of others; Brito and Dourado also point to further clarifications that are needed in regard to mining pools and operations, notably the ambiguous language classifying individual miners versus mining pool operations. Unnecessary stipulations A major problem with the BitLicense framework as proposed is the inclusion of regulations that puts BitLicensees at a disadvantage compared to traditional money transmitting licensees, the authors argue. Pointing to examples like the requirement for all employees to submit fingerprints to the NYDFS (for traditional money transmitting licenses, only the applicant must submit fingerprints) and the requirement to collect physical addresses of all parties involved in any transaction, Brito and Dourado criticize the BitLicense proposal as “impractical and counterproductive”. They note: “As one commentator put it, requiring that Virtual Currency businesses identify all parties to a transaction would be much like requiring Gmail or Yahoo! Mail to identify and gather the physical address of the recipients of the emails their customers send.” These stipulations neglect to consider the uniquely open nature of a decentralized currency like bitcoin, and as the authors mention, may very well result in stifling innovators who wish to explore the bitcoin market further. An on-ramp for startups Brito and Dourado continue to argue that many of the tedious and burdensome regulations that must be met by BitLicensees are more apt for traditional financial firms, not software-focused startup companies. The authors point to the requirement that changes to business must be approved by the superintendent as particularly troublesome, as constant iteration is essential for startups and business model pivots are not rare for young companies: “Indeed, it is unlikely that Silicon Valley would even exist today if entrepreneurs had to receive written approval from regulators every time they wanted to make a material change to their business model [...] The industry has thrived on permissionless innovation.” Brito and Dourado point out that traditional money transmitter licensees do not face the same requirements for changing their businesses, and that the NYDFS needs to take a more balanced approach in working with startups so that they “do not have the same compliance expenses that the world’s largest financial firms have on day one of their existence”. In conclusion, they explicilty commend Lawsky and the NYDFS for proactively approaching bitcoin regulation, but call for further revisions to be made to the BitLicense framework. The authors suggest an additional 45-day comment window to be instated for final comments to be made on the new draft of the BitLicense regulations, in hopes of finding the right balance between preventing money laundering and fostering innovation in New York state. Brito Dourado NY Virtual Currency Comment 081414 by CoinDesk Revisions image via Shutterstock Ben LawskyBitLicensefinancial regulationNew York
Original author: Tom Sharkey
One of Russia’s newly minted technology tycoons has unveiled his first foray into the bitcoin world, a block chain visualiser called BlockTrail, that opened for public access today.
Tech magnate Lev Leviev is co-founder of VKontakte, Russia’s largest social network, which has 266 million user accounts and more active daily users than Facebook in the country.
He 
The mentions tab reveals a page of links to web pages that have referred to the wallet address. This includes links to pages on Bitcoin Talk, for example. This particular US Marshalls wallet has 61 mentions, according to Blocktrail. The page is also structured with a Reddit-like voting mechanism that allows users to vote for the most salient links.
Crowded analytics space
BlockTrail is entering the increasingly heated space of bitcoin data and analytics startups, where firms are raising millions in funding to turn block chain data into profits.
Last month New York-based startup TradeBlock, for example, 
