Having sapling-only wallets will be cool, and I expect that several of these will be release over the next few weeks with the release of the sapling reference wallet. The problem, however, is that most exchanges and hardware wallets don’t support z-addrs yet, so getting funds into these sapling-only wallets will be hard.
I’ve been thinking it would be cool to have a (centralized) service that only does t-addr → z-addr. That is, you send it a transparent transaction, and it simply forwards that ZEC to your z-addr.
Does anyone know if this service will count as an “exchange” according to regulators? Will this need a money-transmitter license?
While I totally understand the use case, I would prefer that the community doesn’t spend any resources on t-addresses and rather push the ECC, the Foundation, as well as the exchanges and hardware wallets to z-address adoption.
If the service you are proposing has control of a users funds (ie: private keys) at any time then it would likely be considered an exchange/wallet. As a “trusted” third party in the transaction I think it would have to abide by the same KYC/AML rules and regulations as a normal exchange.
Either way, setting up something like this would need more feedback from an attorney who knows the laws/regulations that might apply.
Thinking about it there is a good chance it would fall into the category “mixer”. The service provided isn’t much different from mixing, especially if done without KYC or AML regulations/requirements.
Not sure about the US, but here in Europe authorities are going after mixing services and seize/shut them down.
