X (Twitter) Obtains License to Store, Transfer, and Trade Bitcoin and Crypto | Hacker News Reader

X (Twitter) Obtains License to Store, Transfer, and Trade Bitcoin and Crypto

bitcoinmagazine.com

27 pointsgslin14 comments

Open articleView on HN

This will be stupid and horrible, and probably bend the arc of Musk's fate closer towards prison and bankruptcy.

SBF all over again - ketamine instead of Aderall.

ngmi

“No… please… stop…”

Willy Wonka quote is appropriate here.

"Licence" to trade bitcoin. I thought bitcoin was supposed to be free of all those pesky regulations?

Bitcoin as a protocol can’t be regulated, but anyone using Bitcoin can be regulated. Same with taxes. In practice this means any entity that operates a registered company has its crypto operations regulated, while entities that operate fully on chain may not be regulatable (depending on structure and operational security decisions).

I don't know what point you tried to make. Claiming that a protocol can't be regulated is completely irrelevant as the selling point of crypto as a currency is that it's operations are immune to regulation.

> selling point of crypto as a currency is that it's operations are immune to regulation.

It's not that they are immune, it's that no one can stop you. That doesn't mean tat you won't have consequences, but if you live under an unethical reigme, the consequences may be worth it.

Yeah if someone is telling you that crypto is immune to regulation they’re lying and probably trying to scam you.

> Yeah if someone is telling you that crypto is immune to regulation they’re lying and probably trying to scam you.

Isn't crypto synonymous with scams?

https://time.com/personal-finance/article/popular-crypto-sca...

I mean, if it was sold to you on that basis, the person doing the selling was lying to you; that’s obvious nonsense.

Bitcoin is. The intersection of Bitcoin and fiat isn't.

For those not familiar with us laws regarding money transmission licenses, they aren’t that hard to get in most states but the problem is that you have to get a license for every state you operate in- for an online business that’s 50 licenses. And there are capital requirements for each individual license, effective locking out web startups below a certain amount of capital. It’s part of why financial innovation in the us started with blockchains (which as protocols cannot comply) rather than tradfi like PayPal.

Yep, I looked into this ~5 years or so ago for a side project and the money transmission licenses made the idea dead on arrival without outside funding which I really didn't want to do. Bootstrapping MTLs is pretty much unobtainable for most people. (This project had nothing to do with crypto at all, it was tool to help manage and pay off debt).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com