Traditional financial institutions like banks and
money transmitters like Coinbase need personal information to confirm users» identities so they can comply with KYC and AML regulations under the Patriot Act.
Not exact matches
It also puts them in competition with much larger businesses
like MoneyGram and Western Union, which have
money transmitter licenses throughout the country and internationally.
This is probably one of the reasons massive corporations
like Facebook and Amazon carry
money transmitter licenses.
Tether has nominally registered as a
money transmitter with FinCEN, but it is unclear if they fulfill any of the BSA filing requirements (e.g., filing SARs).2 As a company, Tether's USDTs enables large crypto - currency exchanges (including US - based exchanges
like Poloniex) to exist and powers trades thereon in the amount of millions every day.
US lawmakers continue to wrestle with how to approach cryptocurrencies, as a federal judge says the
likes of bitcoin can be treated as commodities by the CFTC, FinCEN says
money transmitter rules apply to ICOs, and Wyoming's state legislature clears a bill exempting some crypto assets from securities laws.
A
money transmitter licensee transmitting virtual currencies must hold
like kind virtual currencies in the same volume obligated to consumers.
That means bitcoin exchanges
like Tradehill would have to register as a
money transmitter with the federal government.