This is an interesting theory. Why don't money transmitter laws apply to standard bitcoin nodes which authenticate more than $10,000 of transactions a year?
These changes shouldn't happen, there are lots of companies who provide services where it doesn't make sense for them to act like money transmitters. For instance, BitGo is a 2-of-3 multisig wallet where they hold one key. They aren't a money transmitter because they can't send funds without your approval nor can they prevent you from sending funds.
Maybe it was just a general concern about centralization resulting in easy targets for regulation.
American law draws two circles. One is for entities with know your customer (KYC) requirements. The other is for entities with a fiduciary duty to their clients. The second circle is inside the first. Lots of entities with no client fiduciary requirements are required to know their customers.
TL; DR If you’re handling others’ money, or helping others transmit money, directly or indirectly, you have a KYC liability under current law.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.
1. Bitcoin nodes have no special knowledge of transactions. There is nothing that you can get from a subpoena of my Bitcoin node that you cannot get from blockchain.info.
2. Bitcoin nodes can't meaningfully object to transactions that they're not party to. You could refuse to validate a block that contained an illegal transaction, but that would have no effect unless pretty much everybody did the same thing.
3. These laws don't make sense applied to Bitcoin nodes. For example, there's a law saying that transactions over $10,000 must be reported to the government. There are several thousand Bitcoin nodes. Does that mean that FinCEN wants to receive 5000 copies of a report saying that a high-value transaction just appeared? No, of course not.
In contrast, lightning nodes do have meaningful non-public information about transactions, and they can refuse to relay a transaction.
KYC is regulated by FinCEN. FinCEN requires every “Money Services Business” to register with them and do KYC.
If maintaining a supernode is so costly that only businesses will do so, to make a profit, then supernodes might require KYC. If supernodes run non-profit, they don’t need to.
If you're skirting KYC requirements on the basis of this belief, you should seek legal counsel.
A business is considered to be a type of entity (just like a person) that gets different tax treatment.
Anyone who transfers money, by any manner including, but not limited to, electronic, financial, debt ledger, cash or traditional methods like hawala, hundi, fei ch'ien, and chit is considered to be a "Money Transmitter."
Money Transmission classification and registration varies by state, to receive money from, or transfer money to someone in said state (regardless of your jurisdiction) you must register with the state and usually put up an insurance bond.
Then you must also register with FinCEN and enact an appropriate AML policy that would include KYC.
Non-profit status is given by the IRS, allowing the entity to avoid taxes. It doesn't change the underlying entity's structure.
NB: I'm not a lawyer.