Instructions: In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Input: A Miami-Dade judge ruled Monday that Bitcoin is not actually money, a decision hailed by proponents of the virtual currency that has become popular across the world. 
  
 In a case closely watched in financial and tech circles, the judge threw out the felony charges against website designer Michell Espinoza, who had been charged with illegally transmitting and laundering $1,500 worth of Bitcoins. He sold them to undercover detectives who told him they wanted to use the money to buy stolen credit-card numbers. 
  
 But Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Teresa Mary Pooler ruled that Bitcoin was not backed by any government or bank, and was not “tangible wealth” and “cannot be hidden under a mattress like cash and gold bars.” 
  
 “The court is not an expert in economics; however, it is very clear, even to someone with limited knowledge in the area, the Bitcoin has a long way to go before it the equivalent of money,” Pooler wrote in an eight-page order. 
  
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 The judge also wrote that Florida law — which says someone can be charged with money laundering if they engage in a financial transaction that will “promote” illegal activity — is way too vague to apply to Bitcoin. 
  
 “This court is unwilling to punish a man for selling his property to another, when his actions fall under a statute that is so vaguely written that even legal professionals have difficulty finding a singular meaning,” she wrote. 
  
 The ruling was lauded by Bitcoin experts who believe the ruling will encourage the use of the virtual currency, and offer a roadmap to governments across the world that have struggled to understand and regulate it. 
  
 Espinoza’s attorney, Rene Palomino, said the judge’s order was “beautifully written.” 
  
 “At least it gives the Bitcoin community some guidance that what my client did was not illegal,” Palomino said. “What he basically did was sell his own personal property. Michell Espinoza did not violate the law, plain and simple.” 
  
 A spokesman for the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office said: “We are presently reviewing the court order to determine whether we will be appealing this decision.” 
  
 Law enforcement has struggled to figure out how Bitcoin fits into illegal activities, and Espinoza’s case was believed to be the first money-laundering prosecution involving the virtual currency. 
  
 The controversial virtual currency allows some users to spend money anonymously and it can be also be bought and sold on exchanges with U.S. dollars and other currencies. 
  
 The currency has gained popularity with merchants selling legitimate goods and services. In Miami, there are a few restaurants that accept the virtual currency — and even a plastic surgeon. 
  
 Regulated services such as CoinBase, which operates similarly to PayPal, allow people to buy, sell and use the Bitcoins. But authorities have raised concerns about the currency being used in the anonymous black market. 
  
 Most notoriously, Bitcoins were used to traffic drugs in the now-shuttered Silk Road network. In an unrelated South Florida case, a Miramar man got 10 years in prison after using Bitcoins to buy Chinese-made synthetic heroin from a Canadian prisoner. 
  
 In Espinoza’s case, Miami Beach detectives found him through a Bitcoin exchange site, LocalBitcoins.com, and told him they were going to use the currency to purchase stolen credit-card numbers. 
  
 The detectives met with Espinoza, 32, three times in person: on Lincoln Road, at an ice cream shop and in a hotel room. 
  
 Espinoza was arrested along with another man, Pascal Reid, who pleaded guilty to acting as an unlicensed money broker and was sentenced to probation. Under his unusual plea deal, he agreed to teach law enforcement about Bitcoin. 
  
 At a hearing in May, a defense expert, Barry University economics professor Charles Evans, testified that Bitcoin was not actually money. 
  
 No central government or bank backs Bitcoin, like the United States does the dollar. Government regulation of Bitcoin remains a messy hodgepodge from state to state, country to country. The IRS considers Bitcoin deals no more than bartering, he said. 
  
 “Basically, it’s poker chips that people are willing to buy from you,” said Evans, a virtual-currency expert who was paid $3,000 in Bitcoins for his defense testimony. 
  
 The judge’s decision will help Bitcoin flourish in Miami and countries where banking system are tenuous, Evans said in an interview on Monday. 
  
