Why Bitcoin lives in a “legal gray area” [Tim. B. Lee] « Mktgeist blog

Why Bitcoin lives in a "legal gray area" [Tim. B. Lee]

“If you’re going to be a money transmitter, you have to turn over information to Treasury or to State to prevent fraud and abuse,” he said. The problem is that miners don’t have any of the information, such as names and Social Security numbers, that the authorities want. The only information miners have is the pseudonymous Bitcoin addresses associated with each transaction—and that information is already available to the general public. The “blockchain,” the shared record of all completed Bitcoin transactions, is available for anyone to download and inspect, so it would be pointless to force miners to disclose information that the government can get directly from the Bitcoin network.

Full article: http://blog.mktgeist.com/2012/08/30/why-bitcoin-lives-in-...