Anyone can make laws, here is one:


It even has fancy numbering!
If you don't, I can and will do.. the same as FinCEN, NOTHING.

who are the lobbying groups involved, and who is paying them?

As long as I only occasionally sell my own Bitcoins I am not engaged as business. As I see it all of this does not affect private users.

There's also this exemption:

- http://cfr.regstoday.com/31cfr1010.aspx#31_CFR_1010p100

The only time I've seen a definition of "infrequent" was in this report from McGladrey in which the definition mentions "fives [trades] or less [per year] and not done for profit":
 - http://bit.ly/XYi9AF

Now that's for needing to register as an MSB.  That doesn't mean you aren't a money transmitter.

As a miner, you are not "engaged as a business in the exchange of virtual currency for real currency, funds, or other virtual currency."

If you return from your holiday with 1000 EUR in cash, and change them at a money changer (or do a swap with someone), are you "engaged as a business in the exchange of real currency for funds, or other virtual currency."?

No.


The law only covers those who "create" virtual currency. E.g. Linden Labs for SLL. I don't see how this can cover miners, who are "granted" virtual currency. I think you are drawing conclusions far too soon here.

bitcoin --->gold---->fiat.

Problem solved.

harvesting? lol

My first thought when I read about this ruling was, like many, "great! bitcoin is legal!". Now I'm unsure again. I've always held nagging doubts about bitcoin, and how amazingly effective it would be as a 1984-esque tool for population control and governance. To recap, just suppose BigGovt gains >51% of mining, and suddenly the only transactions getting through are government-approved transactions, to government-approved bitcoin addresses - it would be the ultimate Big Brother.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, many people more clever than me have suggested measures against this, but I'm still not convinced.

So, now what, are these bitcoin "money transmitters" going to need to register their bitcoin address(es) with some government department so they can be monitored for compliance? How exactly are they going to police this ruling?

This ruling seems positive for bitcoin, but I'm seeing it more as a shot across the bow: "bitcoin: we're coming for you." In fact, many threads have said that the weak point in the bitcoin ecosystem is the fiat exchangers. How about that.

I call on the devs to prioritize a modification to the block approval code in the client, to reject blocks that do not include enough valid and well-broadcasted transactions. We need better discussion on this in order to establish exactly how to proceed.

One more observation. It was mentioned by someone before, that the Cyprus thing makes Euro less fungible. I would observe that all the AML/KYC multilayered legal BS is nothing less than a direct (and suicidal) attack on fungibility of all fiat currencies.

They are making their fiat currencies worse and worse and less competitive as money by making them less fungible. Should have been just doing decent police work instead of making their money vulnerable like that.

Perhaps the key to success of Bitcoin as money is preserving Bitcoin fungibility as much as possible and getting to the point where Bitcoins do not have to cross to fiat world and circulate within Bitcoin economy as much as possible. In this case Bitcoin will simply win because it is better money than less fungible fiat currencies. We are making quite good progress on this so far but this can be improved on a lot.