These are great looking coins. 

Physical bitcoins are not now and never will be illegal.  Money laundering is what's illegal and that's what the U.S. department of the Treasury is looking to prevent.

Let's stop lying and saying that physical bitcoins have been made illegal. 


On an unrelated side note, does anyone know how to escape from handcuffs?

Not waffle speak...its just a complex area in which the laws are currently evolving.  

Money Service Businesses fall under a few different categories, including currency exchanges and money transmitters.  The FinCEN definition of "money transmitter" is vague enough to cover sending pretty much anything of value from person A to person B.   When the regulations were drafted, it wasn't a big deal because everyone knew what money was and it was very clear who was and was not a money transmitter.

Bitcoins represent peer-to-peer money transmission, and the regulations just weren't designed to accommodate such a radical departure from the previous way money has been thought of.  We expect these regulations to change in the next 6-12 months.  

In the meantime, we are federally registered as an MSB.  Our original conversations with FinCEN led us to register as a currency exchange but we have since submitted an updated registration as a money transmitter.  Registering state by state is also technically required in 48 out of the 50 states, and that is a process that requires review of the each state's policies. We're working through the review of state policies and planning where registration will likely be required.  Typically the application to become an MSB in a particular state is preempted by sending a request for ruling letter to determine whether or not the state wants you to register at all.  Most states laws are simply not equipped to address businesses that deal with bitcoins, and many state lawmakers do not understand how regulations should be applied or whether they should be applied at all.  If registration is required, it usually means that a surety bond has to be provided in an amount meant to protect the consumer from fraudulent money transmitters.  This bond can cost as much as 2% of annual gross transmission volume when required.

Mike was the first, and he did an amazing job at bringing Casascius coins to this community in the best way possible.  I personally think that Mike could adapt the business to comply with FinCEN's request, but it's not my decision.  

The U.S. government did not shut down Casascius.  Mr. Caldwell has chosen to shut down for now because of the uncertainty in the regulatory requirements.

Spain shouldn't be a problem, but I'd recommend opting for the $15 shipping upgrade at checkout so that you get the package faster.

The Titan Mint is well aware of the legal environment in which we operate.  Our products are perfectly legal to sell in the U.S. for companies that have the appropriate license.  We intend to comply with whatever regulations are required of us in order to continue to sell our products both domestically and abroad.  Casascius's decision to cease operations in order to avoid compliance with FinCEN is a legitimate one.  Compliance can be very expensive and while we're saddened, we respect Mr. Caldwell's business decisions in the face of the current regulatory environment.

We're shipping from La Habra, California, near Los Angeles.  First Class shipping is included in the cost.  For whatever reason, South America is having trouble delivering our packages, so I'd recommend paying extra for DHL or FedEX if we're shipping south of Mexico.

The Titan One Silver coins are now available. Production is limited to only 1,000 coins for the 2013 edition. These are "proof-grade" in their quality, and have a mirror finish in the polished areas.  They're minted from 1 troy ounce of .999 pure silver (31.1 grams). 

Read more at https://www.titanbtc.com/product/titan-one-silver/


Just a reminder, these are available in 2 versions:

"2-factor Authenticated" (Each coin is registered to an email address, which can be changed at anytime.  Access to the email is required to redeem)

-OR-

"Private Key included" (Just like Casascius coins, the only copy of the 30-digit private key is included underneath the hologram)









We limited production for this coin to just 1,000 pieces and they're selling quickly.  Credit card payments will be available next week on our site.

Lastly, Thanks for the warm welcome in Vegas this week, guys.  The 1 oz gold versions of this coin will be available soon.  If anyone wants to PM with pre-orders for the gold coins, that will help us gauge how much bullion to buy for the full production run.

A few people have forwarded this to me and asked for a comment, so here it is. (Sorry for being away from the forums lately, by the way)

FinCEN is a regulator, so they are going to try to regulate whatever they can.  They sent Mike a letter to say, "we think we'd like to regulate you."  He has the option to say, "No thanks" and let them pursue legal action against him.  In my opinion, Mike could probably win a court case defending his non-MSB status, but it would be a landmark ruling and a huge expense to undertake.  

For Titan Mint, We registered as an MSB because we want to accept dollars and make it convenient for everyday people to buy and get into bitcoin.  We planned to comply with FinCEN's AML/KYC policies from the beginning.  If bitcoin is a "currency", these types of situations are going to keep appearing as the legacy regulatory systems catch up to the constant influx of innovative business that build on the bitcoin protocol.  

Money laundering is real, and it's a real problem.  While this type of thing is a huge pain for the innovators in the bitcoin space, there is a kernel of "good" in FinCEN's mission statement.  It's definitely not for everyone, but some of us are willing to stick it out and work with the regulators in order to bring them up to speed on the future of money.  I completely respect the separatists in bitcoin who want to distance bitcoin from the existing systems.  There's a place for everyone in this community and we'll all add value in our own ways.  The work that is being done to make inroads with the existing financial establishment can serve to make bitcoin and its digital offspring much stronger.  If it doesn't though, we can always just move to a different blockchain.

