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If federal anti-money laundering rules ‘killed’ Bitcoin’s anonymity, could consumer protection rules ‘kill’ its irrevocability?
Last March, the crypto-currency world was struck dumb when the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the United States federal agency responsible for enforcing anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing regulations, issued the now famous interpretive guidance equating exchangers and administrators of ‘convertible virtual currencies’ to money transmitters.
Although some of us saw it coming, crypto-preneurs are just now slowly waking up to the reality of what it really means to be this particular species of non-bank financial institution. See the final section for a compendium of risks and obligations.
One set of regulations that I included in the laundry list of obligations last April but has yet to come to the fore are the federal consumer protection rules emanating from the Dodd-Frank Act and being enforced by the Continue reading
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(Or as hard-core Bitcoiners want it, I should say.)
“U.S. crypto-preneurs who don’t factor in regulation could under-budget their ventures by, at a minimum, a quarter of a million dollars annually.”
Rocky week for the crypto-currency world this past one! All of the following happened over the course of the last seven to ten days:
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In July of 2008, after months of wrangling with the Department of Justice (DOJ), E-Gold, Ltd.’s senior management and directors pleaded guilty to the following charges:
What does E-Gold have to do with Bitcoin?
Well, as soon as I describe what E-Gold was and did, you’ll see that the parallels with Bitcoin and its crypto-brethren are remarkably similar. I will be quoting from the indictment itself, underlining Bitcoin-relevant language, and adding comments in brackets:
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