Money transmission is a licensed, strictly regulated, and strict liability carrying industry in the United States.
If there is one way to get the entire weight of the Department of Justice dropped on your head, it is to screw around and provide criminal/money laundering friendly financial transaction primitives.
Then, if you employ the internet or any State border crossing network to do it, it's wire fraud. If you lie to the Feds, and get caught having done so intentionally, that's a felony.
The law is not a computer. The judge and prosecution care not one iota for your imagined interpretation of what the law should be, and most of the time, the jury just wants to get it over with. In this case, it's likely the jury is going to be a lot more sympathetic to the victims of those who benefitted from this operation than the operators.
As I just explained, they did not launder any money. They served HTML/JS that users ran client side to effect their own transactions. Their service was completely passive in the transaction. Conceptually, it was no different than hosting a Github page.
They provided what is effectively open source wallet software, and you're suggesting other people using that software on their own computers, to commit crimes, should make them liable.
If the banal arguments of you anti-crypto ideologues are accepted by the courts, it would have absolutely devastating implications for Open Source software, Free Speech rights and technological innovation.
If there is one way to get the entire weight of the Department of Justice dropped on your head, it is to screw around and provide criminal/money laundering friendly financial transaction primitives.
Then, if you employ the internet or any State border crossing network to do it, it's wire fraud. If you lie to the Feds, and get caught having done so intentionally, that's a felony.
The law is not a computer. The judge and prosecution care not one iota for your imagined interpretation of what the law should be, and most of the time, the jury just wants to get it over with. In this case, it's likely the jury is going to be a lot more sympathetic to the victims of those who benefitted from this operation than the operators.
Would not want to be them/10