The time constraints still apply, but at least the Bitcoin community has been promised a fuller description of what New York thinks the benefits of its proposed BitLicenses program would be.
On Wednesday, the Foundation announced that the New York Department of Financial Services had promised to deliver more information on its BitLicenses proposal, though a 45-day limit remains in effect.
The Bitcoin Foundation’s request — filed on Tuesday — included “a clear statement of the ‘needs and benefits’ for proposed regulations.”
The Foundation’s letter also suggested the NYDFS develop “an iterative process, in which you issue drafts, take comments for three months, re-draft, and take comments again until the many, many issues raised by the proposed regulation are thoroughly vetted in true collaboration with the community.”
You can read the full text of Tuesday’s letter from the Foundation here.
Less Than a Month until the Deadline for Responses
“If New York was truly looking for public comment, would he be opposed to extending the comment period to the full 365 days, or some other period of time?” Bitcoin Foundation’s Jon Matonis told Cointelegraph last month.
- Jon Matonis of the Foundation
“Knowing full well that many of the Bitcoin players are small startups and can't afford to just drop what they are doing (building Bitcoin businesses, raising money, etc.) to comment intelligently within 45 days. Most entrepreneurs don't even have the funds to hire an attorney right now to do just that.”
The Bitcoin Foundation itself promised to work as effectively as possible within New York’s tight time frame and “publish all of the material it receives from the NYDFS for the Bitcoin community to review.”
“If the agency takes the full 20 days to respond, the materials will be available just days before the close of the original comment period on the regulations, which was the minimum 45 days allowed by New York law,” the Foundation’s Wednesday release read.
The Bitcoin community has until September 6 to respond to the NYFDS’s BitLicenses proposal.
“The reality is that we must work with the NYSDFS and need to forcefully convey the urgency of our concerns, while understanding the needs of these regulators tasked with promoting and abiding by existing laws related to money laundering, consumer protection and national security (regardless of personal opinions on the merits of those statutes),” Ryan Selkis (aka the “Two-Bit Idiot”) published on Cointelegraph following the release of the BitLicenses proposals.
The Digital Chamber of Commerce’s Petition
On Tuesday, also, the Digital Chamber of Commerce appealed to its supporters to sign a petition “asking [Lawsky] to extend the comment period of the proposed BitLicense Rules and Regulations through the end of 2014.”
That petition can be found here.
“These regulations do not even highlight the distinction between digital assets and digital currencies,” Chamber president Perianne Boring said in a statement.
“Without representing the difference between the two, the NYDFS is issuing indiscriminate guidelines that threaten to destroy Bitcoin. Numerous businesses have told me they are ready to block out all New York IPs from their servers, and will not do business in this jurisdiction if these proposed regulations are enacted.”
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