Topic: Bitcoin Foundation: We Don’t Want Everyone Starting a Bitcoin Business - page 2. (Read 2058 times)

Bitcoin businesses are not needed.

I don't see any possible useful "business" in the bitcoin field. All of them are just acting as middle man.

Bitcoin was supposed to be a means for people to transact with people. or people to buy stuff at stores. without their bitcoin being in the hands of middle men.

Sounds like TBF doesn't have much more rope before it hangs itself as the NRA of economic liberty (if you can't afford bribes, regulatory capture, and other crony corporatism).

Anyone do wants to start a business should be able to do so whether the business is base on fiat or a crypto. It may not be easy to run a business successfully, but that is another matter.

It has become common knowledge that members of the foundation seem to think that bitcoin is their vehicle to become part of the elite ruling class. This is why they get so little respect in the bitcoin community.

If "just anyone" has a product or a service that others find useful they have every right to operate in the bitcoin market place. 

What’s that? You want to start a Bitcoin business but don’t have half a million dollars to become compliant with FinCEN and secure a money transmitter license in each of the 50 states?

Well – at least you have the Bitcoin Foundation fighting against excessive regulation and unnecessary oversight. Right? Not exactly. According to foundation counsel and former Department of Homeland Security adviser Jim Harper, who joined the foundation in March, they don’t want just any ‘ordinary Joe’ firing up a Bitcoin based business. That privilege should be reserved for the well-financed minority.

Yesterday, Harper told the New York Times that Bitcoin businesses should not be open to just anyone.

"Well-formulated regulation can help because you don’t want everyone to start a Bitcoin business."

As reported Monday, the latest FinCEN rulings broaden the definition under which businesses will be considered money transmitters. In some cases, this could force merchants to close up shop or to stop accepting the digital currency. Some merchants that currently accept Bitcoin, and pay out dollars to staff or other third parties, could now fall under the agency’s new definition.

But the former DHS official supports regulation and has recently argued for more

"We argue that Bitcoin should be integrated into existing financial services regulation, and we point out the progress in states like Texas and Kansas (along with what’s pending in North Carolina), and in federal agencies like FinCEN, the IRS, and FEC."

However, that’s not what’s happening. The most recent FinCEN rulings would define some Bitcoin businesses as money transmitters, whereas if they operated with traditional currencies alone, they would not fall under the same definition.

According to Andrew Ittleman, an attorney at Fuerst Ittleman David & Joseph, PL, these new developments are a troubling sign for how the industry could be treated by the agency as a whole.

"It seems to me that, according to FinCEN, any company that’s dealing with bitcoin is a money transmitter, and I don’t know if I could have said that before before I read the payment processor note."

Many early Bitcoin adopters had hoped the cryptocurrency could bring new economic freedoms to those less privileged in the World. Some had envisioned a society that offered equal opportunity for both the rich and poor.

But these new regulations will probably make opening a Bitcoin business more exclusive and more restrictive than opening a traditional fiat-based enterprise.

Full Story: http://altcoinpress.com/2014/10/bitcoin-foundation-we-dont-want-everyone-starting-a-bitcoin-business/