While many traditional financial institutions hesitate to embrace cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, a recent news report suggests that Fidelity Investments, the fourth largest U.S. asset manager, is looking to enter the fray. Business Insider reported last week that Fidelity has posted internal job listings for systems engineers “to help engineer, create, and deploy a digital

The Uniform Law Commission is set to vote on a draft Uniform Regulation of Virtual Currency Businesses Act at its upcoming annual meeting in San Diego beginning on July 14th. As numerous states and federal regulators have already begun the process of regulating virtual currencies through “money transmitter” statutes or related legislation, the uniform act attempts to establish model standards for the regulation of business activities tailored to virtual currencies.

Specifically, the uniform act would regulate businesses whose products and services include: (1) the exchange of virtual currencies for cash, bank deposits, or other virtual currencies; (2) the transfer from one customer to another of virtual currencies; or (3) certain custodial or fiduciary services in which the property or assets being controlled or managed include virtual currency. The act includes several exemptions from regulation for banks, securities brokers, personal or household purchases, blockchain data miners and others.
Continue Reading Primer on the Draft Uniform Regulation of Virtual Currency Businesses Act

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) obtained authorization from a California federal court last November to serve a John Doe summons on the virtual currency firm Coinbase in order to obtain customer information to determine whether customers were using virtual currency to avoid paying income taxes.

Although the summons was issued in December, Coinbase has not