Another week, another bitcoin company packing up the Family Truckster and leaving New York for greener pastures. LocalBitcoins announced its exit from the Empire State market in a recent company blog post. This followed similar announcements from other high-profile companies, including Kraken, BitFinex, ArtByte, Genesis Mining, Satoshi Citadel Industries, and ShapeShift, just to name a few.
The BitLicense makes it a criminal offense to sell digital currency to citizens of New York unless the seller is licensed. For LocalBitcoins, this would mean that every seller on its platform would have to be individually licensed. Further, LocalBitcoins would be compelled to review and held to account for the licensing of each trader and his/her AML program.
