This could easily be the open move in a general crackdown, a sympathetic test case to establish that operating a bitcoin exchange == money laundering, with broader applications of that precedent to follow.
If this was a test case of that principle, you'd think it would allege "operating a bitcoin exchange" as the basis of the money laundering prosecution, rather than a whole bunch of things that would be money laundering if you replaced bitcoins with anything else, including US dollars.
After all, if there is no unique principle asserted in the case, it can't establish precedent for any new principle. And all that is being alleged here is bog-standard money laundering by actively, intentionally structuring transactions to avoid $ limits and obscure account identities to avoid transactions being identified as violating anti-money-laundering policies, with knowledge that this was being done to further illegal transactions, particularly, narcotics purchases.
The only principle this stands for is "money laundering is still money laundering when bitcoins are used in the process."