Bitcoin Forum

I tried to sign up for several payment companies so I could fund my BTC-e account, and each one said that US Citizens accounts will be deleted.
Why are international companies doing this?
Is the US Government trying to disrupt the movement of money?

Coz we're cry babies.

One reason is that some states (California, New York?!?), will come after companies worldwide if they do business "illegally" with people from that State. Bizarre, but hey its US Law, so it must be ok.

Of course, those two companies WERE in the US :)

If they do business with us then they have to follow US laws regarding money laundering which means they need identification on all US customers and have to file the right paperwork.

More hassle than it is worth for many of them.

There's the question of Jurisdiction. Unless the international company has accounts in the US, they cant touch them.

It's not a myth.  Both your examples had items that were in the USA that could be seized.  The domain registrations happened to be under a TLD that is US controlled.  And at least in MegaUpload's case, there were quite a few servers physically located in the USA.

For a non-USA business to be able to ignore the USA, they would have to make sure they have NOTHING that the USA can touch.  That means no TLDs under USA control, no physical presence in USA, and no other presence (like bank accounts, etc) in USA.

As it is, they aren't necessarily going to be shut completely down if there isn't much for the USA to take.  Look at the Mt Gox Dwolla account seizure for example.  Since Mt Gox is based in Japan, all they could take was that and maybe the small company that was set up to run that account.

Not allowing Americans to join? Not allowing Americans to join? Let's go kick their ass!

Team America World Police - Fuck Yeah!

http://www.terma-nator.com/images/motivation/america_motivational.jpg

You can say whatever you want and criticize the United States, but this is the Only country in the world that have such a policy against worldwide Cyber Crime and actually DO something!
It may be uncomfortable to US citizens, but the government is sure doing what it suppose to do, and going all over the world to accomplish its goals.

Liberty Reserve, as easy as it was to use for 7 years, was a well-built laundering machine. Not everyone used it to criminal \ 'grey' activity, but sure a whole lot did.

The US have a clear policy, they will go after everyone everywhere who has a connection to US citizens \ bussineses.
This policy affects their treatments of exchangers as well as cyber criminals who operate Botnets around the world.
Botnets who has not affected US citizens, will not be touched by the FBI.

That is why exchangers now do not deal with US citizens, its not only get them off the radar, it prevents the radar of the US to even consider it. the FBI does not have infinite resources to deal with every illegal bussiness who does not affect US citizens.
That is, untill the UN will establish something similar to fight it worldwide.

This simply isn't true.  Among other things, the US now requires foreign investments by US citizens to be reported to the IRS by the companies where they're held.  A lot of foreign financial service providers have decided that the cost of compliance isn't worth the hassle and that declining to have US customers is the best way of avoiding having to comply with what effectively amount to US laws with extra-territorial reach.

Because so many nations are FATF members and they agree to operate within the FATF framework, there are very real risks of sanctions by other members if they just ignore things related to financial crime (and tax evasion is a financial crime).  Once those sanctions are imposed, it becomes very difficult for individuals and businesses to transact with the outside world as their financial institutions get blacklisted.

Patzek, you are a little confused. Money laundering is not cyber crime. It is an attempt to prevent governments from tracking your finances. Of course, the purposes of the finances might be criminal, but money laundering itself has no victims.

You're right of course, but to the government eyes this is a grey area, between Cyber Crime and Crypto-currency.
What I meant, is that like in Cyber Crime, the US will go after those who affects the US.

It is very easy to seperate the two if you fully understands this world.
In their world, it is almost the same.

Cyber Criminals dealt with Libery Reserve. They used their Botnets to mine Bitcoins from zombie pc's, they laundered this money by going off-and-on from Libery to BTC, Perfectmoney Webmoney and what not.
Cyber Criminals purchased their tools using Liberty Reserve, now Bitcoin & Perfect Money.

This is all connected in the end, to our eyes its different, not to them.

The people in the FBI who handle Botnets \ organizations like Liberty reserve, probably sitting in adjoining offices, if not in the same.

Generally the US has higher standards and hassles companies that dont meet their requirements.

Its more of a risk to take on American accounts in this case, but America is also a very rich nation so these orgs must weight the tradeoffs.

