If you share an ecash QR over zoom, zoom is a money transmitter
If you text ecash over iMessage, iMessage is a money transmitter
By this definition every single bitcoin node is a money transmitter and that shit isn’t going to fly nostr:note1u7ddfz86eqa4x8lyy87rwqlpwu40qae97gurth5mvfkkc7gkevmqdvgccd
Ecash is gonna break their brains.
They’ll go after the issuers all the same
Of course they will. So mints using fedimint, cashu, etc. will have to be lightweight and ethereal, so as to make the feds waste their time playing whack-a-mole to try and control them. Otherwise they can be persistent in a place the feds can't see or reach.
🎯
The challenge, though, is that asking people to trust a custodian (even a blinded one) requires communicating that “we’re big, we’re stable, we’re not going anywhere, you can trust us” and whack-a-mole is different from that
That said, if we can have 100,000 mints at once, all in jurisdictions with friendlier laws, then it’s like mp3 sharing - too proliferated to stop
You also don’t need to put a ton of trust in a mint, because it’s usually for small amounts and the ability to instantly leave keeps people honest, at least more than traditional banks.
I do remember nostr:npub12rv5lskctqxxs2c8rf2zlzc7xx3qpvzs3w4etgemauy9thegr43sf485vg saying something about doing "automated bank runs" on mints, where all of your tokens are refreshed every month so you don't have to trust the mint. I wonder if he can comment on what would happen for users if they knew a mint was about to go down.
If I pass you a grocery list that happens to be a seed phrase and post it on the fridge, the paper manufacturer, the pen manufacturer the fridge manufacturer and I are money transmitters.
If I make a phone call to a bank on behalf of my disabled relative then both the phone company and I are money transmitters.
Hoping that Bernstein v US tsunami happens and wipes out all these parasites. Then some based AGs sue and win.
Begun, the second crypto war has.
If I grab the mic and shout a Bitcoin seed phrase then the manufacturer of the PA system is a money transmitter
I propose the “opportunity to steal”, two-question test:
1. Does the service provider have the opportunity to steal from the users?
2. Do the users have the opportunity to steal from the provider?
If the answer to both is “no”, then the provider cannot be a money transmitter.
By this test, ISPs, nodes and CoinJoin services would NOT be transmitters. But existing MSBs like banks and exchanges still would be.
This would be a very rational test if the spirit of the law, ie consumer protection, was still at play
It would mean ecash mints are MSB. AND actually if “inbound liquidity” is the service you paid an LSP for, they *could* rug you by closing the channel prematurely, so there’s an argument they would need to be regulated too
I do agree that the more trust is required, the more regulation is reasonable
I wish we had better solutions for trust minimization, though
If L2 becomes highly regulated, then it’s no use if we run a Fedimint - regulated nodes will reject our channels 😔
To be clear, I oppose all government regulation because it is involuntary. My two question test is how I might recommend Samurai approach their defense.
I’m not a lawyer. But by my reading of the FinCEN guidance, eCash issuers and federated chains (Liquid) are probably engaging in transmission.
I’m less sure about Lightning liquidity providers. I’m guessing they’re not. Once the channel is established, neither party can steal.
Yes, a provider could fail to deliver the service. For example, my cable company could fail to deliver my bandwidth. But failure to provide service isn’t, IMO, proof of money transmission.
The purpose of my test was as a negative. If there’s NO opportunity to steal, then there’s NO transmission. But the inverse does not necessarily follow. That is, the statement “if there IS opportunity, then there IS transmission” is false.
