Bitcoin Enables Drug Dealing, Just as Major Banks Do

Two weeks ago, Pascal Reid and Michel Abner Espinoza were arrested by police in Miami and charged with using the virtual currency Bitcoin to launder money. The week before, Charlie Shrem, co-founder and chief executive officer of BitInstant, was arrested in New York getting off a plane from Amsterdam. Shrem was charged by federal prosecutors with conspiracy to commit money laundering linked to alleged sales of more than $1 million in Bitcoins to people who wanted to buy drugs on Silk Road, a now defunct online marketplace.

The arrests underlined growing concerns among U.S. law enforcement officials that Bitcoin has become the preferred currency of the criminal underworld and that currency exchanges such as Shrem’s have become the enablers of drug trafficking and other nefarious enterprises. But you know who else has a history of enabling nefarious criminal enterprises? Banks.