FinCEN say that users who mine "for themselves" do not have to register as Money Transmitters

On December 29, 2013, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) of the United States issued a clarification that had significant implications for the bitcoin mining community. In a response to a request for guidance, FinCEN stated that individuals mining Bitcoin for their own personal use were not considered money transmitters under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) regulations.
 

This clarification came at a time when the legal status of Bitcoin was still a gray area, and regulatory uncertainty was a major concern for those involved in bitcoin mining. The question at hand was whether individuals who mine cryptocurrencies needed to register as Money Services Businesses (MSBs), which would subject them to a range of compliance obligations including registration, reporting, and recordkeeping requirements.
 

FinCEN’s guidance provided much-needed relief to small-scale miners, confirming that they did not have to bear the regulatory burdens associated with MSB status as long as they were mining for themselves and not as a business service for others. The letter from FinCEN explained that a user’s conversion of Bitcoin into a real currency or another convertible virtual currency does not make the user a money transmitter, provided the activity is undertaken solely for the user’s own purposes.

The official statement reads as:

"In undertaking such a conversion transaction, the user is not acting as an exchanger, notwithstanding the fact that the user is accepting a real currency or another convertible virtual currency and transmitting Bitcoin, so long as the user is undertaking the transaction solely for the user’s own purposes and not as a business service performed for the benefit of another. A user’s conversion of Bitcoin into a real currency or another convertible virtual currency, therefore, does not in and of itself make the user a money transmitter."