If you that's annoying for people who live in the USA, try being a US citizen who moves abroad and also has your account terminated:

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/US_expats_feel_the_burden_of_FATCA.html?cid=35932576

It may have to do with things like FATCA and FBAR.

There's good reads here: http://isaacbrocksociety.ca/

The poor bastards can't even renounce their citizenship to avoid the great tax nazi. http://travel.state.gov/law/citizenship/citizenship_776.html (http://travel.state.gov/law/citizenship/citizenship_776.html)

Out of all the replies I read on this thread, no one has answered correctly. The reason online payment companies like Neteller do not allow US citizens is because the law in US is greatly different then the rest of the world.

US has recently passed a bill requiring all online payment processors including paypal to verify every individual that uses the service in order to extort IRS money out of you.

It's those dammed burn marks they use to tag there cattle, no way to get rid of it. Good thing they use ear rings in side European union at least those can be changed with a compatible model.

You know, I didn't know that...too funny.

It's not about IRS - it's about money laundering, as I correctly stated.

The point I wanted to make is that if the company doesn't want to follow US guidelines, it simply can ignore their requests. Don't punish the customers because some far away government is being a cry baby.

I think it most probable that significant and blatant capital controls will be deemed necessary in the US at some point.  The likelihood is strong enough so that it would be prudent to develop and maintain a set of solutions which could facilitate such capital controls at the flip of a switch.

Coincidental to this, the established financial services institutions are skimming a high percentage of transactions and making a lot of money doing so.  I think it strongly likely that they are participating in the shaping of regulatory policies to protect their turf.  The political system of the U.S. government at this time is such that most laws and regulations are literally written by corporations through their investments in lobbyists.  It is hardly surprising that such regulations favor large and established corporate interests.

Whatever the causes, this whole set of market disruption systems is highly annoying to me as someone who has involvement as a speculator with Bitcoin but has no criminal exposure and no real problem with paying my taxes.  I am still being inconvenienced by this framework of control policies.

that's not true! you would think the laws could be ignored, but reality is, if you do they will come after you!

I dont disagree with the USA trying to tackle crime and criminals.
But when 99.9% of the people effected are law abiding, and just trying to run an honest business, other ways of tackling the crime needs to be found.
It is not right to punish the majority owning to actions of a minority.

I feel for US citizens, but the companies that are shutting their doors to the US are not been given many other options.
It is also a worry that if bitcoin continues to grow, the US will find itself getting left behind... and that's not a position the US is use to being in!

LMAO this is fucking briliant!

As someone so effected, thanks.  I would point out, however, that depending one how one looks at it, Americans are not necessarily being left behind.  Firstly, a lot of the currency base is held by Americans currently.  Secondly, it has been and remains more straightforward to buy BTC than to sell them.  I personally would have fewer BTC than I do were it more straightforward to unload them.

Relateldly, being Bitcoin-friendly might be a really effective way for a nation or region to boost tourism, particularly if the values continue to climb.  I've been meaning to take a trip to Europe one of these day, and I'll very likely be putting big red circles around places where I can leverage my BTC investment in an enjoyable manner.  Since Bitcoin is being driven underground here in the 'land of the free', it becomes a compelling value proposition for me to spend it abroad.

The USA is a fascistic, totalitarian dystopia with good PR.

I didnt mean "left behind" in that the US would become third world  :D
More in the technology space of digital currency, as at present the obsticals to setting up a business revolving around bitcoins are hard or expensive to overcome within the current (US) regulations.
Hopefully the Bitcoin Foundation will come though for the US citizens and prove that "the government" can still keep on top of crime without having to cripple new technologies.

I have not look too hard, but there is a lack of places to spend bitcoins in Europe too!
(To be honest i dont see bitcoin having the potential to replace cash anyhow, cash works fine, it is the banks that don't. I do however see that it [bitcoin] has major potential within the technology and online world, as cash has to be digitised in order to spend online, yet bitcoin does not (amongst other clear advantages)).

(im working on "a way" for bitcoiners to spend some coins, but i too have problems that if i offer some of these services to the US, i may also be in breach of some of the regulations (yet i am law abiding and would like to abide by the rules as i would be doing within the UK). i may find a compromise yet though, so i dont have to bar 300 million (mostly) good people form new technology)....

