To meet the definition of an MSB, a person must conduct more than $1,000 in business with one person in one or more transactions (in one category of activity listed above) on any one day. A business is an MSB for each activity for which it meets this threshold. However, there is one exception.
No activity threshold applies to the definition of money transmitter. A person that engages as a business in the transfer of funds is a money transmitter and an MSB, regardless of the amount of transfer activity. (see
http://www.fincen.gov/financial_institutions/msb/pdf/FinCENfactsheet.pdf )
Since bitcoins are "stored value" and not directly money, there is a FinCEN ruling that is relevant:
http://www.fincen.gov/statutes_regs/guidance/html/fin-2009-r001.htmlRead the ruling to mean this: A company "ABC" could be created that acts as a "merchant payment processor". ABC sells point-of-sale terminals that connect to ABC's servers to process pre-paid bitcoin cards. ABC does not convert currency into bitcoins, because if it did then it would be a money service business or money transmitter.
Then, when the cards are used it works like this:
Merchants [M1, M2 ... Mn] give payment instructions to ABC (pay Mx X bitcoin for goods or or services sold on at ; )
ABC submits payment instructions to BitBank for backoffice processing (remit X bitcoins to ABC re: ).
ABC receives bitcoins from BitBank and remits them to Merchants (remit X bitcoins to Mx re: ).
ABC collects fees from Merchants for providing this service.
ABC is not a MSB or MT.
I'm open to argument on this reading.
As an aside, bitbank.com btcbank.com and bitcoinbank.com are all already registered to 3 different entities.
PHEW all caught up on this thread.