Bitcoin Token Maker Suspends Operation After Hearing From Federal Gov't

First time accepted submitter Austrian Anarchy writes with this story via Reason (and based on a report at Wired) about a maker of physical Bitcoin tokens. Quoting from Reason's take: "Mike Caldwell ran a business called Casascius that printed physical tokens with a bitcoin digital key on it, key hidden behind a tamper proof strip. He'd charge $50 worth of bitcoin to print a bitcoin key you sent him via computer on this token. Cool stuff--a good friend of mine found one sitting unnoticed in her tip jar from an event at which she sold her artisan lamps from 2011 and was naturally delighted given the nearly 1000x increase in value of a bitcoin since then. So, you're making something fun, useful, interesting, harmless--naturally the federal government is very concerned and wants to hobble you. 'Just before Thanksgiving, [Caldwell] received a letter from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FINCEN, the arm of the Treasury Department that dictates how the nation’s anti-money-laundering and financial crime regulations are interpreted. According to FINCEN, Caldwell needs to rethink his business. "They considered my activity to be money transmitting," Caldwell says. And if you want to transmit money, you must first jump through a lot of state and federal regulatory hoops Caldwell hasn't jumped through.'"

Comments

Re: Far from harmless fun... but

[Mitsoid]

If he sold wallets, he wouldn't have issues. He's selling wallets with other peoples money in it, or could be (the no one knows, there is no oversight... and that's the problem). And he's not keeping track of who gave him the money, or where it's going, and he's not providing the information to authorities. It's possible he's pre-loading these coins with values (e.g. $25, 50), and mailing them to people after he takes his fee.

It's basically the formula for money laundering, as the bitcoin trail ends with him, and 'clean' money can come out.