This week, the U.K. treasury announced they would be amending anti-money laundering laws to require bitcoin and other cryptocurrency investors to reveal their identities. Online investing platforms will vet each investor and report suspicious persons to the U.K. authorities in an attempt to limit crime facilitated by crypto-investing. Critics of current bitcoin operations, from Goldman Sachs to JP Morgan execs, are in agreement with the U.K. Treasury’s decision, purporting that allowing investor anonymity can lead to crime, fraud, and breaches in counter-terrorism financial legislation. This follows last week’s order from a San Francisco judge mandating Coinbase to release investor information to the IRS to avoid tax fraud on crypto-investments.
Separately, Amazon is facing legal action from Daimler, the parent company for Mercedes-Benz. Amazon is accused of selling counterfeit Mercedes-Benz car parts, reported as “shipped and sold by Amazon” on the marketplace. This would set an important precedent for small business owners, who often fall victim to counterfeiters selling fake versions of their products on Amazon. Read below for the full story.
New in SaaS listings this week is a $166K social media marketing business, with a growing user base of c.480 clients, an authoritative brand in the growing social media marketing niche, strong traffic stats with around 45,000 visitors in the last year, and low owner involvement. If you are interested in this listing follow the link to request a prospectus.
Been wondering what it takes to build and eventually sell a Shopify app business? In response to increased buyer interest in the market, Founder Thomas Smale published The Ultimate Guide to Building and Selling a Shopify App Business on our blog (and no, you don’t need to know how to code). Give it a read if you’ve been thinking about starting an online business, or simply want to find out what it takes to sell one–and what all the buzz is about.
In event news, Thomas spoke at Capitalism Conference yesterday (formerly known as FreedomFastLane) in Austin and will be in town until December 9. In town? Shoot us a reply so we can set up a one-on-one meeting. Coming up in December: time to dust off your ugly Christmas sweater! The FE team is getting excited to deck the halls at our Holiday Networking Social at the Boston E-Commerce Meetup on Wednesday December 20. RSVP here to come enjoy the holiday season with peers from the industry and chat about what trends we’re all expecting in 2018.
Continue reading below for more on Amazon’s most recent lawsuit, the UK’s increased legislation of bitcoin, and Escrow.com’s new WooCommerce extension.
Deal Highlights
New:
SaaS – B2B Social Media Marketing – $6K MRR
- Authoritative brand in the growing social media marketing niche
- Robust product, boasting c.480 of clients and dozens of glowing reviews
- Simple and scalable cost structure driving continuously high gross margins
- Stable site traffic with c.45,000 visitors over the past year
- Low owner involvement with much of the day-to-day delegated to staff
Yearly net profit: $39,000
Asking price: $166,000
Sold:
B2B SaaS – Real Estate Lease Management Platform – $1.7K gross/mo
Affiliate – Sports & Recreation – $1K gross/mo
In the News…
Mercedes-Benz Sues Amazon
Not for the first time, Amazon is being sued for facilitating the sale of counterfeit items. But one thing is unique, because this time, they’re being sued by Mercedes-Benz.
In the past, small businesses have come across other sellers who steal their imagery and copy their items to sell on Amazon. Amazon has been taken to court over the issue, though was not implicated because the jury decided that since it was not sold by Amazon, acting as the venue does not qualify the marketplace for prosecution. Now, things are different, because Mercedes-Benz has discovered counterfeit car parts that are marked as “sold by Amazon.” Apparently, even after warning Amazon to take down the parts, Amazon has not done anything to change the listing. Consequently, they are being taken to court under guidelines laid out in previous cases that present the conditions necessary for Amazon to be sued for counterfeit items being found on their site.
Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz has built their case against Amazon over three sets of counterfeit Mercedez-Benz branded wheel caps that they discovered were listed as sold by Amazon. The outcome of this case will likely set an important precedent for small business owners.
UK Joins in on Legislating Bitcoin Investor Transparency
In the face of fears that investors are using cryptocurrency for money laundering and tax evasion, the UK and other European Union countries are cracking down on bitcoin regulations to increase transparency into who investors are.
The UK Treasury has made the decision to regulate bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in order to subject them to anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financial legislation. In the new wave of transparency and stringent ruling being brought to crypto-investing, traders will be forced to disclose their identities, effectively ending the anonymity previously enjoyed by bitcoin investors. Under this new plan, online cryptocurrency trading platforms will be required to fully vet customers and report any suspicious transactions. Right now, the anti-money laundering directive is being amended by the UK government in order to allow online trading firms’ activity to be monitored by national authorities. Amid other criticisms, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have castigated bitcoin as a method of committing fraud and other crimes.
The negotiations for the deals are expected to conclude late this year or early next year.
Escrow.com Releases Payment Processing Extension for WooCommerce Sites
Escrow.com has released an extension for WooCommerce sites, allowing users to make payments directly to WooCommerce stores using Escrow.com.
With two updates out already, the extension is useful and simple to download. WooCommerce store owners simply navigate to “Plugins” in WordPress, click on “Add New” and then click on “Upload Plugin” once it has been downloaded from the Escrow.com site. Click on “Choose File” to select the .zip file downloaded from Escrow.com, click “open” and finally “Install Now” to begin installation. Escrow.com should then appear as an option under the Checkout tab of the WooCommerce Settings page. This extension is compatible with WooCommerce 3.0, WordPress 4.0, and PHP 5.6 but is not guaranteed to work with older versions of these software. WC Vendors is the only multi-vendor extension supported by this version of the extension.
The extension grants several benefits to WooCommerce store owners, among them: support for USD and EUR currencies, drop down of who pays the escrow fees on each transaction between the buyer and seller with the option to split 50-50, modifiable description of Escrow payment option at checkout page, and more.