There are persistent rumors that the FED and the US-government is considering shutting down all virtual currency exchanges. - Bitcoin tumles again.
Will the US-government shut down virtual currency exchanges soon? Rumors has it that they will at least freeze all accounts because of regulatory issues, i.e. future and margintrading on crypto-erxchanges. After the rumors were spread in the community, Bitcoin took another steep dive.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today announced a Proposed Interpretation concerning its authority over retail commodity transactions involving virtual currency, such as bitcoin. Specifically, the Proposed Interpretation sets out the CFTC’s view regarding the “actual delivery” exception that may apply to virtual currency transactions. The Proposed Interpretation is open for public comment for 90 days from publication in the Federal Register.
IRS
To add to that, the US federal government is pushing a bill called “Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Counterfeiting Act of 2017” - which we talked about a few days ago.
This bill takes a further step to target bitcoin and wants to put any business which “issues” cryptocurrency under this umbrella of anti-money laundering regulations. Also, it will include bitcoin on the list of monetary instruments that must be reported when entering or leaving the US.
As you can see, trying to do anything related to bitcoin in the “land of the free” anymore is becoming more and more difficult. This combined with the SEC turning down a bitcoin ETF months ago has all but ensured that many Americans missed out on massive gains in the rise of bitcoin and other altcoins in the last year.