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A Florida court just dismissed a money laundering case and said that bitcoin isn’t “money.”

That result is unsurprising given the uncertainty that surrounds state regulation of businesses in this space; an area of law we've been working hard to rationalize.

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Blog Financial Surveillance

There’s a great passage in the Court’s opinion:

The Florida Legislature may choose to adopt statutes regulating virtual currency in the future. At this time. however, attempting to fit the sale of Bitcoin into a statutory scheme regulating money services businesses is like fitting a square peg in a round hole.

We’ve had a lot of time to think about square pegs and round holes; our State Framework explains the two approaches for state regulation that we favor, either:

  1. Clearly issue regulatory guidance excluding virtual currencies from existing money transmission regulation, or
  2. Craft new legislation (not regulation or guidance) that would set up a regulatory system that countenances the peculiar squareness of a virtual currency peg.

You can see how different states have measured up against our framework on our State Tracker. You’ll notice that Florida is not on that tracker because there hasn’t been any new guidance or legislation proposed there in this space: which may explain the confusion that led to this case.