Mark Alexander Hopkins, also known by the moniker ‘Doctor Bitcoin’ or their handle Rizzn, has claimed that “transacting Bitcoin p2p is a federal crime” after announcing the sentence in their case to social media followers.
In a Sunday Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) thread, Hopkins said that they were facing between 6 to 15 months at a federal correctional institution in Texas following a guilty plea for allegedly operating a crypto business without the necessary licensing. According to Rizzn, the U.S. Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, used a 2019 interpretation of a law — 18 U.S.C. 1960 — originally enacted in 1992 to charge them with illegally operating a “money transmitting business.”