Interview with Juan Llanos Of The Bitcoin Foundation
Just as I realize that Bitcoin is such a world changing technology, government agencies and regulators are also realizing how risky it may be.
It’s not about government obstructionism, it’s about money laundering, terrorism financing, and the integrity of the financial system. These issues are top priority in Capitol Hill and the White House and we just have to live with it.
Juan Llanos is member of the Regulatory Affairs Committee of the Bitcoin Foundation and a veteran anti money laundering expert. In this interview he opened my eyes as to what are all the risks involved in starting a Bitcoin or digital currency business.
Yes, FinCen has laid out guidelines in March of this year, but the issues are more profound and more government agencies, federal and state, are looking at crypto-currencies and analyzing their nature to decide whether to establish more controls or not.
My personal opinion is that FinCen settled the “money transmitting” and “exchange from digital to fiat” issues, but the other questions are: Is Bitcoin an investment security? Where are bitcoins deposited? Is the block chain the “bank”? Should the block chain itself be regulated just like financial institutions are?.
Of course the best scenario would be to regulate the layer of the services operating on top of the Bitcoin network instead of Bitcoin itself, but the issues are still open and thus so are the risks. This includes trading risks.
Please watch my interview with Juan Llanos:
