REUTERS/Peter Nicholls
A bitcoin sticker is seen in the window of the 'Vape Lab' cafe, where it is possible to both use and purchase the bitcoin currency, in London March 24, 2015.
Daniel Roberts at Fortune reports that Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, is putting the finishing touches on BitLicense, a policy that "will require digital currency companies to obtain a license in order to transmit money on behalf of customers."
This means that the cryptocurrency is getting slightly more legit, though the Bitcoin community is unsurprisingly somewhat unhappy about that. While some people think that regulation is a way to wider acceptance, Bitcoin is by and large a community full of people with serious philosophical opposition to the mainstream system. That's why they created bitcoin.
From Fortune:
While some welcome [regulation] (such as those rolling out insured exchanges) because it can bring the currency and the technology mainstream, many are more philosophically motivated, and were attracted to the space precisely because of its lack of regulation. The latter camp includes people like Roger Ver, nicknamed "Bitcoin Jesus," who recently told Fortune, "Bernie Madoff… was regulated up and down and every which way, and it didn't do any good, he ran away with everyone's money… Without all the regulations, we could do so much more already."
These bitcoiners should get together with JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon.