Bitcoin Forum

When I tried to move 5 BTC out of mtgox (to glbse) mtgox says me:

"Your account is currently pending review, please visit https://mtgox.com/forms/verification"

and on that page there is only one option - to reveal physical identity (no way to go without this).

I expect that for sums below 100 BTC one can withdraw "anonymously".

Earlier I asked them to increase withdrawal limit, but after they requested my ID,
I decide not to give ID to mtgox -> japanese government -> american government.
This is why I decline their offer of yubikey delivery (delivery requires physical address).
And they already did "password recovery" after their hack.
I had a strong password which was used only on their site exclusively.
The hack was their fault, not mine. But they forced me to give some my details that time.
(By mail request of 2011 June 24)

They seems to be very intrusive in attempts to get personal details (under the name of "my protection")...
Identification is not a problem for me, but it destroys one of major bitcoin ideas.

The problem of course, that i have much more money in mtgox account.

UPD: they replied to this topic (in support.mtgox.com site):
They have absolutely no reasons to suspect my in "suspicious activity".
I bought my bitcoins in february in small amounts on another exchange (I have it in wallet history).
I move my funds to mtgox site after changing password after hacking
My new password is strong an used ony on their site.
Funds was moved to this address:
http://blockexplorer.com/address/145bLBbsT97TibMR8N6H1Y7noYm26rhJDQ
By this two transactions:
http://blockexplorer.com/tx/cfe67cb91fa872da251f542ce29d445789773e79663e40c217a861ab1aab7e74#o1
http://blockexplorer.com/tx/674c9b7f2e7a8f7a35bde8a5c408a5ba8e5009d4ad7644f148dcdeaf1dc3f08c#o0
(both 2011-Sept-06)
I have very long history of posts in the forum.
I tested withdrawal earlier with a sum of 10 BTC, but shocked that I can't withdraw now.

The sums they locked:
http://i53.tinypic.com/2r406s6.png

I can't provide identity of myself other then
static IP addresses (which they already have confirmed in June, before money was moved in October)
and wallet private keys...

Earlier (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3712.msg54973#msg54973) mtgox said:
I want to hear reason.

My proposition: I still own wallets and addresses, which I used to transfer funds in.
I can use the old address to receive BTC, which i use to send BTC to mtgox.

UPD2: After I submit my documents, both my requests was closed with comments:

Now I am waiting for 5 business days for document checking, as written in the site.

UPD3:
I gave him international passport, which have translations to english (within the document itself).
and domestic bill (as they requested).
Of course the bill was in domestic language.

I received (2011-Oct-24) an email:

UPD4:
I upload notarized translations (that cost me ~30 BTC equivalent as a reward to the translator and notarius) and reopen ticket.
Ticket was closed with comment:
I wrote a letter to that email address.
Start waiting for five days.

I hear this more and more and it makes me nervous.

If you have to take people's private information you do it upfront. It is BS to take money and hold it ransom. They know it costs them customers that's why the obtrusive requests come afterwards.

I'm not so worried when mtgox decided to act like a traditional financial institution, which will collect the identity information of the people.

Bitcoin is money, if mtgox want to act like an serious bitcoin financial institution, some traditional best practice is in the best interest of mtgox and the bitcoin economy.

However, this will not danger the bitcoin ideology, you can always spend and transfer bitcoin anonymously.

This somehow like the gun things in America. The people is free to hold guns, so that ppl is able to fight with the government when the gov becomes evil. but ppl are not shoot at gov everyday.

we can spend bitcoin in a P2P way, and hide our identity from everyone in the world. But we don't have to do this all the time. and mtgox is just giving us the other choice, where mtgox may need some of our identity information.

give the ID information or not, use mtgox or not, it's your call. but some ppl will like to trust mtgox, to got some convenience. just like ppl are free to give information to facebook and google. like it or not, most ppl do it this way.

so don't judge, you can warn ppl the risk in trust such elephant, but mtgox does nothing that wrong.

 If you want to spend bitcoin anonymously, fine, then don't try to convert it into USD on the mtgox, just spend it.

If you like to hide all the trace of your bitcoin, you'd better stock some bitcoin for emergence  use, donot think in when-need-bitcoin-I-will-just-buy-it-then way. Yes, you'd better "hoard" some on your personal wallet or you have to leak you personal information to mtgox.

The 'Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange'  is acting more and more like Paypal these days. People have been reporting about this for months, so you can't say that you weren't warned. I hope that you can get access to your money, but I fear that without full disclosure, your funds will be sucked into the Mark Karpeles' legal slush-fund.

It brokes his earlier promises.

Just as example,
also I asked them about the possibility to transfer rubles - they said "yes" then "no":
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=48140.0
I was forced to convert money twice - from USD to RUR and from RUR after that.
They get the comission and don't return it (wrong advice was their fault, not mine).



I don't want to withdraw USD, I want to withdraw BTC.
How will I prove my identity with photo and home address, if it is completely unrelated to my nickname?
Should I provide notarial signs on all the screenshots of my internet provider accounts?

Can't you just cancel and get back your money without those hassles?

And the bigger it gets and the more markets it expands into, the more it's going to have to comply with all sorts of financial services regulations and AML/CTF/KYC laws.  This might piss people off, but they get more pissed off when they can't get their funds because Mt Gox accounts are frozen due to suspicious activity.  If the exchanges don't comply with AML requirements, everyone's money which is held in their accounts is at risk of being frozen.  

It's amazing that Mt Gox managed to operate for so long before this became an issue really.  I expect that all the exchanges hoped they'd be able to fly under the radar for quite a bit longer.  It takes considerable staff time and therefore costs money to verify accounts to comply with AML requirements and I'm sure the exchanges would rather not be bearing those costs during their start-up period.

The time has probably come where all of the exchanges need to have user agreements which clearly state that their customers may be required to verify their accounts and/or their identity at any time and that if they fail to do so their funds will not be released.  The problem is that people rarely read complex user agreements such as those of PayPal and Technocash until access to their funds has been blocked.  Even if the exchanges do have complex, multi-page user agreements I suspect that people are still going to bitch when the terms of those agreements are enforced.

I'm not sure about elsewhere in the world, but I know that here when a customer refuses to verify their account and/or identity to a business like PayPal or another financial service provider, the funds in their account must be transferred to one of the government unclaimed money funds after a certain period of time.  

Don't get me wrong, I understand why MtGox are doing this, but I think that they could be more open and up-front about having to do it from the offset, and allow people to remove their money anonymously if they stay within the agreed limits ($10k per month). They also need to pull their finger out and have faster response times to people's issues.

I've heard of so many people who have been well within MtGox's limits having their accounts frozen. Everything about this goes against what bitcoins stand for imho.

I sent them the documents.


That is exactly my point.

My perception is that they were genuinely naive and thought that if they set a $1000 per day/$10,000 per month withdrawal limit then that would somehow exempt them from having to comply with AML/KYC and various other financial services laws in the countries in which they operate.  Quite a  few times people questioned that logic and got vague answers about how those rules couldn't be applied to their operations because...Bitcoins.

Although it was before my time on these boards, from what I've read about how Mt Gox operated prior to being taken over by Mark the withdrawal limits used to be lower and the time period to withdraw much longer - which probably reflected the relatively low volume and small cashflow which the exchanges had prior to the surge in Bitcoin prices.

In many jurisdictions it is going to be illegal for them to allow customers to remove their money anonymously.  Just because withdrawals are below the threshold amount which requires that the transaction must be reported to the financial tracking organisation in a particular country, doesn't mean that financial services providers aren't required to know the identities of customers making transactions below that threshold.

I do utterly agree that their customer service stinks.  They need to be proactive about getting information to their users rather than simply putting announcements about issues on their websites and relying on others to repost it in the forums - especially when those issues affect people being able to access their funds.  Far too often, they've even delayed putting announcements on their website for days after people have been complaining here about not being able to withdraw through dwolla/paxum/SEPA/whatever when they clearly knew that there was an issue.  And often when they've finally deigned to respond on the forums, their answers have been formulaic, robotic, and given no more information than was already on their website. 

I get that they're probably stretched to the limit in terms of staff resources right now, but being stonewalled isn't reassuring to their customers.  They're quick enough to come here and post when they want to announce something which they think will bring them more business, but pitifully slow at making an appearance when something goes wrong.

where is 'here'?

Maybe the OP can check the TOS of Mtgox asking them to point out the clauses that need him to supply the identifications?

Australia.

mtgox are fair to ask for id. But it is completely evil to let people deposit money thinking they have anonimity. Spread it on the forums, edit a note whereever you see gox - using this exchange removes privacy due to withdrawal limits that vary as limitless as exchange rates.

Let this be a lesson to everyone. And a lesson for me, i thank you for the warning, especially on gov fund siezures.

I lost almost all my life savings years ago when the gov froze a fund. The court case has been going on for years and by the time i get the funds unfrozen i expect the printing press would have decimated my savings. This can happen with mtgox and any other exchange so LET THAT BE A LESSON  to spread eggs to many baskets.

 And trust your instinct too;  before it happened i started to withdraw even though i no idea what was spooking me. If i had converted to bitcoin back then i'd be drinking a barcadi and coke in the carribean by now!

In "here" you really can't do much :( , that's why I am extremely supportive of oz.in, certainly isn't easy, just the cost of doing biz will be a killer.

do you mean https://ozco.in ?

After I submit my documents, both my requests was closed with comments:

Now I am waiting 5 business days for document checking, as written in the site.

+1
And it's not just BS, it's theft.

+1

I really don't think that is too strong a word at all.

I've been recommending them in the past, but won't any more and I won't keep a balance on there for convenience like a used to.

Magical Tux other service Kaly Host has also turned to garbage. I've been avoiding saying it publicly because they've been good in the past. But it's been almost 3 months with no response from support for my account and for the account of a friend who I refereed there. It is bad to the point where he owes money imo.

I doubt that any exchange who is big enough to pay their expenses will be able to operate under the kind of anonymity that would be desirable to a lot of us.

My projection is that when anonymity is required, fiat<->btc will be occurring on a face-to-face basis and at a significant discount over the exchange rates.  And I doubt that it will be long before that is considered to be a criminal activity if it is not already.

Are you saying people will pay less to get coin without giving info to an exchange?

I think it's the other way around, meeting face to face to purchase bitcoins with cash immediately is a premium service over using an exchange.

I was initially very disappointed to have to submit my iD... but you know what... it's a compliance issue that will not go away - a cost of doing business in USD set by big governments and big brother... It's not a bad thing for Bitcoin, but eventually a good thing because soon everyone will see that once you're in BTC, you can do whatever the fuck you want to do with your Bitcoin and be free from a fascist government snooping into your financial affairs.

I guess as mtgox gets bigger, they are subjected to more regulations, I doubt it is their fault and I also doubt that they will wait to inconvenience their users if they can help it.

Other way around, sorta, but I did not say it clearly.

I'm saying that if I am going bring something of value (cash, gold, etc) to meet face to face with someone who is so concerned about anonymity they won't use something like Mt. Gox or Tradehill, it is very possible that I am meeting with a criminal.  That is a risk that I'm going to need to deal with in various ways so it will have to be worth my while and I'll want a discount over what I could get coin for on an exchange.

I don't want to specifically discount any bad experience anyone's had with MTGOX, but I do feel the need to state that I've put about $10k through MTGOX since before the "incident" and I have had zero problems.

I did neglect to put a MTGOX customer number on a dwolla transfer and my money was "lost" for a few days - but that was entirely my fault. As soon as MTGOX customer service found the transfer, it was available to me for trading.

Most people in my BTC pool have had issues with MtGox cancelling their accounts for similar issues as what has already been described. Even after faxing identification, it seems about only 50% manage to retrieve their money. The others just get excuse after excuse, and play the infinite ticket game.

But people have been talking about this issue for months. People have been sharing their issues on this forum for months. And people keep using MtGox?...  ???

I didn't realise until shortly after signing up that MtGox hosts this forum. Talk about a monopoly. lol. This forum is ok for open discussion, but I wouldn't trust any PM's being private - so be careful what information you give to others on this board via PM. Best to go to an instant messenger or some other offsite form of communication to discuss transactions.

I gave him international passport, which have translations to english (within the document itself).
and domestic bill (as they requested).
Of course the bill was in domestic language.

I received (2011-Oct-24) an email:

I'm baffled at the continued support for Bruce Wagner's show by Mt. Gox (as is claimed by Bruce at least.)  It would be interesting to hear some discussion of that if you guys have the time.

I understand that. But it should be made upfront. If they need IDs, that should be clear from the moment you register in the site. They cannot let you deposit money and then hold it until you comply to their terms. That's criminal. Those who did not agree to provide IDs should be given a chance to withdraw all their money. And if then MtGox wants to demand IDs before they start trading again, it's fine.

What a sad story, bearing in mind the nature of Bitcoin :(

In what way is this the nature of Bitcoin?

In a way of the biggest bitcoin exchange "mtgox requires physical identification"...while one of the main points of Bitcoin is total privacy :-/

Actually PayPal had its ass handed to it over not being compliant with financial services regulations many times in the early days.  Like the exchanges, they argued that they were a new and different type of services and that the usual regulations didn't apply to them because...PayPal.

The Bitcoin exchanges for some reason thought that their withdrawal limits would exempt them from AML compliance requirements.  They should probably sue any accountant or lawyer who gave them such advice because there were never any valid grounds to believe that.

Terms of Service and User Agreements don't trump the law.  If they're required by their banks to verify customer IDs, then they either comply with that or their accounts get frozen.  Allowing customers to withdraw anonymously isn't going to be an option in many cases.  It's certainly not criminal to require people to comply with the law before they can access their funds.  And "I lost money because MtGox complied with the law" isn't likely to fly in a civil suit either.


Privacy and anonymity are not the same thing. 

I upload notarized translations (that cost me ~30 BTC equivalent as a reward to the translator and notarius) and reopen ticket.
Ticket was closed with comment:
I wrote a letter to that email address.
Start waiting for five days.

We check AML emails as well as process applications daily. You should be receiving a response from our AML team within 24 hours of submission.

Looking at BitcoinCharts.com, it seems like Mt. Gox RUB exchange stopped on the 24th.  I'm not a customer so I don't follow their boards and I suppose it has been announced somewhere there, but I didn't notice discussion of it in this forum.

Then I see that you, presumably a Russian, seem to be getting a fair amount of grief from Mt. Gox on this.

It seems to at least one conspiratorial minded person (namely, me) that perhaps there is some desire to cut out the Russian block from as much of the Bitcoin fun as practical.  Could it be that the amount of financial visibility within the Russian sphere is limited enough to make it worthwhile to exert significant pressure on Mt. Gox to cut them out?  Or perhaps that the user base within that sphere could sustain Bitcoin even if it were effectively quashed in the West?

You guys need to get over this. Seriously. If you want to transact with real world cash, you are going to have to follow real world rules. And one of the main points of Bitcoin is not total privacy, it is pseudo-anonymity. There is a difference, and it's fairly big.

Mt.Gox may have been far from perfect in handling this situation, but it is a growing pain of a totally new economy. It will become easier to convert BTC/USD/other in the future if Bitcoin increases in popularity. You gotta roll with the punches for now and allow Mt.Gox to work better at streamlining this process so other people in the future can benefit from those growing pains.

I have one more conpiracy idea - the summer rise of bitcoins was caused by the CIA funding.
Now they want to track their dollars, which flow out of MtGOX.


I entered BTC, and I want to withdraw BTC.

Actually I was needed ~400 BTC for a project, but I already miss the opportunity, because all shares (FPGA.contract (http://charts.glbse.com/markets/FPGA.contract.html)) was sold out...

Hello,

Our AML team has reviewed your documents and they have been approved.  Our sincerest apologies for the delay and frustration caused.

and another happy Gox user finally gets something resolved in public

I dodge Gox as a preference because they don't inspire any real confidence, especially since their hack fiasco.  I didn't lose funds or coin, but the delay in transferring money around just smelled too much like they have an underlying problem that I don't want to be victim of.  Yes, I did lose 3BTC  when they did the BitPLN acquisition because their system could work out the difference between accounts, and they play favourites for some of their users, but they are making some money and if they wanted to abscond with a huge amount of coin, it would crash the value immediately - they'd have to take the cash and that would be real crime.  But while this is still wild-west, lawless trading and there are no accounts/records or protections, people lose sometimes.

People also need to understand that the exchanges are not Bitcoin itself.  In a peer-to-peer situation Bitcoin can offer pseudo-anonymity - that doesn't mean the exchanges can legally offer that (and I'm quite sure that none of them want to get shut down for offering it illegally).  The exchanges should certainly be offering privacy, which means only disclosing user information when required to do so by law - AML laws require them to collect that information and privacy laws prevent them from disclosing it without legal cause. 

I decide to upgrade to "trusted" status:
http://i43.tinypic.com/b5llyd.png

I sent them documents physically to obtain "Trusted status":
http://i40.tinypic.com/m9na7c.jpg
(Note, that post office index was written properly)

The post said that it delivered:
http://i39.tinypic.com/imndj4.png

And I asked them to increase limits to the level of "Trusted" account:
http://i39.tinypic.com/2mesphk.png

Within 5 days (as they promised)
http://i39.tinypic.com/23tghgo.png
I received no response.

Today I also send the request to support (but earlier thay said that they are not an AML team and will not answer for it)
http://i44.tinypic.com/212u9gl.png

When you are moving to another country or getting a job, the officer can look at the picture and check if it's your passport or not.
Mtgox can't do that. Possibly that's the reason...

Hello,

We see that your account has been upgraded to a Trusted Status.  If you require any further assistance, please feel free to send us a ticket at the Support Desk and we will do our best to address your issue.

Your proof of residence should be a document that includes your name and address which was issued within the last 3 months.  Thank you for your cooperation and understanding in this matter.