Some good news came out of the US Treasury Department for American Bitcoin miners.
Anyone mining Bitcoins for his or her own purposes and not for the benefit of others will not be consider a money services business and will thus have no obligation to register with FinCEN, according to a ruling by the group.
FinCEN, or the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, has thus far required any US-based Bitcoin business to register as money transmitters.
But if you are mining Bitcoins simply for your own digital currency wealth and spending those earnings for your sole benefit, then you don’t fall under FinCEN’s definition of a money services business.
This is good news for a number of miners who were concerned they would have to comply with a number of difficult federal regulations just to run their mining equipment.
The ruling is the result of a request from Atlantic City Bitcoin, a New Jersey-based company that operates a number of ASIC miners. FinCEN replied to Atlantic City Bitcoin as follows:
“To the extent that a user mines Bitcoin and uses the Bitcoin solely for the user’s own purposes and not for the benefit of another, the user is not an MSB under FinCEN’s regulations, because these activities involve neither ‘acceptance’ nor ‘transmission’ of the convertible virtual currency and are not the transmission of funds within the meaning of the Rule.
“This is the case whether the user mining and using the Bitcoin is an individual or a corporation, and whether the user is purchasing goods or services for the user’s own use, paying debts previously incurred in the ordinary course of business, or (in the case of a corporate user) making distributions to shareholders.”
Note that any contract mining operations done on behalf of another would not qualify and thus would have to register as a money services business.