no one is locking out bitcoin businesses!!!!!

in the UK it does not require holding $50M, this is the problem with people making exchanges. they simply dont know the regulations or requirements because they are too lazy to read them.

if your transacting less then £3mill a month then you only need to be FSA authorised... Over £3mill a month then you need to be FSA Accredited.
read the regs involved which mainly concern having code/policies inplace to recognise repeat customers to know how much they transact in FIAT to warn/avoid them going over limits. and require ID if they wish to continue over the limits. validate this information, either using 3rd parties services (credit agencies etc) or by requesting government supplied identification.
store the information as the regulations require of you and have policies to act/react to certain situations.

 if these past exchanges actually read the regulations and requirements they would see they are not being locked out at all, its not that hard to follow the regulations. and if they want to say they are secure and knowledgeable and experienced to look after millions of pounds of money. to actually prove it by following the regulations


the problem is that they dont bother, and then a small problem rears its head such as a scammer talking to their bank asking for a chargeback. which snowballs into bank investigations which lead to finding out an exchange has not even bothered to follow the guidelines. which manifests into the banks making a SARS report, which results in the exchange being shutdown.

simple solution. read the rules, follow them and you wont get shutdown.

it facepalms me to see all of these so called trusted exchanges cant even follow simple regulations. the banks /regulators are not out to get bitcoins. they are out to protect peoples FIAT.

the OP asked how to get away from centralised exchanges. well if you imagine an exchange for every town then each town would base prices on that towns exchange. making that towns exchange locally centralised.

a non centralised exchange is where everyone has a different idea of value and that you are not paying into one bank account to deal with multiple people. but dealing individually.

so local bitcoins is the only true method to non-centrally exchange your currencies.

if the OP asked for a a method to have more then a dozen exchanges for HFT where everyone did not base the price purely on MTGOX then my answer would have been different.

looking at your website about the phantom.. it looks like you are doing a BFL.

putting a lot of effort into doing nice CAD drawings of chassis and cases before having a prototype board. please please please. get in contact with board manufacturers get some working boards and then design a chassis around that.

after all we dont want a matchbox size chassis turning into a toaster.

i like the images but a empty chassis is not exactly a functioning ASIC

localbitcoins.com

board manufacturers
i PM'ed you a company worth looking into.

expanding crypto.
in the UK if you want bitcoin dont think about putting your fiat into a american gateway to then buy coin. google search "drop shippers" find a product that would sel and start a bitcoin shop. you receive bitcoin and you send your FIAT and the customers delivery address to the dropshipper.

the drop shipper deals with the packaging delivery etc, thus you now have bitcoin and customers have products delivered to them bought with bitcoin.

this is how i see entrepreneurs of the future expanding bitcoin in the UK.

its not all about mining or centralised exchanges

slight suggestion.

seing as how the vertical strikethrough the B is the property of thailand and designated to the Baht.

it might be worth using Ƀ instead

bitpay have a secret way of how they convert the bitcoin into pounds. but i am hoping they are atleast following the regulations.

i wouldnt say for him to stop going on TV, but maybe to stick to TV in his native country, then he can have a more fluid conversation without nerves /delays of trying to translate what he is hearing/trying to say.

what we need is MANY spokes people.

not a select few. so that spanish media can speak to a spanish 'expert', french with french, UK with uk ETC ETC
have local people across the world to speak to their local media outlets. that way bitcoin is not dominated by 4 americans

hmm a service that links businesses/exchanges/and other altcoins.....

Ripple.

as for the main purpose of holding your investments. id suggest to everyone DONT THROW ALL YOUR FUNDS into third party services.

fiat banking institutions do not have a problem with bitcoin, neither does fincen or FSA etc. the problem is all of these bitcoin third party services have a problem reading the regulations, following them or atleast paying the licences/insurances to protect peoples investments.

so dont blame banks for shutting down services. blame greedy and lazy exchanges for not caring about looking after their customers and just wanting their profits, and then when getting shutdown for not insuring their customers investments are secure, blaming the banks instead of themselves.

if you want to become a bank atleast get the paperwork down legitimately

if you cant afford to get the licences/insurance (FDIC) then maybe your not the right person to be looking after peoples investments

finally smart people yay. this is how bitcoin was envisioned.

if you want bitcoin.
you search "drop shipping" or "wholesalers" in google. find some products (legit of course) that will sell. and you start up a business / shop.

you price items in bitcoin. and as the orders come in you pay the dropshipper/wholesaler with your fiat and the products get delivered to your customers. while you keep the bitcoin.

if you have bitcoin but want fiat
you search out localbitcoins for someone that can trade you them or atleast meet you at the car fuel station to pay for your fuel and you pay them bitcoins. or at a grocery store to pay for your grocerys and you give them bitcoin.

banks are not pulling the rugs from under exchanges.

exchanges dont even bother making rugs.. they just stand on the cold floor.

meaning they dont bother reading the regulations, getting authorised, keeping records or following any of the rules of handling fiat.

its like a majority of these exchanges are run by amateurs that have no previous experience in finance.

the community needs to up its game. its not difficult.

but being lazy by ignoring the laws and then blaming the regulators like its a total surprise is just reasons why i see the half assed attempts of making exchanges always fail.

you guys seriously need to atleast read the regulations and know how fincen/sec/fsa work.. they are not pro-active. they are reactive.

