As
Rick Falkvinge points out:
It becomes increasingly clear that the arrest of BitInstant CEO Charlie Shrem is a harassment arrest, intended to spread chilling effects, an arrest that has no judicial basis whatsoever but to demonstrate wielding of power by a repressive police system.
Indeed, this is a KIDNAPPING, not an arrest.
The funny thing is that even IF it were a genuine money laundering charge, Shrem would still be
morally innocent, because the money was (allegedly) used to buy drugs, not to steal or murder or otherwise cause harm to someone.
If some guy in a suit who calls himself a "lawmaker" writes on a piece of paper that it is "unlawful" to eat chicken, and you are "caught" eating chicken and forcibly taken away from your home -- would you call that an "arrest" or a kidnapping?
Nobody is harmed by you eating chicken. Nobody was harmed by what Charlie Shrem is alleged to have done by people believing themselves to be "authority." If we assume the charges against Sherm are true, who exactly was harmed? The answer is obviously nobody.
(The charges are: one count of conspiring to commit money laundering, one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, and one count of wilfully failing to file a suspicious activity report.)
As much as I like CoinDesk, they ran an article by a clueless/spineless Daniel Cawrey, who
writes:
The reality is, it is Shrem’s alleged negligence, not the government’s actions, that got him into his current precarious position.
Really? So if I tell you that I'm the authority and you have to do as I say but you don't, and I then kidnap (arrest) you, it's your negligence, not my actions, that got you into such a precarious position? Who exactly grants me or people who say they are "the government" such "authority"? Cawrey hints at the answer a bit longer down the article:
"The [Bank Secrecy Act] gives FinCEN the authority under the auspices of the US Treasury to “determine emerging trends and methods in money laundering and other financial crimes”, according to the FinCEN website." - Oh, so a piece of paper, entitled Bank Secrecy Act, written by some self-serving "lawmakers," is what gives some people the right to initiate violent action against people who don't have that right. I see.
Cawrey continues:
Bitcoin has a long way to go to reach credibility to a mainstream audience. As a result, Shrem’s alleged crimes are a detriment to everyone who is trying to build positive rapport within the cryptocurrency space.
The detriment is the slavish behavior too many in the community are displaying, as exemplified by this journalistic travesty by Cawrey. If all it takes is an accusation of some abstract victimless "crime" to take down one of our own, then we have already lost. You might as well sell all your bitcoins right now for some safe dollars. As a commenter to that article points out:
Extreme wrongdoing? Which part? The part where people are voluntarily and knowingly trading substances (which may or may not be mind-altering -- like thousands of products and drugs you can buy at your local pharmacy)? Or the part where people were smoking dope?
Or wait, the worst part -- the "extreme wrongdoing" -- is the guy who traded one currency unit for another currency unit to avoid being caught in the other aforementioned "wrongdoing"... Those are the bastards we gotta worry about!
This FUD subscribes to the same status-quo load of crap, all of the State's made-up, phony "crimes". Viewed by their "laws," everyone's doing something "illegal" everyday, and anyone the "authorities" don't like will be found to have mud on his shoes and be accused of "extreme wrongdoing".
We may have to live in a world (for the time being) where people continue to believe in witches, but (luckily) we don't have to pretend to believe in witches with them.
Exactly. Continue to believe in witches if you'd like, but the simple and obvious truth is that a man, innocent of any
moral wrong-doing, has been unjustly kidnapped and is being threatened with 25 years in a cage. The fact that the people responsible call themselves "government" has no bearing on the facts. If it was the Mafia doing it nobody would find it acceptable.
As another commenter points out:
Shrem made the mistake of trying to have a business in America. The America Land of the Free as we once knew it is gone. Having any business in the United States today is risky if not an outright stupid endeavor. There are thousands of government workers getting paid to shut you down, harrass you, spy on you, bankrupt you, and lock you in a cage.
The Winklevoss twins, who invested in Shrem's BitInstant, had this to say upon learning of Shrem's arrest:
We were passive investors in BitInstant and will do everything we can to help law enforcement officials. We fully support any and all governmental efforts to ensure that money laundering requirements are enforced, and look forward to clearer regulation being implemented on the purchase and sale of bitcoins.
It's one thing to state "we have no connection to Sherm's alleged illegal activities" but it's another to unthinkingly pander to the oppressor.
Should the public faces of Bitcoin be opportunists who worship at the altar of the state? I don't think so. Bitcoin is the most disruptive technology of our time, more disruptive than the Internet, as
Andreas Antonopoulos and
Stefan Molyneux eloquently explain from differing perspectives. It's people like these who should be the public faces of Bitcoin, not unthinking, cowardly, profit-driven weasels who support oppression if under the umbrella of "government."
The Bitcoin Foundation, a group that ostensibly aims to represent the interests of the Bitcoin community, offers no comment on the facts of the matter, choosing instead to distance itself from its now former member, implicitly making the ridiculous assumption that this kidnapping of one of their members has nothing to do with an attack on Bitcoin.
They -- the control freaks who believe they have authority over other people (exclusive rights) -- are obviously paying a lot more attention to Bitcoin now, this kidnapping happening about the same time as the NY hearings and Gavin's CFR meeting. What all thinking people of conscience should be doing is vocally supporting Shrem, not assuming he's "guilty as charged" and a "bad apple" in the Bitcoin community. If we blindly accept the oppressive "laws" of the system whose greatest threat is cryptocurrencies, rather than guide ourselves by morality and natural law, then they have a chance of destroying/controlling Bitcoin. If we unthinkingly act this way, then it's only a matter of time before they kidnap the next top Bitcoin person.
As Falkvinge says:
This is a harassment arrest apparently intended to intimidate and associate “bitcoin”, “silk road”, “drugs”, and “money laundering” with each other, and the community should take exactly none of this nonsense and this repression. At this point, it’s important to stand up for the bitcoin community and for Shrem against a harassment arrest.
If we don't stand up for Shrem, we are complete idiots waiting for the next blow.