 “Bitcoin is perfect for small-scale cross-border transactions and we are international in this area,” Evans said. “If somebody from Venezuela needs a hammer, now that person can send Bitcoin to his cousin in Miami, that cousin can sell the Bitcoin, go buy the hammer and send it to Venezuela.” 
  
 The ruling could also spark a push to tweak Florida law. Judge Pooler, in her ruling, said the state’s money-laundering law that targets transactions that “promote” illegal activity requires a “much-needed update.” 
  
 “Hopefully, the Florida Legislature or an appellate court will define ‘promote’ so individuals who believe their conduct is legal are not arrested,” Pooler wrote. |||||  
  
 A Bitcoin, virtual currency, coin is seen in an illustration picture taken at La Maison du Bitcoin in Paris in July 2014. (REUTERS/Benoit Tessier) 
  
 The hotel room was wired with cameras and microphones, and in it sat $30,000 in fake $100 bills. Miami Beach Detective Ricardo Arias, working undercover as an identity thief, flipped them in front of Michell Abner Espinoza. A “flash-roll,” it’s called, the kind you see in the movies where bad guys flick through wads of cash before holding it up in the air. 
  
 For that $30,000, Espinoza had agreed to sell a slew of bitcoins, the almost unregulated virtual currency, which Arias’s character said he would exchange for stolen Russian credit-card numbers. 
  
 The sting was designed to catch Espinoza, then 30 of Miami, laundering money. Florida law prohibits using financial transactions to “promote” illicit activity, such as, in this case, credit-card fraud. 
  
 Ultimately, Arias arrested Espinoza on three felony counts of money laundering, capping a three-month investigation in 2014 into South Florida’s exchange of computerized money. 
  
 But a Florida circuit-court judge ruled Monday that bitcoin is not money at all. And if you don’t have money, you can’t exactly launder it. 
  
 In an eight-page opinion made available by the Miami Herald, Judge Teresa Pooler acknowledged that she could not explain what bitcoin is. “Nothing in our frame of references allows us to accurately define or describe Bitcoin,” she wrote. 
  
 But she was able to say what bitcoin isn’t: It’s not money. 
  
 “Bitcoin may have some attributes in common with what we commonly refer to as money,” she wrote. It can be “exchanged for items of value,” for example, but unlike money, not always. It’s accepted by some merchants and service providers but unlike money, not by all of them. Unlike money, bitcoin’s value fluctuates wildly. “With such volatility, they have a limited ability to act as a store of value, another important attribute of money.” 
  
 The charges were dismissed. 
  
 It was only the latest chapter in a long and as yet unresolved argument about where virtual currency, most prominently, bitcoin, fits within a regulatory and legal framework that never anticipated its rise. 
  
 Bitcoin is a decentralized “virtual currency” with fluctuating value designed in 2009 as a way to transact business, sometimes illegal, without the constraints or scrutiny attached to real money. 
  
 Once created, bitcoins can be bought and sold online. Some retailers, including Amazon.com, Target and Microsoft, accept bitcoins or work with financial services firms to convert the coins into cash. 
  
 Bitcoin is virtual money that cuts out banks and credit card companies. Here's what you need to know about the original cryptocurrency. (Davin Coburn/The Washington Post) 
  
 And all of that has left lawmakers flummoxed about how to approach the currency. 
  
 “Attempts to categorize Bitcoin into existing regulatory constructs have proven to be difficult,” wrote Kevin V. Tu and Michael Meredith in the Washington Law Review. 
  
 The Internal Revenue Service in 2014 declared that bitcoin would be taxed as physical property. If you sell it and make a profit, it’s taxable as if it were a house or a share of stock. Last year, the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission defined virtual currencies as commodities for regulatory purposes. 
  
 Despite its increasingly common use, many see bitcoin as inherently dirty, used when people have something to conceal. That is what Arias and Secret Service special agent Gregory Ponzi thought when they began their investigation in 2013. 
  