Just getting my dictionary out  ::)

A rare point of agreement between you and I it seems.

I'd add that most likely, "you ain't seen nothing yet."  I find it exceedingly unlikely that we'll turn this around before we plumb some very much darker depths.  The sad thing is that in doing so, many souls around the globe will suffer even more than we will here.

Cause US government  don't want people to keep bitcoin instead of USD :)

Why?

cuz the US government is a dogpile piece of crap that ruins everything in its path.

It's because of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FACTA), which you can read about here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act

It's a problem not just for electronic payments, small european banks are kicking out US citizents because it's more EXPENSIVE to adapt systems and make all reports requests that your goverment makes than keep US clients and earn profits from their transactions.

Basically it's a way that the US goverment have to keep money on US banks, a desperate move to try to kick the "new finantial system meltdown" can to the future.

Doing Financial Services for US citizens means having to comply with various US regulations.
Selling Goods or Software in the US means being target of patent trolls.

Who needs that crap? The world is big enough without US.

The U.S. claims that anyone, regardless of where they are located, that does business with someone in the U.S. is subject to U.S. laws. This claim became real in 2011, when the U.S. shut down three foreign online poker sites and arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned their CEOs. Online poker is illegal in the U.S. and people in the U.S. were playing poker on these sites.

Online poker is legal in most states but sending money to those website is not. They didn't arrest anyone for running an online gambling website, they did because of "money laundering".

The reason why multiple financial institutions outside the US are rejecting US citizens is called FATCA - Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.

FATCA forces "Foreign Financial Institutions" to provide burdensome reports on every "US person" (US citizen/resident or green card holder) they happen to have an account with. If they don't do so, they suffer a 30% tax (or something close to it) on any financial instrument they might hold in the US. And I think it has some sort of recursive function too: to be compliant, you must ensure that every financial institution you work with is also compliant, or you risk having your financial instruments in the US heavily taxed just because you accept to do business with someone who did not respect FATCA. I don't know for sure what "do business" mean though. What I know is that due to US's weight in the financial world, the US government is able to impose an international law.

The easiest path for such FFIs is to simply deny doing business with "US persons". This way they're compliant.

This is the most outrageous form of capital controls ever enacted. It isn't an explicit capital control, but in practice that's what it is, since from now on US persons will have great difficulty to send money abroad. And it's outrageous because it's one government forcing financial institutions of the whole world to behave as they want. In many countries, for FFIs to comply with FATCA, they'd need to violate local laws.

FATCA is already responsible for a raise in the number of US citizens dropping their US citizenship. I think many more will do so in the next couple years.

Because.

 ;D BO is printing bucks himself ，he only let you take dollars, he wont permit ya guys use other currencies

Cause its Americans, so many restrictions.

It is the responsibility of the US citizen to report their assets to the IRS held in foreign accounts, not the foreign company.

There must be another reason.

Because sadly the US is a rogue state and a menace for any company giving payment or copyright-related services to its citizens.

How about check my last post?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=317612.msg3405622#msg3405622

It is also the responsibility of all financial institutions that do business in the US to enforce various rules, and also to make sure all financial institutions they deal with do the same regardless of in what jurisdiction those institutions might be located.

Read at least wikipedia about it.  You are flatly wrong.  As long as we (the U.S.) have geo-political reach to impose our will on the rest of the financial world, we can impose $20 of cost on foreign entities for $1 in revenue gain.  I, as a U.S. citizen who is not completely 'isolationist' financially, suffer for it but I'm not representative of the class who is being protected.  Just the opposite most likely.

Because they don't want to be caught up with 30% tax which always kills entrepreneurs at that rate. Also maybe they just hate and despise the American dream. ::)

This may be the case with Liberty Reserve.  I have not followed the case, so the fact that I haven't seen any particularly compelling evidence the government claims about it are true doesn't mean much.

However, the Megaupload case strikes me as a classic case of government overreach, the raid on Kim Dotcom was pure jackboot lunacy (and later thrown out by a New Zealand court as illegal), and so far, the U.S. has woefully failed to make any solid case against Megaupload itself (as compared to its customers).  It appears to me that either what Megaupload was doing is legal, or else what a lot of other more well-established corporations (including Google/YouTube) are doing is just as much a crime.

