Bitcoin Miner Announces Closure over BitLicense Row
Bitcoin mining company BTC Guild has announced to closedown its operations in the wake of BitLicense, the state's official Bitcoin regulatory framework. In its final notice on BitcoinTalk.org, owner Eleuthria admitted that the said framework has enough "gray area" to threaten the functioning of their mining pool, saying that they cannot bear the expense of defending the company at this moment. "The fact that BTC Guild is not in New York does not matter, since it would be doing business with New York residents while they are physically in New York," explained Eleuthria. "This fact makes it....
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After an aborted closure of BTCGuild, when BitLicense was first announced, the company’s owner has now decided to close it for good on June 30, 2015. With NYDFS using BitLicense to try and regulate businesses inside and outside of NY, the closure comes as no surprise; the owner has stated before he will not put miners and himself through the invasive and vague regulatory hassles. Even after the release of the final BitLicense draft — revised based on a round of public comments — BTCGuild’s owner feels that there is still enough “gray area” the NYDFS can use to intervene in the company’s....
Yet another bitcoin startup left New York State and declined to comply with the BitLicense. BitFinex, the largest cryptocurrency trading platform in the U.S has followed the lead of Poloniex and Shapeshift, announcing the closure of their operations on their blog this week. The BitFinex team wrote: BitLicense requires any digital currency related startups and exchanges to pay US$5,000 in application fees, US$20,000 in legal fees. “Due to financial regulation changes in the State of New York, certain Bitfinex services are no longer available for New York Residents. Bitfinex is not applying....
Following the publication of this article, a spokesperson for the New York State Department of Financial Services told CoinDesk "miners and mining pools are exempt from the BitLicense". BTC Guild is set to close at the end of June, months after previously announcing that it would shut down its long-running bitcoin mining pool. In its announcement, posted to Bitcoin Talk, owner Eleuthria cited the finalization of the BitLicense as a primary motivator for shutting down, stating that BTC Guild could not afford any legal threats that may arise as a result of the New York regulatory framework.....
The new BitLicense will open for a 30-day public comment period in just a few days. In a speech to the Bipartisan Policy Council, a Washington D. C. think tank, New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) Superintendent Ben Lawsky told the world about the new BitLicense's impending release date as well as several planned changes. Also read: NYDFS's Ben Lawsky Reveals Plan for Transitional BitLicense at #Money2020. Changes in the new BitLicense. Notably, a new BitLicense is not required for consumers or merchants seeking to transact in Bitcoin; furthermore, Bitcoin-related software....
If New York was Jurassic World, BitLicense would undoubtedly be its Indominus Rex. The highly constrained New York Bitcoin regulatory framework has apparently forced another local company to shutdown its operations. This time, it is Eobot, a Bitcoin cloud miner, which decided to take down its banners within New York, stating that the state's new license requirements are putting additional cost burdens on them. "We regret that we must cease Eobot business within New York State, however the new BitLicense requirements in this state place compliance and cost burdens upon Eobot that we believe....