[mikeyouse]

The difference is always the proportion, obfuscating that is pretty dishonest.

HSBC laundered something like $9 billion for the cartels from 2006 - 2009.[1] As of Dec 2009, they had $2.36 trillion in assets.[2] Money laundering is clearly illegal and $9 billion isn't a small amount of money, but their business wouldn't have changed at all without that 0.3% of dirty cash. You can absolutely make the case that the penalties should be larger (although $2 billion in fines is a pretty good start considering they didn't keep the deposited cash) and that executives should have criminal liability, but there's nuance to both of those things.

There's just no comparison to BTC-E (or any of the darknet markets that people insist are 'just like' eBay) who solely exist to launder money and facilitate illegal goods.

[1] - https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/opa/legacy/2012/...

[2] - http://www.annualreports.com/HostedData/AnnualReportArchive/...

[celticninja]

Btce didn't exist solely to launder no way though. It was used by many people to legally trade cryptos.