US law is pretty clear on the fact that Mt. Gox is a money transmitter (you don't have to actually transmit money to be one, just things equivalent to money). Whether they are subject to US jurisdiction or not might be debatable (though not really as far as the feds are concerned if they have US customers).
> US law is pretty clear on the fact that Mt. Gox is a money transmitter
US law is pretty clear on the fact that Mt. Gox is a money transmitter because Gox did, in fact, transmit money (that is, it had USD denominated accounts for users and distributed funds to other people from those accounts to other people at the direction of the account holder.)
> (you don't have to actually transmit money to be one, just things equivalent to money).
That might be true, but its irrelevant, as Gox (and any other exchange that exchanges a commodity for money, whether or not the commodity itself is also money) actually transmitted money, not merely "things equivalent to money".
Do you know if CCP Games is registered as a money transmitter? Eve ISK has value and is as equivalent to money as bitcoins so they should fall under that umbrella right?
> Whether they are subject to US jurisdiction or not might be debatable
If you're worried about what the courts have to say about the subject, it isn't debatable in the slightest. They're the ones who get to decide what the rules are, period.
If you don't care what a jurisdiction's courts have to say about the rules governing financial services, you really have absolutely no business offering financial services in that jurisdiction.
