Bitcoin Foundation General Counsel Patrick Murck on FinCEN’s Guidance:
Patrick Murck (@VirtuallyLaw), General counsel and board member of Bitcoin Fondation posted on FinCEN’s recent guidance regarding using and exchanging virtual currencies. Excerpts:
“Upon an initial reading two things struck me:
FinCEN firmly believes that virtual currency in general, and bitcoin in particular, does not fall under the pre-paid access rules.
FinCEN seems intent on recreating and expanding the pre-paid access rules for virtual currency and bitcoin under the mantle of money transmission.”
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“Under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), FinCEN can’t promulgate new rules without going through a notice and comment proceeding whereby the public may have their voices heard. If FinCEN would like to expand its statutory authority over “money transmitters” to include brand new categories such as ‘administrators’ and ‘exchangers’ of digital currency it must do so through proper rulemaking proceedings and not by fiat.”
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“FinCEN’s guidance implies that every person who has ever had any virtual currency and has ever exchanged that virtual currency for real currency may now be considered a money transmitter under the Bank Secrecy Act. That is, of course, an untenable position.”
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“This framework would wildly expand the reach of FinCEN and the BSA, and would be infeasable for many, if not most, members of the bitcoin community to comply with. […] The BSA was never intended to apply this broadly and reach this far into people’s everyday lives.”
– https://bitcoinfoundation.org/blog/?p=152
– http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=154672.0 (Further discussion of the topic)
– http://1.usa.gov/117bnWj (FinCEN FIN-2013-G001)
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