Quote from: Armis on April 03, 2015, 04:48:50 AM

Quote from: sinner on April 03, 2015, 04:44:46 AM

so it's illegal to sell BTC on LocalBitcoins without a money transmitter license?

Short answer is, NO. If you are a business you need a license regardless of where you operate in the USA.

Long answer is, read the thread.

Here's the problem that I have with people who are answering this whole f**ked-up situation with the "just get a license" reply: In certain STATES that's totally not feasible.

Case in point, check the Michigan Dept of Insurance and Financial Services info where it says that licensees for Money Transmission Services Act need to have net worth of $100,000 minimum and provide surety bond up to $1,500,000 to qualify.

This is clearly not intended to be something applied to ordinary individuals running any kind of "Small Business".

Furthermore, a search on their website, here...

http://www.dleg.state.mi.us/fis/ind_srch/ConsumerFinance/Search.asp

...to see exactly WHO and what KIND of actual business currently *IS* licensed for this, turns up exactly ONE actual business located in MICHIGAN, and SEVENTY-FIVE other businesses, ALL located in OTHER STATES and ALL of which appear to be multi-million or billion dollar LARGE corporations operating *Nationally* and even *Internationally*, such as PayPal, Western Union, GreenDot, etc etc etc.

Is there really a point to getting the FinCEN license for Federal "Approval" IF at the STATE level they're going to end up trying to apply this onerous impossible "license" to a lone-individual or even "small business", sub-$1000 per day, local bitcoin hobbyist type amateur trader anyway??

Other states may be better, but I'm sure others may be worse too.

Quote from: Armis on April 03, 2015, 04:48:50 AM

Smart choice is to not do anything with LocalBitcoins if you live in the USA.

Well, just *voluntarily* giving up on doing any kind of person to person trading out of FEAR is probably exactly what they want to achieve with this attack on Burt and his family (and, sadly, from Armis' reply above it seems that strategy may actually be working). Sad

KEV