Mining pools and the law
What the guidance actually says, quoted, and how it shaped the design of Spearmint Mining. Not legal advice.
-
FinCEN
Is a mining pool a money transmitter? FinCEN's §5.4 rule, explained
The 2013 framework, the 2014 mining ruling, and the 2019 guidance's one sentence that separates a pool from a money transmitter — and the one feature that flips it.
Start here -
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania Act 7 of 2025: what changed for virtual currency on 26 August 2025
The renamed law, the new licence requirement quoted, the carve-outs, the licensing bar, and why there is no mining exemption to lean on.
-
Custody
Why our mining pool will never offer a hosted wallet
What a hosted balance changes technically and legally, and why "the address is the login, and cannot be changed" removes a whole class of theft.
-
Terminology
Why we say "pending mining reward", not "balance"
The unpaid figure on a pool dashboard is an allocation against maturing blocks. Calling it a balance changes what users, regulators and developers assume.
Pools and payouts
How mining pools divide rewards, and how to run without one.
-
Payout methods
PPLNS vs PPS: which mining-pool payout method is safer for the operator?
PROP, PPS, FPPS, PPS+, PPLNS and SMPPS compared — and the point nobody makes: under PPS the operator owes miners before a block exists.
-
Solo mining
Solo mining with ckpool: a complete setup guide (any SHA-256 coin)
Node config, ckpool.conf with the real keys, pointing an ASIC at it, reading the logs, and the time-to-block arithmetic.
Building a chain
The engineering behind Spearmint, with the failures left in.
-
Bitcoin Core
How to fork Bitcoin Core v29: chainparams, genesis block, and what breaks
Every chainparams field you must change, the genesis-mining loop that broke on us, and why the consensus additions are the dangerous part.
-
Difficulty
Per-block difficulty retargeting: why 2,016 blocks is too slow for a small chain
Why Bitcoin's rule is fatal for a small SHA-256 chain, what KGW, DGW, Digishield and LWMA got right and wrong, and what Spearmint's ADR still has to prove.