Hello,
I have an idea I have come up few days ago. Seeing all these exchanges closed, and their USD bank account closed got me thinking. Can you trade bitcoin for lets say gold? What if there is an exchange where you can freely exchange BTC for gold or some other commodity, and later on you can cash in at some gold to USD exchange? Is there some large gold exchange that has some sort of IOU certificates which can be maybe traded even on the p2p bitcoin-to-IOU exchange?
That way FINCEN regulations would not apply for bitcoin to gold exchange.
Let me know what you think.
Regards, Neil
Yes, I actually had this idea in the form of getting coin shops involved. They are not high tech (I asked one once about any Web interest and he replied something about a webbed foot), so there might be a barrier there but everyone understands profit potential. All we would need to do is sign up shops to allow people to walk in and trade their gold for bitcoins or vice versa, giving the shop and any middle men a cut of course.
I think that would be really popular. As the FinCEN guidance says exchanging bitcoins directly for goods or services is not subject to regulation or record keeping requirements.