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Bitcoin To Be Regulated Under US Money Laundering Laws
Newsubmitter davek writes with news that the U.S. will be applying money-laundering laws to Bitcoin and other 'virtual currencies.'
"The move means that firms that issue or exchange the increasingly popular online cash will now be regulated in a similar manner as traditional money-order providers such as Western Union Co. WU +0.17% They would have new bookkeeping requirements and mandatory reporting for transactions of more than $10,000. Moreover, firms that receive legal tender in exchange for online currencies or anyone conducting a transaction on someone else's behalf would be subject to new scrutiny, said proponents of Internet currencies. 'I think it's inevitable that just like you have U.S. dollars used by thieves and criminals, it's sadly inevitable you will have criminals use a virtual currency. We want to work with authorities,' said Jeff Garzik, a Bitcoin developer. Still, law enforcement, regulators and financial institution have expressed worries about the hard-to-trace attributes of virtual currencies, helping trigger this week's move from the Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCen."
Bit Coin works even if there are no "firms" to issue or exchange. Therefore, there is no one to regulate.
People exchange cash for the virtual currency, and exchange the virtual currency in the game all the time. Will Blizzard be subject to book-keeping and regulations?
What about other games with credits and item trading?
They will use this law to strike against Silk Road.
Remember, Capone was convicted on federal charges of tax evasion.
Tell your friends about xenu.net
"I think it's inevitable that just like you have U.S. dollars used by thieves and criminals..."
Unfortunately, the worst thieves and criminals (the government and the banks that have bought the government) will be the ones doing the regulating.
Yes, and not surprisingly it has changed since the article posted!
Same as when banks started having to report transactions of a few thousand dollars to the feds, because it could be "money laundering". If it's not the mob, it's terrahrists or pedos.
Same shit from both parties, different day.
Pry them out from my cold hard encryped grasp, if you can.
Satanic usery worshipping asshats.
Yea! Bitcoin is growing up! That means enough people are using it that the government is noticing. And of course the first thing the government does to show its appreciation is to start regulating it. Did they at least get a "Baby's first regulation" card?
For the few, the proud, the article readers: Pelle Braendgaard of PayGlobe wrote a much better article on the same topic.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Sigh. Inline, updating stock quotes in business and finance articles are annoying enough in their own context. When taken out of that context by a lazy and sloppy copy-paste, as had happened with this article summary, is just plain disappointing. Does nobody bother to copy-edit these things before they go live? I thought this was /., not reddit.
I guess we really need to keep FinCrime busy now that all those bankers and investment brokers are in jail. Oh, wait...
But foolishly, folks, this looks like a way to puff up the arrest numbers and make for some easy convictions to justify their shrunken budget (FinCrime got seriously defunded the instant they started looking at the big banks and investment houses) to Congress. The prevailing metric of any police force is their arrest record and conviction rates. Go after small fish you can steamroller cause the whales fight back.
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Money laundering? BS. If they cared about money laundering then they'd go after the bankers who are laundering millions of dollars in drug money for the cartels.
What this is really about is a banker-government that will do anything and everything possible to prevent alternatives to their fiat + fractional reserve monopoly on money. These parasites absolutely can't have us serfs using a money supply which they can't control and manipulate in order to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.
"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." Mayer Amschel Rothschild
All these financial instruments must be regulated and monitored for our safety.
Yes, I remember the paralyzing fear and chaos of the days of a primarily cash economy, too. /sarcasm
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
Yeah - that money from a protection racket or from running a prostitution ring or from embezzling... no victims there. Or to put it another way, if you think ill-gotten gains only come from money that appears from thin air, you're either *very* innocent about how the world works or utterly and completely clueless.
We hardly knew ye!
The price jumped from $40 per BTC to $70 per BTC since this news broke.
All this does is require people who buy and sell Bitcoins for USD to report their activities over a certain threshold.
Anyone can still freely use BTC directly.
The bubble is obvious: look at the 2013 BTC/USD chart.
Despite periodic "corrections", the price is still continuing to rise precipitously. The volatility is insane, but how viable is it that the price on 1 Jan 2013 was 1 BTC/~$15, and now it's trading for ~$70? The value has more than quadrupled in the 81 days so far in 2013. If the present bubble is extrapolated that represents roughly a 103,000% APY; clearly, that growth is unsustainable.
So... is anyone selling put options on BTC?
Seems like purchasing a few puts on BTC will pay off handsomely.
The regulations Treasury mentioned apply to transactions of $10,000 or more at a time.
Yeah - that money from a protection racket or from running a prostitution ring or from embezzling... no victims there.
Well, it would be very hard to run an illegal prostitution ring if prostitution was legal.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Uhh, explain to me why prostitution is a crime? If a person is being forced into sex work, this is kidnapping and slavery. If a person embezzles from another person, that is theft. You DO understand the difference between malum prohibitum and malum in se?
