Interesting that the MTB/MSB laws where what they used to go after e-gold a decade or so ago.
E-Gold got used by customers even sketchier than anything I've seen BTC used for -- I used to think of it as the carder currency, but it was also heavily used in the CP world, I think. They really hated e-gold, but chose to use the MSB laws against it.
I know the e-gold guys tried to go out of their way to be as compliant as possible, too. They were fundamentally pro-liberty/pro-gold people, not involved in the "sketchy" business, and had been fully cooperating with authorities as much as they could (e-gold was not really about anonymity as much as "honest money"; they had bank-level KYC requirements for accounts at some point, although initially they had none.).
The interesting question is whether fully KYC/etc. compliant Bitcoin businesses will be allowed to register as MSBs, or if there will be artificial roadblocks put up. One issue is the global pseudonymous network that is Bitcoin once it leaves a KYC-compliant site, but that isn't too different from either a KYC-compliant bank that pays out physical cash or one which sends SWIFT wires to overseas banks with more lax KYC requirements (or issues prepaid debit cards).
Some carders used e-gold, but because most of the major fraud gangs operated out of Eastern Europe/Russia, the dominant carder currency was generally WebMoney.
e-gold was actually incredibly popular for online gambling and participating in HYIP(short term Ponzi schemes). Not exactly the most squeaky clean activities, but not exactly terrorism or whatever else the feds used to shut down e-gold.
Webmoney got big after e-gold, iirc. (I was a consultant to e gold and was working on a digital blinded token currency backed in egold at the time in Anguilla). My memory that far back is kind of hazy, though.
The HYIP stuff was amazing. I don't remember it being so popular for gambling. The other gold currencies which turned out to be scams (osgold, etc) were super lulzy too.
E-Gold got used by customers even sketchier than anything I've seen BTC used for -- I used to think of it as the carder currency, but it was also heavily used in the CP world, I think. They really hated e-gold, but chose to use the MSB laws against it.
I know the e-gold guys tried to go out of their way to be as compliant as possible, too. They were fundamentally pro-liberty/pro-gold people, not involved in the "sketchy" business, and had been fully cooperating with authorities as much as they could (e-gold was not really about anonymity as much as "honest money"; they had bank-level KYC requirements for accounts at some point, although initially they had none.).
The interesting question is whether fully KYC/etc. compliant Bitcoin businesses will be allowed to register as MSBs, or if there will be artificial roadblocks put up. One issue is the global pseudonymous network that is Bitcoin once it leaves a KYC-compliant site, but that isn't too different from either a KYC-compliant bank that pays out physical cash or one which sends SWIFT wires to overseas banks with more lax KYC requirements (or issues prepaid debit cards).