meaning if they get a complaint then they will act. if when acting they find something iffy, they will enforce.

so as long as you learn the rules and use them wisely to your advantage, so that if EG
a scammer tries to do a charge back, which triggers the banks to internally investigate and ask you questions. and you give them satisfactory information. they wont then make a SARS report to then cause fincen/FSA/SEC to come looking at you in detail.

fincen rules are for financial institutions to do internal investigations first. and only file a SARS report if the institutions own investigations dont end in complete satisfaction.

so the simple solution is to not lie, not hide details. comply with the rules and the snowball of headaches does not start rolling. it stops early on and you get to continue with business.

lol worst advice ever is to say dont declare bitcoins. especially when the reasons of not declaring them is advice from a person that has not read the regulations, does not understand fincen and then goes on a power trip thinking they will cripple the world at some point.

major face palm.

i don't advise not declaring bitcoins. in as much as tins of baked beans. if the government ask how many you have.. just say what you have. so far governments are not asking. so there is nothing to worry or think about right now... but by lying for any reason if they ever do start asking can cost you alot more in the long run, instead of just telling the truth.

this is where exchanges go wrong, they dont read regulations, they don't follow the rules they lie when questioned.. and then everyone wonders why they get shut down

the whole idea of bitcoin in 2009 is this

imagine the amount of bitcoin a person can mine in a day is minimum wage

then imagine how much bread, milk, rent, (lifestyle stuff) they would usually buy in a day.

use that as their bases for value.

so if they could only mine 0.3BTC a day and needed to get some bread, meat, veg, milk, OJ, pay their electric then they would work out the dollar value and find someone that would give them the dollar value for that daily use.

localbitcoin.com bartaring style.

so imagine he needs $50 a day to live a healthy lifestyle. that makes a whole bitcoin valued at $150.

back in 2009-2011 people were receiving many bitcoin a day so bitcoin had a low value. now its harder to mine coins so the value of products/services vs bitcoin income makes bitcoin worth more then in 2009-2011.

i personally prefer to see a ticker that adds up all of the miners currently mining and divides the income (rewards) by the amount of people mining per day to get an average income per person. then use this number as a minimum wage value to compare to real life products.
25 coins/10minutes = 150 an hour = 3600btc a day
imagine there was 10,000 miners mining today
average income= 0.36BTC

loaf of bread=2% of average income
4 pints of milk=2.4% of average income
bottle of beer in a bar=5% of average income
pack of cigarettes=10% of average income

that way  value is based on proof of work not speculation, and different countries which had differing values for products (EG USA has cheaper electricity and car fuel then the UK) the US would vary its product percentages accordingly

and that is how you create a non centralised value that has a bit of stability as the value is bartered between a few people untill they all agree on a set level for easy calculation...not ramped and dumped by a few rich people on an exchange.

i highlighted your statement at where btcbuy went wrong, and will leave them to read the full length of regulations as to why/how they went wrong.

if you want to get fiat (in any form) above $1000 in a small period of time or above $10k over a year and no ID is ever asked. then don't expect that service to run for very long.

i too dont want/do drugs. but this is where the media has brainwashed you. bitcoin is not used just for scamming people/drugs/playing the markets.

buy a computer or a tv www.bitcoinstore.com
buy some food https://www.foodler.com/user/Bitcoin.do
plus thousands of other things.

and remember bitcoin is still new. its still in the victorian age of currency. where its just moved away from only being used to trade on market places and whorehouses (cam4bitcoins) and is now moving onto being useful for more of a variety.

so the reason to mine is not to spend today. but to spend later.

if you really need FIAT and your only desire is fiat then only withdraw a couple hundred dollars/euros/pounds just to pay the bills.

cashing out every single bitcoin you mine for fiat defeats the entire reason for even using bitcoin

agreed. this is where satoshi had it envisioned that localbitcoins and individuals would work together to do money exchanges.

alot of people still think the only way in to bitcoin is to use the gateways that MTGox prefer.

this needs to be sucked out of the minds of the sheeple and a new era of local merchants, local exchangers need to rise up.

bring back the localbitcoin craze and make local bitcoins more popular then mtgox/dwolla/moneygram/bitinstant/okpay/AurumXchange

agreed, minor details off but 99.99% great. well worth a listen. i sent a personal message to enmaku to say where the minor point was. it was not a criticism to say the podcast was bad, it was just a way to add more context /info to help the learning experience of all.

life is a learning experience, don't fear someone helping you turn something marvellous into something magnificent.

great work, keep it up, you could be amongst those elite media press representatives using that podcast as an example.

best cold storage:
make a brain wallet. never import it into a bitcoin client. and simply deposit funds into the public address.. store it safely on paper in a fireproof safe.. thats about as cold as you can get

hot wallet
private key is imported into a wallet and is connected to the internet. whereby a rogue webhost or a hacker can get to the API calls to empty the wallet of funds.

since the addition of the bitcoin:// uri in windows. do any of those that have lost funds do any "free bitcoin" faucets regularly.

i remember last year there was one that actually made my QT client start running.

also

check all the programs installed EG the miners, drivers, etc that are not from the official websites. even check if you have a trading bot that was not created, compiled by yourself.

there was a guy named litecoin trader that hade a closed source trading bot. his version one last year was very very "iffy" and he soon went quiet when questioning him. he now has a version 2 which is also closed source.

do any of you use a trading bot for btc-e / mtgox?