No CommentsThe Bitcoin community is preparing for what might be a historical event. Seven federal agencies are meeting a representative Bitcoin group to discuss regulation. The gathering is set to happen this Monday (26).
Patrick Murck is going to represent the Bitcoin Foundation, as its general counselor. He’s going to make a presentation and answer questions from several authorities: the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Federal Deposit Insurance, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Internal Revenue Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Secret Services. It’s not clear if representatives from the banking field will attend the meeting.
Murck assured he’s pleased with the chance to provide more information to the authorities “so we can both move forward to the same safe regulatory environment“. According to the representative of the foundation, “we understand there are specific challenges that go along with Bitcoin and there is a lot of potential and we want to work with them [authorities] to chart a safe course”.
According to the Wall Street Journal, this meeting shows that the federal authorities are making an effort to figure out how to regulate the peculiar world of virtual currencies. So far, their only actions have consisted of supervising and seizing assets from some Bitcoin exchanges, like Mt. Gox.
Earlier this year, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued some basic guidelines that placed cryptocurrencies and its exchanges under the same anti-money-laundering rules, considering the Bitcoin-related trading platforms as money-transmission businesses.
