currency money-laundering cryptocurrency
Are identifiable cryptocurrency miners helping crime?
<p>Say there is a cryptocurrency whose issuers use electronic signatures issued by the government to prevent Sybil attacks (identity forging) to the voting mechanism when new currency units are created. The identity of currency issuers is pseudonymous to the general public but the issuers can be exactly identified by the government.</p>

<p>Lets assume the cryptocurrency is reliable and gets widely adopted among the public. After some time someone commits a crime using the cryptocurrency as a medium (maybe to pay for a murder etc.). Can the original currency issuers be judged for accessory (helping to commit crime) since they were the origin of the money? There may be many transactions from money creation to the final criminal. The transactions may either be pseudonymous (=traceable, like bitcoin) or fully anonymous. The type of transactions may be set before the cryptocurrency is created.</p>

<p>Here are the suggested federal <a href="http://www.mad.uscourts.gov/resources/pattern2003/html/patt9z1w.htm" rel="noreferrer">jury instructions</a> for aiding and abetting:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>To "aid and abet" means intentionally to help someone else commit a
  crime. To establish aiding and abetting, the government must prove
  beyond a reasonable doubt:</p>
  
  <p>First, that someone else committed the charged crime; and</p>
  
  <p>Second, that [defendant] consciously shared the other person's
  knowledge of the underlying criminal act, intended to help [him/her],
  and [willfully] took part in the endeavor, seeking to make it succeed.</p>
  
  <p>[Defendant] need not perform the underlying criminal act, be present
  when it is performed, or be aware of the details of its execution to
  be guilty of aiding and abetting. But a general suspicion that an
  unlawful act may occur or that something criminal is happening is not
  enough. Mere presence at the scene of a crime and knowledge that a
  crime is being committed are also not sufficient to establish aiding
  and abetting.</p>
  
  <p>[An act is done "willfully" if done voluntarily and intentionally with
  the intent that something the law forbids be done - that is to say
  with bad purpose, either to disobey or disregard the law.]</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Based on this, I would say a miner would not be guilty.  They would have no more than a "general suspicion that an unlawful act may occur" at most, and that's not enough.</p>
