A University professor testified Friday at a money laundering trial in Miami, Florida, that Bitcoin could not be considered money under Florida law and was more akin to poker chips.
Barry University associate economics professor Charles Evans made the claim during the trial of Michell Espinoza, who according to The Miami Herald is accused of illegally selling and laundering $1,500 worth of Bitcoins to undercover detectives who claimed they wanted to use them to buy stolen credit card numbers.
Espinoza’s defense team is arguing that the laundering charges are invalid due to the fact that Bitcoin isn’t technically money under local law.
“Basically, it’s poker chips that people are willing to buy from you,” Evans testified, despite the ironic fact that he was being paid $3,000 in Bitcoin for his appearance as a defense witness.
When asked by an attorney “is Bitcoin an actual coin…in a sense a physical piece of base metal?,” Evans replied “No.”
In addition, Evans also testified that no central bank backs Bitcoin, that regulation within the United States is scattered and nonuniform, and that the IRS considers trading with Bitcoin as bartering, before going on to liken Bitcoin worth to how collectors assign values to baseball cards or comic books.
http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/05/31/defense-claims-bitcoin-is-not-money-in-miami-laundering-case/
