Coinbase has restarted the services of selling Bitcoin (BTC-USD) to residents of Wyoming after receiving a nod from regulators. As per a blog post from the company, it has successfully renewed its money transmitter license in the state and managed to return after pulling out abruptly from Wyoming almost three years ago.
Coinbase pulled out following declaration from regulators
State regulators in 2015 stated that the company came under the Money Transmitter Act. Following this declaration, Coinbase decided to pull off from Wyoming in June 2015 citing that it would be impractical and costly for the exchange to continue offering trading services in Wyoming. According to the Act, Coinbase will have to double reserves for state residents. It indicated that for renewing its license as money transmitter Coinbase will have to hold fiat currency reserves for all the crypto assets on behalf of consumers.
But the scenario has changed in the last couple of months after the Cowboy State introduced an amendment in the Money Transmitter Act in March due to which the virtual currency exchange has now received an exemption from the Act. As mentioned in the blog post of Coinbase, the digital currency companies in the state now do not need to double their reserve assets of the local residents as was deemed necessary previously.
Now that the license has been renewed, the customers of Wyoming can once again access their funds stored on their Coinbase accounts and start trading as well as using virtual currencies. According to the company, “We believe this action by Wyoming will spur innovation and economic activity for individuals, families and communities across the state.”
Coinbase Introduces New Plugin
In other news, Coinbase is planning to introduce the WooCommerce plugin, with which merchants will be able to accept both Litecoin (LTC-USD) and Bitcoin payment directly via Coinbase Commerce. With this arrangement, the payments will function in a peer-to-peer manner. It means that the cryptocurrency of the customers will be transferred directly to the wallet of the merchants and for that, it will not need any intermediary. Thus, the merchants will be saved from paying any transaction fees for carrying out any payment.