shrem

Fortunately, this case is much more about Charlie Shrem and his penchant for violating laws than Bitcoin itself.

Likely but it doesn't take a trained compliance officer to not do the things Shrem did choose to do.

The state itself is far, far more morally culpable for whatever true evil was actually brought on by Ulbricht than Shrem himself is.

To make matters worse, while Shrem was CEO he was simultaneously BitInstant’s compliance officer, responsible for ensuring that his company followed the law.

And if you don't do that, then you risk finding yourself, like Shrem did, in a place which really wasn't a legal place to be.

Charlie Shrem was arrested for Silk Road related Bitcoin charges.

> Fortunately, this case is much more about Charlie Shrem and his penchant for violating laws than Bitcoin itself.

And all Shrem did was enable people to participate in this market (which a priori is not illegal, as it traded baseball caps and hamburgers, too, Shrem was agnostic about what the bitcoins were used for, and did not even sell them to Silk Road users, but to someone who resold them to Silk Road users).

I don't personally think drugs should be illegal at all, but I do think that funding crimes in general should be illegal, which is essentially what Shrem was charged with here.

I don't know the details; but I strongly suspect that while Shrem very likely knew he was laundering 'illegal' money (at least, I think he would have done it whether he knew or not), he was not ripping people off on purpose.

I don't see how a state enforcing categorically insane policy, creating inevitable black market, creating an inevitable marketplace, creating an accidental king-pin, who has allegedly committed murder-for-fire has anything to do with the moral ground on which charlie shrem stands with laundering money for a drug dealer.

I don't know anything about the case against Charlie Shrem, but that "and" groups Charlie Shrem and the Silk Road operators into the same bucket.

With "VIPs" like Charlie Shrem, Mark Karpeles, and the likes, it's doomed to fail!

The “police have been devoting a huge amount of resources to track down peaceful people engaged in voluntary trade like Charlie Shrem and the operators of the Silk Road Market,” Ver says The part you left out is the most context that that statement was made by Ver, someone interviewed for the article, and no real claim was being made that the Silk Road is peacefully run.

> police have been devoting a huge amount of resources to track down peaceful people engaged in voluntary trade like Charlie Shrem and the operators of the Silk Road Market Um, the "operator(s) of Silk Road Market" allegedly attempted to hire a contract killer.

Shrem was the compliance officer for a company and he deliberately broke the company's own compliance policies.

Shrem himself didn't use Silk Road; he bypassed his own company's AML process to help a known SR user exchange BTC.

Personally, I find it hard to feel too bad for Shrem; since he was sloppy and loud..