Ocamm’s Razor doesn’t point me to malice. It’s just as easily a kid trading gift cards $20/time until he has the funds. This looks like an idea that starts small, and frankly when it was invented it wasn’t illegal at the moment of creation.
It’s the story laid out in the court case and the changing of regulations and laws that created the crime. Inception of an idea alone doesn’t lead me to believe the intent was malice; privacy, obfuscation, the lack of funds maybe.
Obfuscation can be as simple as protecting privacy.
As an example I can say the first day I stepped foot in a cryptocurrency community was on IRC about 13 years ago. I didn’t realize Freenode showed your hostmask by default and random people had IPwhois’d my netmask, asking about where I work, pulling up the address on street view…
I’ve exclusively used rented servers bouncers cloaks etc ever since. That’s the community I realized I was dealing with.