 “There is unquestionably no evidence that the Defendant did anything wrong, other than sell his Bitcoin to an investigator who wanted to make a case,” Pooler wrote. 
  
 On localbitcoins.com, Arias and Ponzi found a user named “Michelhack.” He asked potential buyers to contact him anytime, day or night. He liked to meet in public places such as coffee shops and malls, he wrote on his online profile, and buyers had to pay in cash in person. 
  
 Arias and Ponzi homed in. A man with 24-hour availability operating solely in bitcoin and cash was a sign of someone up to no good, they said. Arias on Dec. 4, 2013, asked for a trade: $500 for 40 percent of a bitcoin. 
  
 The pair met at a Nespresso Cafe in Miami Beach. Espinoza took a liking to Arias’s character. The two sat and chatted after the sale. He told Arias about the bitcoin trade. He said he bought the coins for 10 percent below market value and sold at a 5 percent margin. 
  
 On his $500 sale, Espinoza made $83.67, he said. 
  
 A week later, Arias texted Espinoza again. He wanted $1,000 in bitcoin, and they met at a Miami Haagen-Dazs. 
  
 Over frozen treats, Arias told Espinoza that he used the bitcoin to buy stolen Russian credit-card numbers. During the next transaction, he offered to pay with those instead of cash. 
  
 “I’ll think about it,” Espinoza replied. He and Arias did not speak for three weeks. 
  
 A flurry of texts came Jan. 30, 2014. Arias wanted $500 worth of bitcoins. The two made the trade electronically. 
  
 Then came the detective’s big ask: $30,000 in bitcoins. 
  
 They met at a hotel Feb. 6, talking briefly in the lobby before heading up to the room Arias and Ponzi had bugged. There, the exchange happened, and Espinoza’s arrest for money laundering. 
  
 In front of Pooler, and for the next two years, Espinoza said he had not broken any laws. He was trading in bitcoin, not money, so how could he be charged with laundering money? That Arias wanted to use the virtual currency for illicit activity was none of Espinoza’s concern, his attorneys argued. 
  
 Defense attorney Frank Andrew Prieto held up a 1966 U.S. quarter in court and asked expert witness Charles Evans, a Barry University economist, “Is bitcoin an actual coin?” 
  
 “In a sense of a physical piece of base metal?” said Evans, who was paid $3,000 in bitcoins for his appearance in court. “No.” 
  
 “This is the most fascinating thing I’ve heard in this courtroom in a long time,” Pooler said in court. |||||
Output:
Bitcoins may be valuable in tech circles, but to a judge in Miami-Dade County, the virtual money is nothing more than shadow currency. On Monday, Judge Teresa Mary Pooler discarded felony charges against website designer Michell Espinoza, who had been accused of transmitting and laundering $1,500 in bitcoins—an impossible-to-prove charge since bitcoin isn't actual "tangible wealth" that can "be hidden under a mattress like cash and gold bars," per the Miami Herald. Espinoza had allegedly transferred the bitcoins to undercover detectives for cash, the Washington Post reports; the detectives said they were going to scoop up stolen credit-card numbers with them. The paper explains how Florida law forbids exchanging money for "illicit" activity such as the credit card fraud Espinoza was accused of trying to abet. But in her eight-page ruling, Pooler noted that while she couldn't "accurately define or describe Bitcoin"—and also couldn't deny that in some (but not all) circumstances it could be "exchanged for items of value," like money—neither could she deem that it was actual money, rendering the charges against Espinoza moot. Quartz notes how Pooler isn't the only one confused about how to categorize bitcoin, with the legal system still struggling with how to deal with the concept. Espinoza's lawyer, not surprisingly, called the judge's decision "beautifully written" and said all Espinoza had done was "sell his own personal property." The Miami-Dade state attorney’s office is deciding whether to appeal. (What about Ethereum, aka "Bitcoin 2.0"?)