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2. Why does it Even Matter if Linden Dollar is a Virtual Currency or not?
It matters for Linden Lab because they are now both an administrator and an exchanger of virtual currency. Both of these are a Money Services Business (“MSB”) under the treasury regulation. An MSB must register with the Treasury Department and make Anti-Money Laundering and periodic reports. These reports are not little one page chores a trained monkey can do. There is a reason corporate compliance departments are stacked with lawyers and accountants. As you can imagine both of these items cost a lot of money.
At this point Linden Lab must be considering their options. One option is to abandon the Linden Dollar altogether and just deal in cold hard cash. The upside of that decision is that it would spare them a lot of grief in the form of FinCEN reports. The downside of that is that is like turning off a printing press that prints money. And who in their right mind wants to do that?
It matters for Linden Lab because they are now both an administrator and an exchanger of virtual currency. Both of these are a Money Services Business (“MSB”) under the treasury regulation. An MSB must register with the Treasury Department and make Anti-Money Laundering and periodic reports. These reports are not little one page chores a trained monkey can do. There is a reason corporate compliance departments are stacked with lawyers and accountants. As you can imagine both of these items cost a lot of money.
At this point Linden Lab must be considering their options. One option is to abandon the Linden Dollar altogether and just deal in cold hard cash. The upside of that decision is that it would spare them a lot of grief in the form of FinCEN reports. The downside of that is that is like turning off a printing press that prints money. And who in their right mind wants to do that?
http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2013/04/could-linden-dollars-become-real-money/