find out that it had hardly anything to do with the Bitcoins. Ali Shukri Amin was sentenced to 11-years in prison, for recruiting American citizens to fight for the ISIS. He had already helped one of his recruits (the 18-year old ethnic Iranian Reza Niknejad) to travel to Syria. Amin was caught before he could send more recruits to the ISIS territory.

This doesn't give Bitcoin nothing in my opinion. It gives it just what you want to give it in the first place. If your view is negative, yes it will add to the negative opinion that you might have.

Dollar should then be the most hated currency of all time. Since it's birth, millions of bad deeds, crimes and criminals have been financed with, and yet, everybody loves when they get some dollar bills.

So as you can see, all is relative and it depends of the one's point of view.

Look thought the names you have written and then look at the one that is listed in article...i'm not racist or anything (thought i'm atheist) but it sounds like name from these countries...

This is the kind of misleading title that the media shouldn't print. This guy was actually recruiting on behalf of ISIS and bitcoin was just incidental to the story.
Sure, this headline draws more eyeballs to the article, but the editor should think twice before clearing a title like that.

well it can happen not only with bitcoins can it? i guess it still gives it bad reputation

That is exactly the point. The prison sentence was handed out for recruiting American citizens in to ISIS (and in my opinion, he was given a very mild punishment, should have been life without parole). Amin was in contact with senior ISIS figures in Syria, and he was trying to convince them to use Bitcoin. The leaders, however decided against using Bitcoin.

hmmm like some one want to buy ton of bitcoin at cheap price

True, I bet people have sent money to ISIS using all sorts of methods including Paypal, but I have never read a headline about someone helping ISIS with Paypal donations. Twitter is full of accounts promoting ISIS, but you don't get the media blaming Twitter. It's a cheap sensationalist headline and t's not going to put people off Bitcoin because people will see through it.

Exactly, I don't see how this should harm bitcoin's reputation in anyway, if someone is helping terrorist he'll go to Jail, it's as simple as that. What means he chose or how he helped them is irrelevant, it's funny how whenever there is bitcoin related to a crime, they stop blaming the actual criminals but put the blame on bitcoin.

Guys, not sure why you keep ignoring the fact that we, Bitcoin users, are not the general public and while we continue to love Bitcoin when we hear bad news involving it, the general public doesn't feel the same way. OK, be it FIAT or BTC, that doesn't change our views, but when it comes to the masses, it's very different, because, unlike BTC, FIAT doesn't need to build a reputation.

Hyram J Winkleberger Jr IV.

You don't get names like that anywhere other than the US.

Its a sad and scary world when it comes to terrorism. Why cant we just get along. Life is to important for such hatred in the world.

Well, we can't just let terrorists spread terror all around the globe. We, as human beings, should still care for our fellowmen. We may not help directly to the cause but we can still do so by giving our sympathy to those who are in trouble.


This, I think is somewhat trivial. As far as I know, no one can actually directly link an address to a real person unless that person advertises his address for whatever reason he/she has. How did they come up with the name of the kid?


Did a quick research on the matter, and I couldn't find hardly anything about bitcoin except for this article. Nice diversion of attention there. Well played.

I do get what you are saying, but what can we do? Go and beg criminals that they don't use Bitcoin for their shady businesses since this will bring us a bad reputation.

I am not trying to make fun of your post, I understand it, but every single currency had to go through these "baby illnesses" so we will have to as well and any other future currency would have to go through the same.

For me, it makes no point on wasting time and discussing this. We better concentrate on things we can change. All we can us keep telling to the non believers that you can do the same with $ and criminals are doing it daily.

Helping terrorists is helping terrorists. Just because they used bitcoin doesn't mean bitcoin is the problem. No such thing as bad press.

There are positives and negatives with regards to many currencies but I guess all being legally recognized doesn't make them look shady but bitcoins being a virtual anonymous currency makes it look even worse. If it can be misused, there are many benefits as well like tax saving, speedy transactions and so on but oh well, all negatives make this currency look so bad.

Dumbo should of sent cash :o

Let's face it, if the guy paid the guy with cash, Euros, or Rubles or Rupees, it would still be news but no one would care about the payment method.

But add bitcoin to the equation, and all of a sudden it's not a slow news day.

We need more legit merchants and services that accept BTC. Merchants (including me, but changing soon) who don't accept bitcoin are losing a market. BTC needs to be able to be the payment method for everything.

For example, what if T-Mobile, the "Un-Carrier", started accepting the "Un-Currency"?  ???

Just a thought.

I think larger companies are waiting for it to be viable in payment processing. Luckily more startups are coming out with fixes to the confirmation time and this whole blocksize debate has sparked a much larger intrest amongst the community about advancing the space needed to be a decent competitor to other established payment processors.

It's coming guys and gals! I feel it!

For your information, in selected countries T-Mobile in already accepting direct Bitcoin payments (I know for a fact that you can pay with bitcoins in Poland).
I am not sure why this is not global trend yet. I guess they are testing the waters.