Bitcoin money transfers
Goklu v. United States
In brief
- Where it stands
- Dismissed
Petition denied.
- What it’s about
- Michael Goklu asks whether his bitcoin-for-cash trades with the same customer counted as money transmission (moving money for someone else), though he says he was the trade’s other side, not a carrier.
- Who it affects
- Goklu received no Supreme Court review, and the Court made no decision on either legal question.
Summary: written with AI from the case record.
What it's about
He also asks whether the trial court could add after the defense’s closing argument that the exchange could count as a transfer.
Goklu says he was the other side of the trades, not a go-between carrying a customer’s value to someone else.
Question presented
1. Whether a dealer’s immediate bilateral exchange of bitcoin and cash with the same customer — acting as counterparty rather than carrying accepted customer value to a separate recipient — constitutes "money transmitting" under 18 U.S.C. § 1960 and the law governing petitioner’s 2018-2019 conduct, where the court of appeals truncated 31 U.S.C. § 5330(d)(2) after "by any means" and treated delivery of either medium back to the customer as transmission to "another location."? 2. Whether Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 30 and due process permit a court, after the defense relied in summation on the announced charge, to add that "exchanging Bitcoin for U.S. currency can qualify as a transfer," resolving the central statutory issue before the Government’s rebuttal.
Documents
Docket activity
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AI analysis generated: Case Briefing
AI analysis generated: Decision Record
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Sources
Primary materials plus reporting. Best-effort analysis: this explainer relies on a mix of primary materials and trusted secondary sources. Official filings and opinions remain authoritative.