And the problem with your reasoning is you have no experience in the industry and are just spewing shit out of your ass.
Here, I'll link it for you to make it easy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuring
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Problem: Someone just placed a W tile. You have these tiles available to play: H, O, O, S and H.
Your proposed solution: spell the word "HOHOWS".
Analysis: That's not a real word.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If you actually were old enough to remember (or interested enough to have read about) when the printing of the kind of paper currency we now refer to as cash was unregulated, before it first became heavily regulated and then a government monopoly, you probably wouldn't use the sarcasm modifier.
Ditto if you were even older and remembered (or, again, interested enough to have read about) the chaos and dislocations that happened before paper currency with specie currency (which was "cash" before paper currency was) when disruptions (in either the surplus or shortage direction) occurred in the supply of specie.
The "primarily cash economy" with an unregulated money supply was, in fact, a source of not-uncommon paralyzing fear and chaos.
Drugs besides alcohol and prescribed pills are illegal because they circumvent a distribution apparatus.
That's not the reason why drugs are illegal. Harry Anslinger, who led the effort to outlaw pot in the 1930's, explained his motivations:
"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the US, and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others."
That why the drugs favored by white people back in the day (tobacco and alcohol) are legal, but the drugs favored by non-white people at the same time (marijuana, opiates) are illegal.
The next major round of prohibitions was very explicitly because Richard Nixon wanted an excuse to lock up the hippies, who he saw as a threat to America.
I am officially gone from
What about "HOSHOW"?
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Because there's a history of pimps using and abusing women with no marketable skills and hooking them onto addictive drugs or taking advantage of an existing addiction to push them into the line of work. It's a lot like robber-barons and wage-slaves, but with more a dire outcome and deeper hooks.
There are prostitutes, strippers, and dancers that made a fair choice about their jobs, but it'd be hard to say what percentage got pushed into the field due to unreasonable social pressures and/or firm backhands.
I wasn't talking about before currency was regulated by governments (no one is that old), I'm talking about before any transaction greater than $10,000 became subject to Federal scrutiny, like maybe 40 years ago, which I *do* remember, and yes it was a "primarily cash economy". How you took that mean "prior to gov'ts to controlling their currencies" is beyond me. My point was that the idea that we need these regulations "for our safety" is rather ludicrous when our society functioned just fine without them in recent memory.
Momentarily, the need for the construction of new light will no longer exist.
If you read legal definitions defined in the UCC 1-201 item 4 you see a definition for bank:
"Bank" means any person engaged in the business of Banking.
(http://www.law.cornell.edu/ucc/1/1-201.html)
And the definitions of banking:
The business of receiving money on deposit, loaning money, discounting notes, issuing notes for circulation, collecting money on notes deposited, negotiating bills, etc.
http://thelawdictionary.org/banking/
The fact is, all people are in the business of receiving money on deposits even if depositions of money or it's equivalent is done informally, they loan their monies to banking institutions or to each other, they issue notes (checks) and most do negotiate terms when they take a 2nd mortgage out or perform any number of commercial negotiations at one point or another.
So while it may appear that we can't force people to become banks, it appears that that appearance is deceiving.
As one last bid to offer support for my claim, grab a magnifying lens and your checkbook. Using the magnifying lens examine the line on any check where the drawer is indicated to apply his signature. Examining that line very carefully, you will notice the words "Authorized Representative" in very small letters. You sign a check as an authorized representative of the bank, as a banker, unless you specifically apply a different endorsement (most people don't) you accept being a banker through the principles of tacit acquiescence.
The problem is that the average man on the street thinks the crime of "money laundering" means "hiding the proceeds of crime". That's the definition you'll find in the dictionary, on Wikipedia etc. If you actually read the regulations however, by far the majority of offences labelled as money laundering boil down to not filing the right paperwork or myriad other things. For example, it's quite routine for farmers to be accused of money laundering for depositing their money in chunks of less than $10k, typically to avoid filling out byzatine forms. When this happens, the US government just seizes (aka steals) the money. There is usually no court case.
Over time, the more I learn about AML laws the more I dislike them. There's no rational cost benefit analysis of any of this stuff. The $10k limit was set in the 70's and never adjusted for inflation. The regulations and thresholds are made more and more extreme every year, yet evidence it actually succeeds in stopping drug dealing or terrorism is - as far as I can tell - minimal to non-existent. The costs, meanwhile, are staggeringly huge. The sheer amount of paperwork it generates alone is eye watering.
No matter what you're paid with, you still need to pay the taxes to the IRS if you are a US citizen, and in almost all cases they must be converted to USD. Having income in bitcoins does not exampt you from tax obligations on that income. Even if you are paid in teddy bears you need to be reporting this.