Today, FinCEN released information that they have fined Ripple Labs and XRP II (a subsidiary) $700,000 USD for violating the Bank Secrecy Act.

Once again, Bitcoin users not affected.

For all intents and purposes, Ripple Labs Inc. IS Ripple. As we all know, Bitcoin is a protocol governed by the rules of math, programming and logic. Fortunately, FinCEN agrees (outlined below). Here at shitco.in, we don’t expect to see any lawsuits against the Bitcoin protocol any time soon.

Some takeaways from today’s documents:

– FinCEN press release can be found here.

So what we have here is Ripple Labs “failing to implement and maintain an adequate anti-money laundering program designed to protect its products from use by money launderers or terrorist financiers”. Wait a second… Didn’t a case just come to light where Bitcoin exchanges (BitStamp and Coinbase) came forward regarding suspicious activity from a government agent?

So, individual Bitcoin exchanges are able to implement KYC/AML for an unregulated protocol, but Ripple can’t keep track of their pre-mined shit?

Oah yeah, even better… the government has a concept of what pre-mined is now.

From this document.

So, in summary…

Jed McCaleb founds and then leaves Mt. Gox (which so gloriously implodes) to start Ripple, which the US government recognizes as pre-mined (garbage). Now, FinCEN is fining Ripple for failing to comply with the simplest of virtual currency regulations which were outlined 2 years ago, in 2013!