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by olalonde 1436 days ago
No, you are not supposed to. KYC is a legal requirement for money transmitters[0]. It does not apply to Bitcoin users.

[0] Money transmission is the act of receiving currency from one party and transferring it to another party. Basically, middlemen in a transaction (e.g. banks).
1 comments
dragonwriter 1436 days ago
If you are processing financial transactions (including something of “value that substitutes for currency”) between other people at their direction, you are a money transmitter. The whole point of both Bitcoin is decentralizing this function from banks to a network of miners, and a similar thing is done in Lightning with its nodes.
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olalonde 1436 days ago
That's correct. In the case of Bitcoin, the thing that most closely resembles a "money transmitter" are miners but FinCEN ruled that they are not[0]. A sensible decision because otherwise, Bitcoin would have effectively been banned from the United States (or Bitcoin miners, at least).

[0] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2014/01/31/fincen-declares-b...

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