Yes, I am using this meme, moving on: yesterday CoinDesk reported that New York Federal Judge Alison Nathan ruled that “bitcoins are funds within the plain meaning of that term.”

In other words, bitcoin is currency.

Before you celebrate (or cry), other U.S. judges this year have also ruled that bitcoin is most definitely not currency. (Hence the meme usage.)

“To me a lot of [the bitcoin debate] is like, when Europeans first encountered the duck-billed platypus they were confused: ‘Is it a mammal?  Or a bird, or what?’” said cryptocurrency trader Jacob Eliosoff, of the constantly vacillating local rulings. “The answer of course was that it was something new, with a mix of properties of the animals known before.  Bitcoin is like this: we’re never going to get a single conclusive answer like, ‘They solved it — it’s a currency!’”

There has been ruling after ruling after ruling for years on whether bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are actually currencies—like Miami Judge Teresa Mary Pooler’s decision this July that bitcoin is more akin to property than money, and property is the way the IRS is choosing tax it, according to its March 2014 notice.

As a federal rather than local ruling, Nathan’s decision has the potential to be somewhat more disruptive than past judgments, but that potential still doesn’t address how two judges and a host of other lawmakers can look long and hard at the same thing and come up with two completely opposing conclusions—currency or property—on what it is.

“Nathan’s new ‘It’s money’ ruling makes somewhat more sense to me than the Florida judge Pooler’s previous ruling that it wasn’t,” says Eliosoff. “But I agree with Pooler that the task of updating the definitions belongs more rightly with legislators, not judges.”

A lot of the confusion has to do with the fact that, per Eliosoff’s point, bitcoin can act as both property and currency, depending on how it’s used by its holders.

Pooler was judging a case where the defendant—Michell Espinoza—was selling his bitcoins directly, where Nathan was judging the conduct of Anthony Murgio, who was an operator on the now-shuttered bitcoin exchange Coin.mx.

Pooler ruled that Espinoza was selling property directly—which is legal—while Nathan rejected Murgio’s bid that his conduct did not count as money laundering because bitcoin isn’t money. Nathan ruled bitcoin was being used as money in this case, which makes Murgio’s actions illegal.

If you’re confused don’t worry, most people are—the only thing that would put an end to the debate is probably a judgement by the Supreme Court, and no one really seems to think we’re going to get there anytime soon.

“Only the juiciest cases go that high,” says Eliosoff. “The Supremes have better uses for their time!”

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