Quote from: Stephen Gornick on March 22, 2013, 06:30:04 PM

Quote from: acoindr on March 20, 2013, 01:56:08 AM

Quote from: Stephen Gornick on March 19, 2013, 10:07:31 PM

Excerpt from prepared remarks of

Jennifer Shasky Calvery,
[...]

Quote

Those who are intermediaries in the transfer of virtual currencies from one person to another person, or to another location, are money transmitters that must register with FinCEN as MSBs unless an exception applies.

It sounds like they're interested specifically in exchanges.

I just re-read that and am now seeing that part being missed in the various initial interpretations of FinCEN's guidance. FinCEN's guidance only addressed transfer of virtual currency when "as part of the acceptance and transfer of currency, funds, or other value that substitutes for currency".

But how would an EWallet provider know if I was sending from my EWallet to someone as part of a transfer of currency or if it was a gift, or perhaps I bought something and was paying with bitcoins.

From the director's remarks, it sounds like an EWallet would be an MSB (and thus need to obtain identity of the users then). But almost no EWallets require that. And I don't need an intermediary to transfer bitcoins anyway -- I can send right from my own client, without using an EWallet.

Or, are all peer nodes now considered "money transmitters" that must register with FinCEN as MSBs.

This isn't guidance from FinCEN, this is mis-guidance from the highest level.

Yes, that's a good point. I think eWallets would also be regulated.

The difference I think between you sending to a recipient directly vs. using an eWallet as intermediary is something we've discussed on this forum, which is fractional reserve. An eWallet holding user funds MyBitcoin.com style can abscond with the funds or misrepresent the amount of funds they had. With virtual currencies having real value and FinCEN essentially saying that's ok, I think it makes sense they want to cover any entities dealing with funds.