Re:US financial regulator: We could regulate Bitcoin “if we ...
by benjamincburns on Tuesday May 07, 2013 @02:00PM
(#5669636)
Again, I'm not a finance person, but I believe you could argue that the legendary item is a virtual good, rather than a virtual currency so long as it had in-game value aside from use as a monetary instrument.
The money transmitter regulations might (should) apply to sale of in-game currencies, however as these are only valuable as instruments of trade.
That said, it's probably totally legal if one were to use bitcoin to purchase a virtual good such as a legendary item, (allowable without restriction under the guideline) and then sell said virtual good for USD or another currency. Following that line of reasoning it wouldn't be too outrageous for commodities markets to open up trading in-game goods for the sole purpose of virtual currency exchange.
But that's pretty contrived...
"Creates a unit of convertible virtual currency": Plays long enough to obtain a legendary item and...
"sells those units to another person for real currency": sells the legendary item on the real money auction house.
That's a very scary statement indeed. It's too broad, and could be brought to bare against too many concepts in the digital world.