It appears to me they went after Kim Dotcom more because of his larger than life persona (see what I did there) and appearance of being a buffoonish egomaniac than because he actually broke the law.  If he is a lawbreaker, then apparently lawbreaker is just another name for a successful entrepreneur without a big corporate backer.

The reason I started this thread because I wanted to join a foreign exchange that would allow me to send USD to and obtain bitcoin to purchase bitcoin mining hardware. Since Mt. Gox had their account seized in the US I was concerned about sending money to them, so I went to BTC-e. They didn't have an easy way to send money other than international wire transfer which was going to cost a sh*t load of fees, so I looked around at some of the the other methods they offered and each one I went to said no new accounts from the US. I was taken back by this because even if the US requested a foreign company to comply with anything, it is optional for the foreign company to do so. Although I wasn't interested in money laundering or any other kind of illegal act such as buying controlled substances, but had a legitimate purpose, I didn't understand why they wouldn't want to do business with Americans. Certainly in Mt. Gox's case failure to comply was costly, and I'm sure once they cross their t's and dot their i's they will get their funds released. The government just wants to make sure they can catch the bad guys, and that's fine by me.

If it's any consolation, I'm also squeeky clean and am being sorely abused by the policies and strength of the U.S.  It's not just Bitcoin either.  It was hell just trying to get a few $100's worth of machine parts from an outfit in New Zealand.  And they are one of our most faithful minions for Christsake!

I would question that their regulatory position is one of unalloyed altruism.

So far as I can tell, they want to protect the bad guys who pay for their campaigns from the rest of us, while protecting the markets of the bad guys who pay for their campaigns by making it as difficult as possible to access the U.S.-facing markets.  They protect them from foreign corporations whether or not those foreigners are bad guys or not.

Because the thieving American government sucks the shit out of a hobos ass and they don't want to get raped by the American warmongers.

The US government or for that matter any modern government with a fiat money printer doesn't want the citizens to keep anything but their own currency since it's much easier to tax that way.  When gold was used taxes had to be collected by armed collectors and it was hard since you physically had to take it.  Now if a government wants to feed some special interest like army or social programs in exchange for votes it can just print some more money.  They don't need to go house to house and collect the money from the citizens.  That only works if everyone is holding their own fiat.  But currently the main issue of why foreign companies don't accept USA customers is because the amount of paperwork required to do so costs more then what that customer is likely to bring in profit.

Unfortunately you're wrong. Please inform yourself about FATCA. This is capital controls done in a way never seen before.


I believe you don't even need to do business in the US directly. AFAIK FATCA is "recursive". To be compliant, you must ensure every institution you do business with is also compliant.


No, in practice they don't really have a choice. The only choice is not to do business with any other financial institution in the current financial world, to create a "parallel financial world" that has no connections with the one which accesses the US market. Due to the weight of the US economy, that's just not a viable option.

You don't believe businessmen would just refuse money like that, do you? If they're doing so, there must be a strong reason.


Now you know, it's named FATCA.


I hope, for your own good, that you don't truly believe this bullshit you wrote.

I'd call it "viral regulation".

Yup. Late justice. Their parents and grandparents attacked Germany to fight fascism (at least that is the fairy tale found in history books), but now Americans got fascism in their own country. The grandfather died in WW2, and his grandchild gets pepper sprayed by John Pike or worse. Formidable, from a twisted point of view.

I don't think the PR is so good, though. The entire world hates them, just that many countries depend on Uncle Sam's $$$ and don't say that openly. Clearly, there are powerful countries (mainly China) that are still worse than America, so a good relationship with the US is the lesser of two evils.

Of course nobody wants US citizens as customers anymore. They are like whores that are owned by a very ruthless pimp; nobody wants contact with that psychopath; I feel very sorry for every US person (who does not work for the government). Who will come and liberate you now, aliens?

It is almost unbelieveable that there are still so many people who try to become US citizens. That is not a benefit, it is a curse!!!!!!!!  :-[

I think this is just conjecture on your part. The concept of jurisdiction would preclude any of these statements.
Can you substantiate any of this or show me the provisions?

