1) Aside from US-based exchanges (and international exchanges dealing in USD) having to register as Money Transmitters, what are the other real-world implications of the new FinCEN regulations?
2) How much does registering as a Money Transmitter actually cost?
3) The way I understand what is written in the FinCEN statement, miners who sell directly to other people would have to be registered Money Transmitters, but miners who sell to other people through an exchange would not (since the exchange is already acting as the Money Transmitter in that case). Is this true?
4) How feasible would it be for the government to actually regulate direct miner-to-people trades for USD? For example, people selling Bitcoins on localbitcoins.com?
My thoughts:
1) In "real world" terms, it means the feds will scrutinize heavily any "legitimate and regulated US based financial institution" that has
anything to do with BitCoin. They are making this crystal clear.
For example, a ton of people upload USD to Mt. Gox with Dwolla.
Dwolla is only able to operate using a partnering bank/credit union within the United States to process its ACH payments. All banks in this country are regulated by the feds in several ways, e.g. FDIC, Comptroller of Currency, Treasury, etc. Now NACHA (run by US gov), handles all check processing (a.k.a. ACH transactions) through the Federal Reserve (approx. 21 trillion in payments anually). Dwolla has no other mechanism of exchange with US citizens other than through the good graces of our lovely US govt. They will want to keep that key relationship. The new FinCEN guidelines are saying, in my opinion, that Dwolla is going to have to act as a barrier to money laundering somehow, and not just through their partnering bank (Dwolla is not wanting to admit this right about now). Moreover, their partnering bank might catch heat in being partnered with them. Dwolla could conceivably have to consider discontinuing it's relationship with Mt. Gox, perhaps by order of their partnering bank, as a possible senario, unless they make dramatic changes to the way they screen money going in and out. Dwolla will need to invest heavily in compliance at this point to keep everyone happy. They may reduce amounts uploadable to Mt. Gox or in general as a precaution, so they don't trip the thresholds for further monitoring of customer-based transactions.
At any rate, I sure would hate to lose the ability to upload my funds using Dwolla. It is a very well conceived portal and works nicely for me when buying BTC on Mt. Gox, so a ton of people would be disappointed to see a bottleneck form there. I could go on and on about the big players emerging and how much of a burden this could place on them as fairly early startups, i.e. such as Coinbase, Coinlab, etc. They all have to take big notice of this new info right now.
2) I think it's 100 bucks or something, but that's not the challenge. A new MSB or money transmitter, once registered must institute major changes (expensive ones) to the way they do business. They must have things like independent audits, robust interdiction software protocols (usually custom made), and additional staff to manage reporting requirements.
3) You have this one backwards. The exchanges that interface with major US institutions are the only ones they can really do anything about and they know it. The miners selling directly to others will be much safer in my opinion. Much safer.
4)Practically impossible to regulate direct miner-to-people transactions...This is why we have all fallen in love with Bitcoins in the first place right? ;^)