The Complexities of New York's Bitlicense

Back in 2015, New York rolled out the Bitlicense to tackle crypto fraud. But honestly, the verification process for businesses is so over-the-top that it feels like a sketchy crypto casino demanding loads of KYC just because you scored big. Because of this, a ton of exchanges and fintech companies (basically the new wave of banks) have pulled out of New York. It really sucks for those of us living there since these services are up and running in most other states. People were hoping that Mayor Eric Adams would step in and change things, but so far, all we’ve seen are more anti-mining laws popping up. So for anyone in New York or bouncing between states, how are you all handling this? Is there even a glimmer of hope that they’ll ease up on these regulations and make it simpler to comply?

I don't think so... Despite reading "this [refer to the "NEW DEVELOPMENTS" section]", I still can't think of an instance where they actually made life easier for BitLicense holders [e.g. I couldn't find the exact thread, but there was a user on this forum that mentioned he spent more to gather & fulfill the requirements than he paid for the application fee] and "this" is one of their recent additions.

To put it bluntly - that's fucking stupid. Periodic compliance fees? That will make non-compliance fines useless. Anything special action groups for crypto can do to campaign for a change in legislature?

Is it possible to circumvent this with a vpn too for a lot of sites or is there tougher legislation about that (such as proof of address). This probably adds the an argument of trying to make things more decentralised. Convert to cash with a large company (I assume coinbase and binance are still operating there, binance is operating in the UK illegally still lol) and just use dexes for converting between cryptos (and stable coins).

A VPN from NY or some other state to some location in another unbanned state in the US should do fine, but not one to a different country obviously. The exchanges seem to care only that you are using the account in the US as you are supposed to, but they don't have the means to track your state - it's not on your ID card, so it can only be determined from the IP address, which has just been masked. It would be better if there was VPN software that tunneled your connection only for specific websites / domain names.

Well I moved to New Jersey years ago. Problem was improved a lot.