This isn't necessarily what the U.S are doing ( yet, but they will ) even I know that but a lot of people don't see it that way, I've learned when a country begins to fail the economic restrictions become more and more unreasonable and restrictive, the kind of thing you're seeing in America is called capital flight and wealth transfer, everybody wants to get out of the dollar even if no one will admit it. I have also seen certain financial services that aren't even payment processors denying access to U.S citizens.

It's nothing to do with the people the regulations are just so restrictive and expensive and the dollar so worthless that it's becoming more cost effective to stay out of the U.S entirely, this is why cryptocurrencies are such a good idea though because then you can trade without the U.S government interfering as much and why I'm personally going purely crypto as well. I think I'm going to stick with my original plan of ordering gold/silver because for some reason they don't seem so keen to restrict trade on that just yet, must be the work of central banks.

Ordering gold will not do you any good. USG registers all rare metal purchases, so you don't truly own it - you are just allow to possess it temporarily. If you want to own gold you need to purchase it anonymously for cash. I think in Canada you can still do that(??)

Man, I'm not inventing anything, just read about the subject (http://lmgtfy.com/?q=FATCA), and you'll see it yourself. Since when does the USG care about the concept of jurisdiction BTW?


More? Okay, let's try.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance_Act
https://www.internationalman.com/78-global-perspectives/1009-fatca-a-tool-of-the-electronic-surveillance-state
http://www.repealfatca.com/
https://www.internationalman.com/78-global-perspectives/995-the-worst-law-most-americans-have-never-heard-of
http://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Corporations/Foreign-Account-Tax-Compliance-Act-%28FATCA%29

I clicked the link.  Now the NSA thinks I'm planning to defect. Haha! Thanks. ;)

Seriously, though - "Want to stop being an American? FUCK YOU, you're an American until WE say you're not. You're going to be a citizen of the Greatest Freedomocracy in the History of EVER, and you're going to like it."

Yeah, FACTA is probably the reason, and its no surprise that Democrat fascists are the ones behind this law.

People stop voting for DEMOFASCISTS. ???

But again, If I started a company in a foreign country and the IRS comes knocking on my door and says give me your papers, I'd tell the to f*ck off!! :o

So all you companies who are not interested in doing business in the US can give the finger to the DEMOFASCISTS and support your American Customers with love.

Remember They can't do anything to you as long as you don't own assets in the US.

While I agree with a lot of things said on this thread, history keeps reminding us that it's very often the case the fall of one great hegemony/tyranny will only give birth to a more ruthless/fierce one, that's, probably, until Bitcoin. The status quo should not be destroyed until we're sure we have one technically superior to replace it.

It got really bad from this year, when any financial institution who has business in USA  are required to report all transactioins of US Citizen & Green Card holders.  In order for the banks and other financial companies to comply with the requirement, it would cost them in millions, so the cheapest solution to keep in the business was to shut out Americans.

Americans created the laws and the same Americans who got booted from the banks and brokerage accounts all over the world.  Americans can THANK their Democrats!!!   ;D ;D ;D

It is creating a lot of troubles for many Americans abroad.  You can't do much without a bank account now days.

As I recall, the cost of operation of FACTA is one order of magnitude MORE than the taxes brought in, and it is to be borne largely by the foreign financial operators.  The revenues are not expected to be particularly meaningful anyway in the scheme of things.

It seems pretty clear to me that this is not about tax revenue particularly.  My best guess is that it is about lubing up the machinery needed for significant capital controls.  Ah well...I've always theorized Bitcoin will bump along until it is truly needed, then take off on a fairly steep trajectory toward it's theoretical potential...

that's right. Even just regular back accounts can be hard for US persons to open.

Definitely. I read somewhere that the estimations on how much tax money this will bring back makes it just not worthy, if that was the only motivation.

It already works as capital controls, actually. And it's also a surveillance tool.

It no surprise with American's like this why people around the world hate American's. :(

its called humor

He doesn't even realize I'm making fun of America. Humor is the one thing I've noticed that really doesn't cross national boundaries very well.