MarkTanamil

Those who have recently invested in Bitcoin might be in for a shock when they find out that the federal government bureaucracy FinCEN is poised to stamp out all trade of the digital currency.<p>Currently Bitcoin is legal to use, however “miners” have to register as Money Transfer Businesses by applying for a government license. Since the original announcement from FinCEN no miners have coughed up the necessary funds or even applied for a license, and as a result FinCens stance on Bitcoin has changed for the worse.<p>As of May 1st, participating in the exchange of US dollars into Bitcoin will be in breach of the bank secrecy act and liable for prosecution.<p>This is bad news for any Americans that are currently in possession of Bitcoin since converting it back into US dollars is effectively illegal.<p>Additionally FinCEN has teamed up with the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) in order to track down people that have been purchasing illegal drugs through the hidden Silkroad website. Dan Restrepo in the White House said “We have been monitoring the [Silkroad] website ever since it first came online. Our technical experts have managed to track down the location of the site. We are just waiting on an application for a European Arrest Warrant before it can be shut down for good.”<p>Steve Hudak of FinCEN added “Until now due to the nature of Bitcoin it had been extremely difficult to track down people that had been using it to purchase illegal goods. Now that we have been given full access to all data held on the exchanges it is a simple case of linking the Bitcoin addresses to the identities of the accounts.”