Do Gavin and the other devs have to comply with it, or pay for one?
I had a quick read through and found the bit quoted below. Do Gavin and the other devs control, or administer a Virtual Currency
http://www.dfs.ny.gov/legal/regulations/adoptions/dfsp200t.pdf(q) Virtual Currency Business Activity means the conduct of any one of the following types of activities
involving New York or a New York Resident:
(5) controlling, administering, or issuing a Virtual CurrencyThe wording is a bit vague. In the absence of precedent/prior case law, it would be advisable to err on the side of caution
no
it only applies to financial institutions dealing with customer funds
"We have no interest in micromanaging minor app updates. We’re not Apple."
I think this clause would mainly relate to VC's like Ripple and the like. Or, something like a pre-mine. Regulators would have severe difficulty attributing this language to bitcoin per se or litecoin, dogecoin, and all the hundreds of others. The miners ultimately decide whether or not to incorporate any changes so regardless of what a developer suggests, there is still a consensus based network decision making which would need to apply. They might be able to force this language onto a controlling mining pool. However, as long as they are <50% one would argue that they are not, defacto, 'controlling.' I'd like to say this could result in greater decentralization to avoid being seen as controlling. However, it creates some uncertainty with how pools distribute found blocks. I.e., in the short interim between block payouts, would the pool have been considered to be administered a vc? I've always laughed about how they seek to regulate exchanges but not regulate pools themselves; it creates a certain legal gray area full of ambiguities and potential litigation.
Administering/issuing seems to target pre-sale operations, so theoretically, something like ethereum... could possibly find itself in the crosshairs of both nydfs and sec. Which is interesting, because there is clearly no vested interest in seeing one VC succeed over another... or is there? Ripple certainly seems to be trying to play catchup but still... Regardless, this would certainly spell DOOM for something like 'paycoin' lmao. It could create some interesting footwork for cloud based hasing services also. Are the mining shares to a certain extent basically a dividend yielding virtual currency?
Was hoping for some movement but, it appears all is quiet on the western front :/
Even if we did go sideways for a year; that's kindof a good thing. You can continue to accumulate and age your virtual assets. That is for those of you abiding by tax rules and regs, remember capone? So, when and if an opportunity manifests iteself sometime in the near to not to distant future, you can sell and use long term capital gains taxation strategies as opposed to something else. And yes, the biggest thing this does is provide a strong documented paper trail mandating exchanges to track transactions for tax purposes; uncle sam and the queen all need their cut.
