Re: Intro

On 08/23/2013 12:05 PM, Margaux Avedisian wrote:
> I just recently joined the group. My background is from the startup
> world on the business side opposed to technical. I've known about
> Bitcoin for a while but really got into it when I helped relaunch the
> first American digital currency exchange as VP of Business Development
> and Client Services, Tradehill.  I then was CEO and Co-founder of
> another digital currency exchange. 

Hi Margaux, welcome to the group!

I spoke w/ Margaux last week and she has a really interesting, and
potentially very helpful background for the work that this group is
doing. Specifically, she adds something that this group doesn't have a
very good grasp on, which is an understanding of the legal landscape
around running what's called a Money Service Business (MSB) and
knowledge about Money Transmitter law in the USA.

In a way, the technology side of what we're doing is much easier than
the legal side of it. The more we get involved with building these
technologies and trying to bring Bitcoin into the mix, the more we keep
bumping into regulatory issues that need to be addressed. Some of these
regulatory issues may be solved by technology that this group is working
on. Some of it is a human problem, which no technology can address.
Teasing one out from the other will be important to the success of the
technologies that this group is working on.

There is the basic Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering
(AML) stuff that comes with running a money transmission service on the
web, which most of the stuff we're working on either brushes against or
runs into head-first. Then there are the trickier Money Service Business
(MSB) and Money Transmitter (MT) regulations, which are difficult to
interpret on a state-by-state basis.

For example, why is Dwolla allowed to transfer money between people, but
is not classified as a Money Transmitter?

http://www.themembersgroup.com/news/tmg-in-the-news/dwolla-veridian-cu-describe-and-defend-their-strange-symbiosis/

It's questions like these that we've had a hard time answering in the
past with any amount of certainty.

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Meritora - Web payments commercial launch
http://blog.meritora.com/launch/

Received on Monday, 26 August 2013 02:20:22 UTC