It seems as if it’s been a long road to get here, but today marks the conclusion of the first public commenting period when it comes to the New York Department of Financial Service‘s (NYDFS) BitLicense proposal, which has been seemingly met with no shortage of resistance from the community.
The proposal, which was distributed for public comment in mid-July, outlines a number of regulations the NYDFS hopes to put in place to keep tabs on companies operating in the virtual currency space in the State of New York.
Those regulations include collecting customer names, addresses, and other identifying information, in addition to strict reporting requirements for companies regardless of their size or resources.
This commenting period was supposed to last for a 45-day period, if you’ll recall. But when members of the community realized that 45 days would not be nearly enough to review and comment on the proposal, they began to realize that an extension would be required if this were to be done the right way.
At the time, Perianne Boring of the Chamber of Digital Commerce called the 45 days “severely inadequate” and “egregious”.
It wasn’t too long before the NYDFS came out and extended the public commenting period to October 21st, much to the relief of companies looking to submit lengthy comments (much like Circle and BitPay did yesterday).
What happens now?
It’s certainly not the end of the process.
Presumably, the New York Department of Financial Services will take some time to review the tons of comments they received on the proposal (both from the public and from the business sector), which will go into shaping the next version of the proposal.
When released again, another public commenting period will open, though it’s unclear whether or not the NYDFS will stick to the extended time frame of 90 days or go with the 45-day standard.
Either way, it’s a very interesting topic, and I’ll have more information for you as it becomes available.