Bitcoin e cyber self-laundering: lo sguardo sospettoso della Cassazione sull'impiego di criptovaluta

In Judgment n. 27023 of 2022, the italian Supreme Court recognized the confgurability of the crime of self-money laundering in the conduct of a person who uses the proceeds of crimes committed by him to purchase bitcoin, not directly, but through the intermediation of cryptocurrency exchange companies. The Author takes the pronouncement as a starting point to probe the extent to which the culture of suspicion, with which the anti-money laundering legislation is imbued, and the stigmatization of cryptocurrency have influenced the Supreme Court's guidance, in which there emerges a strong temptation to establish a kind of automatism between the input of illicit proceeds into the bitcoin system and the integration of the crimes of money laundering or self-money laundering. The Author sets out to examine whether conduct in the use of cryptocurrencies can actually be sanctioned without resorting to hermeneutic forcing of the incriminating norms.