Charlie Shrem Resigns from Bitcoin Foundation After Money Laundering Conspiracy

Charlie Shrem, Vice Chairmen of the virtual currency exchange company Bitcoin Foundation has resigned from his position following his arrest yesterday for potential involvement in the illegal drug trafficking occurring on Silk Road.

Shrem’s company, Bitinstant, is used as a means to front credit and speed up bitcoin transactions, and it’s through this that Shern is under investigation for supposedly having sold bitcoins to Robert Faiella, who then sold these for a profit on the Silk Road forums. While the Bitcoin Foundation is not agreeing with or admitting to Shern’s guilt, in order to protect their own interests they have been distancing themselves from him.

“As a foundation, we need to remain focused on our core mission to standardize, protect, and promote the Bitcoin core protocol,” said director Jon Matonis. “While Charlie has contributed a great deal of personal effort and resources to enhance the adoption of Bitcoin worldwide, a prolonged legal dispute would inevitably detract from advancing that core mission. Therefore, in order to focus on his pending trial, it has been mutually decided that Charlie Shrem resign from the Board of Directors, effective immediately. The Board accepted that resignation today.”

Shrem is a major advocate of Virtual Currency, and even owns a bar in midtown manhattan which accepts bitcoins as a form of payment. Shrem is currently facing one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering (up to 20 years prison sentence), one count of operating an unlicensed money transferring business (up to 5 years), and lastly one count of willful failure to submit a suspicious persons report (up to 5 years).

Source: The Verge