Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Ryan_Singer 4344 days ago
The Money Transmission Framework is a combination of two types of rules:

1. Capital Requirements, licensing and Bonding for people who hold money for consumers who are not banks. These rules are consumer protection laws and make sense for businesses that offer custodial accounts denominated in bitcoin or dollars. These rules could have been applied to Instawallet, Coinbase, Mt. Gox, etc.

2. AML + KYC rules. These require people who help move money into and out of the banking system to find out who their customers are and report them to law enforcement when they do the unexpected. These rules could be applied normally to people doing exchange services, like Expresscoin, BitInstant (RIP), CoInvoice, etc.

I've spent years and hundreds of thousands of investor dollars examining the issues here, like you have. Stay tuned for a policy piece describing when these rules make sense and when they don't. Hint: If you are just posting software to github, these rules do not make sense to apply to you.
1 comments
thinkcomp 4344 days ago
"These rules could have been applied to"

Actually, these rules ARE applied to Coinbase at the very least. Coinbase--and YC, and many YC startups--deliberately choose to ignore them.

link
Ryan_Singer 4344 days ago
I've read your lawsuit against coinbase. No comment.
link
thinkcomp 4344 days ago
Sounds like you don't disagree then.
link
rlpb 4344 days ago
Sounds like he cannot comment for legal reasons.

On the other hand, assuming that you have filed a lawsuit against Coinbase, it sounds like you can no longer pass neutral comment on the matter. Something you seem to have conveniently not mentioned.

link
thinkcomp 4344 days ago
I've written about the lawsuit often enough on HN that I'm routinely criticized for writing too much. Of course, if I don't bring it up, I must be trying to hide it.

In any event, there's no legal reason why he couldn't comment. He's not involved, except to the extent that his own company might also be ignoring the law and thereby breaking it--which I have no idea if it's the case or not. But plenty of startups do.

link
wpietri 4344 days ago
The bulk of readers are not going to know your history. I didn't.

It doesn't take a lot to add "[full disclosure: I'm suing Coinbase]" when you opine on Coinbase. Having somebody else bring it up first definitely reduces your credibility.

link