After facing federal money laundering charges, accused of aiding the notorious Silk Road drug market, bitcoin booster Charlie Shrem is taking a plea bargain. He seems very happy about it.

Reuters has the report:

Charlie Shrem has reached a plea deal to resolve U.S. charges that he engaged in a scheme to sell over $1 million of the digital currency to users of illicit online marketplace Silk Road, his lawyer said Friday.

Shrem, the former vice chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, will plead guilty next Thursday in New York federal court to unlicensed money transmission, Marc Agnifilo, his lawyer told Reuters in an email.

Shrem, who describes himself as "an apostle of Satoshi Nakamoto" and "a crusader for a new, better, tech-driven society," previously faced a series of much more serious charges, but could still get some prison time, the Wall Street Journal reports. Now, he won't.

In a quote provided to the New York Times, he seemed defiant, as if pleading to a criminal act in connection with a drug dealing service was just a way of getting the cops off his back:

"They want a guilty plea on their books, and that's what they're going to get," Mr. Shrem said on Saturday from his parents' home in Brooklyn. "They got a Bitcoiner."

We'll see how long they really get him for. Until then, he's partying:

Photo: Getty