The most controversial of the code's stipulations include fingerprinting company employees, monitoring customer activity, and strict capital requirements.

This final version of BitLicense is the third draft of the bill, the result of modifications made to two previous versions. Most of the revisions that happened in the first two drafts clarified vague language that could have been used to make BitLicense necessarily strict. The most celebrated of these revisions was an explicit exemption for developers, which allows them to work on their projects in New York without any regulatory burdens.

Despite two rounds of revisions, BitLicense still places an unprecedented amount of regulation upon the Bitcoin industry. Consequently, the community is divided in regards to BitLicence's benefits and hindrances.

Industry Representatives React to the Final BitLicense

Erik Voorhees, CEO of ShapeShift and a well-respected member of the Bitcoin community, has been an outspoken opponent of BitLicense from the start. As a libertarian, Voorhees has repeatedly shared his general skepticism of government. His sentiments are no different towards BitLicense, believing it to be counterproductive against its own goals:

"The hypocrisy of the BitLicense is unfortunate. It claims to protect consumers, while simultaneously requiring them to surrender personal private information to Bitcoin companies and government agencies. This is anachronistic, and puts consumers at risk, for inevitably those stashes of personal data get hacked."

Erik Voorhees, CEO of ShapeShift

ShapeShift has put action behind its leader's words, opting to not apply for a BitLicense and suspending its services in the state of New York. This cryptocurrency exchange does not require users to make accounts with the exchange, which provides users with a high level of anonymity. Compliance with BitLicense would force ShapeShift to abandon this policy, as the regulation requires companies to report sensitive customer information to the NYDFS. Voorhees is not willing to compromise his customers' privacy in that way, telling CNBC that "we're not going to spy on thousands of people purely to make [New York's] job a little bit easier."