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RE: Is trading on LocalBitcoins Illegal? What is Legal trading?

in #bitcoin7 years ago (edited)

This is pretty much right on. Had wanted to include a blurb about this in my "EOS Highlights and Favorites from Ethereal and Consensus 2017" post, though it seems @crypt0 had deleted the video for some reason. Perhaps they asked him to take it down, but one event was "Chasing Privacy in Blockchains" with Anne Wallwork, a "Policy Director" for the US Treasury Department.

The way she described it was that basically the Treasury Department regulates all forms of wire transfers. By extension, coin exchange is also then a form of "wire transfer", and technically anyone moving money electronically for any purpose, and certainly "privately" and/or "anonymously", could be considered as running afoul of KYC (know-your-customer) regulations...

You start to get the idea. As @modprobe wrote, potentially everyone's guilty of something, if "the powers that be" choose to come after you. That's sort of how Ms. Wallwork ended it, (paraphrased) "We're just watching and observing for now, but that could change at any time, as we see fit..."

Sort of like when the IRS retroactively changes the rules and goes after people 10 years later, except here they would see it as finally deciding to "enforce" laws (for certain players, at least, to "make an example" of them), that they already believe they have jurisdiction to pursue, as they see fit. Or say, just like they did to @charlieshrem. Another story that really started "waking me up" to how bad it had all become was Martin Armstrong's story: When There is no Justice – It is Time To Turnout the Lights

And of course, there's still the IRS probe into Coinbase, which is ironic since I think many coinbase users are likely also small businesses using coinbase to accept bitcoin and immediately convert it back to cash for sales (as opposed to people trading bitcoin and raking in "huge" profits): Congress Seeks Answers From IRS About Its Bitcoin Tax Investigation.