Quote from: MagicalTux on September 04, 2011, 02:30:04 PM

Quote from: Anduril on September 04, 2011, 02:25:51 PM

I'll be extremely interested to read the Court's decision (not the summary civil court one, but the later one). The relevant part of the Directive 2009/110/EC (Electronic MOney Institutions Directive) reads:

2. "electronic money" means electronically, including magnetically, stored monetary value as represented by a claim on the issuer which is issued on receipt of funds for the purpose of making payment transactions as defined in point 5 of Article 4 of Directive 2007/64/EC, and which is accepted by a natural or legal person other than the electronic money issuer;"

Your best defence is to claim that you are not the issuer.

However, that would still not solve your problems in Europe, as you may still need to register as a credit institution in order to take deposits and keep accounts. You actually may be better off as an electronic money institution than as a credit institution.

We are basing our defense on the fact Bitcoins are not issued for money, but issued ("created" or "mined") for "free" (in exchange of a specific work, in fact, but anyone can have their computer do it and expect to have bitcoins within a more or less long timeframe). Because of this, one bitcoin (or 0.00000001 bitcoin) has no defined value.

Yes, that would definitely be a good argument. However, it all depends on how they read the Directive's definition, as mining could be considered value issued on receipt of funds, it depends on whether they consider that the cost of issuing the value is more than 0, which technically it is (depreciation and electricity have monetary value).

I still believe that your best argument is to state that you are not the ones issuing the money.

I am still very interested in how you intend to operate in Europe regardless of the decision, as technically you would be a regulated financial institution because of what you do. European financial markets are highly regulated, as I'm sure you are discovering.