Sorry about the downtime.  We're working on it.

We've got coins back in stock, but we are still working to resolve the payment processing on the website.  If you'd like to pay with BTC, shoot me a PM and I'll put the order through for you manually.

I'm sorry I don't know what registration number you're looking for.  Can you be more specific?

Titan Bitcoins are produced by the Titan Mint Inc., which is a corporation registered in the state of California, USA.  Does that help?

Thanks for the suggestion. 

We do actually match up the email addresses to verify that that the delivery confirmation number is coming from a known address associated with the customer. 

Even though we apparently don't make it very clear, there has only been one instance in which a delivery code came back from a different address and we had to ask the customer to reply from their previous address.   A delivery confirmation interface is a great idea and we've been working on implementing something similar, just to better automate the process.  In the meantime, I'll definitely have that packing slip revised to make it clearer that we're asking customers to reply to our "Your order has shipped" email when they confirm receipt.

The easiest way to verify the value is to either scan the back of the coin with a smart phone (a bar code app is required), or visit titanbtc.com/verify and type in the 8-digit coin ID number.  You can click on the bitcoin address shown on that page to verify that the coin is funded and get details on the funding transaction. 

Thanks for the pics!  Glad everything arrived safely.

Silver coins are arriving shortly and they're pristine.  They will be available for purchase on the site Nov. 30th.  Because of the U.S. holiday, the first coins will ship out December 3rd or 4th. 

The gold coins are in process as well, but its a slow process and we want to make sure they meet all the criteria that collectors are looking for in verified rare coins.  I'll post updates here when we have a firm delivery window.

We're planning to decommission the dies from the current production run and move to the 2014 designs in late spring or early summer of 2014.

We will probably sell off the complete 2013 production runs before that time.  Either way, we'll have a page on the website that documents the number of each design that was sold before it was retired.

We'll have coins available for sale this week. 

Check back later this week.  If the new merchant accounts aren't fully setup yet, we'll at least be offering coins for sale via other methods of payment like check, wire transfer and BTC.  The recent price increases and the fact that our coins are attracting some more mainstream interest are good news, but it means that our cash reserves on the exchanges don't last nearly as long as they need to.  We're implementing some solutions to make sure we can source BTC in higher quantities. 

You're on the list, Michail1.  

I'll have our developers add that to the website as well.

That's not a bad idea.

Right now, we're trying to make it as simple as possible to purchase our coins.  Most of our customers right now are either new to bitcoin or don't have a convenient way to invest in bitcoin.  For those that do already own BTC, it's fairly easy to pay with bitcoins at checkout now.  However, separating the two transactions (the coin funding and the coin purchasing) is something we actually considered early on for legal reasons which is why I agree that it's a viable option. 

I'd love to offer self funded coins as an option in the future.  Especially when we release some of the lower cost physical bitcoin items.

   

I agree. 

I think the "Relay OP_RETURN data TxOut" feature addition to the next official protocol update will be a much better solution than the current hacks that are in use by Colored coins et al.

Still looking for members for our dev team for this project, so please PM me if you'd like to get your hands dirty building a custom bitcoin client that makes use of this latest feature edition.  This is not a request for volunteer labor.

Thanks Steven.  Customer service will be happy to give you some chunky discount codes to compensate for that problem this morning.  I'll have them email you shortly.

I appreciate your point.  

Anyone who has bought from us knows that we are extremely responsive with customer service.  Deciding when to take a loss on a sale is always a tough call.  We started the business with the goal of bringing more people into the bitcoin community and that's still my main goal, but I can't pay for the people that make our customer service great if we're not making a profit.

Honestly, we may need to stop allowing customers to pay in dollars until we build our own exchange.  We're the only game in town at the moment selling physical bitcoins for fiat.  We have to have massive amounts of cash on the exchanges in order to buy BTC in real time as orders come in.  Its a lot of liability and maybe it's not worth it at this time.

I'm listening though.  You're not the only voice on the side of the customers and we're looking into honoring those orders that were payed for and later refunded.

Quick update and an apology

I just wanted to apologize to anyone that made a purchase on our site this morning that was subsequently cancelled.  One of developers updated the code to our website late last night (2:00 am here in California) while the rest of us were sleeping.  It wasn't until this morning that we realized he had enabled an automatic pricing feature that wasn't fully tested yet.  As a result, we were offering to sell bitcoins at a loss this morning for about 4 hours.

I would love to have fulfilled those orders, and it would have been a customer service win of the first order, but it also would have meant that we took a loss of about $2,000.  Honestly it was a tough choice, and our customer service rep really resisted when I told her that we would have to cancel those orders.  I hope the members of this community can sympathize with the challenges of pricing our products in dollars, in an environment where the selling price of bitcoins varies by as much as $100 depending on where you buy. 

We're interested in making things right with our customers, so feel free to shoot me a PM if you got stung by this error on our part and I'll happily send you a discount code for future purchases.   

Thanks