Made me chuckle too.

Would it seriously kill them to hire a dedicated customer support representative to respond to people's queries directly instead of just posting messages on their website?  Their attitude towards customer support has got to be costing them more per week in lost business than employing someone in that role would cost.

Edited to add that they now have a support account registered for the forum.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=42942;sa=showPosts

Let's hope that person gets around to participating in this thread soon.

I'm glad to hear that you're planning to have your ducks in a row before launch.

My background is in business administration with an emphasis on regulatory compliance.  My current areas of interest are small business and NGOs (in the past it's been Freedom of Information and the various state and federal Privacy Acts).  I believe that far too many small businesses fail in Australia these days and that while blaming "the economy" has become almost reflexive, many of them would have failed due to other issues even during better economic times.

Why small business?  Because it's the lifeblood of Australia in terms of providing employment.  It's about creating opportunities for yourself (and hopefully for others as well) instead of just hoping that someone else will provide you with opportunities for upward mobility.  And while there are no guaranteed passports to the middle class and beyond, for many people establishing their own business will give them a better shot at upward mobility than trying to out-compete hundreds of other equally or better qualified candidates for coveted, high income private and public sector jobs.

I'd suggest that you clearly explain on your website the circumstances under which you might ask users to verify their funding accounts or their identity.  It's becoming a big issue with the exchanges and a lot of people are getting really pissed off about having to verify when they weren't told at sign up that it might happen.

Asking for the registration details of a business which claims to be registered in Australia is hardly calling them a scam. It's information which they should be disclosing in advance if they want to establish pre-launch credibility and which they're legally required to disclose the moment they start offering goods or services to the public.

They've made an unsupported claim about being a Pty Ltd company.  The onus is on them to provide the information which allows their potential users to verify that claim.  There are no existing registrations which preclude them from registering Crypto X Changer as either a company name or a business name and they can't legally trade under that name without doing one or the other.  If they're going to claim some kind of ethical high ground then they need to back that up with verifiable facts.  Recent registrations for which I can find records are a company called International Bitcoin Exchange Pty Ltd which was registered on 20 June 2011 and Australian Bitcoin Exchange which was registered as a business name only in WA on 1 July 2011.

The Australian operations of their competitors have collided with regulatory issues here and will probably continue to do so until they become compliant with local business registration and financial services requirements.  None of them appear to be registered for GST and that's a big red flag given that the GST threshold is only $75,000.  If the volume of money going through their accounts has been an issue for their Australian banks as they've claimed in the past then their turnover is high enough to require GST registration and the potential for nasty things to happen if they're not GST compliant is significant.  

One of their competitors is currently the subject of a strike-off action by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.  The circumstances under which ASIC will initiate company deregistration are outlined here.  If they forgot to update their details with ASIC when they moved their operations from one state to another (the "best" case scenario for the strike off action) then someone needs a damned good slap because the registered office of the company is where nasty legal documents such as Director Penalty Notices from the ATO and Statutory Demands from creditors (including the ATO) get sent and if those aren't responded to within the required (very short) time frame then seizure of assets and/or forced liquidation of the company are very real possibilities even if the company is technically solvent.

https://westpoint.asic.gov.au/asic/ASIC.NSF/byHeadline/ASIC%20initiated%20deregistration%20of%20a%20company

Anyone looking to operate a Bitcoin exchange in Australia needs to explain to their users how they intend to avoid the issues which have affected their competitors operations here.  Good intentions won't avoid those issues.

At least they've now revamped their website so it doesn't look like it was formatted by a 15 year old any more (still need to run spell check guys).

Mt Gox could be licensed out the wazoo in Japan and it still wouldn't exempt them from having to comply with financial services legislation in other locations. Paypal Australia, Technocash, Western Union, etc don't hold Australian Financial Services Licences for shit and giggles - they do it to minimise the possibility of their bank and/or other financial institution accounts being shut down, which would put their local operations out of business if not resolved quickly.

It's usually funny when deviantART meets SomethingAwful.

A lot of the Bitcoins mined to date have never been moved.  I wouldn't assume that the majority of Bitcoins are being used as currency at this point.

I think the bad idea was believing that the exchanges wouldn't require that information sooner rather than later.

Absolutely legal but you can't conduct business under anything other than your own name without registering the business name you want to use.

Interestingly, few Bitcoin related names appear on either the business names register or the company names register.

This is where I believe it's bad business practice to offer support exclusively via IRC and email.  MtGox is large enough now that it should offer phone support during set hours which are well publicised as well as committing to having someone in IRC at specific times each day.  "When we get around to answering your emails" is not an acceptable customer support model.

Looks like they're having another problem too.


 https://support.mtgox.com/home

Database problems in businesses which have your money don't exactly inspire confidence.

Another problem is that many of them seem pretty sketchy and no-one wants an association with a company which took the money and ran on their resume. 

While no-one's going to get up in arms about someone designing a logo for a company which disappears overnight, a lot of mud is going to stick to anyone who actively markets any business which later turns out to be a scam.

TradeHill had issues with Dwolla and it's also had issues with its Australian banks requiring compliance with AML legislation.  World Bitcoin Exchange states on its website that its unlicenced and that it will comply with all AML and CTF legislation (which covers identity verification requirements).  MtGox has had issues with PayPal, its French banks, and now Technocash in Australia. 

Many of these issues are now predictable and the exchanges need to be more open about the probability of them occurring rather than allowing their users to believe that the exchanges are somehow exempt from the usual financial services laws and practises which apply in the jurisdictions in which they operate.  They can't operate effectively without local bank accounts and those bank accounts are subject to local laws.  Period.  When the exchanges didn't offer local deposit and withdrawal facilities, people complained that getting funds to and from the exchanges was too expensive and took too long.  Now they're complaining about the exchanges operating like other local financial services providers.

The exchanges themselves will almost certainly be faced with the choice of becoming licensed and regulated or ceasing operation in some locations in the future.  As the primary purpose of a business is to make money, limiting their operations to only locations where they can operate totally unregulated might not be a viable business model for the long term.  While many exchange users might prefer that the exchanges continue operating in legally grey areas, the future value of the exchanges to their owners is somewhat linked to their legitimacy.

I think there are plenty of grounds on which to criticise the exchanges, but it's important to remember that people have the option of trading Bitcoins over the counter if they don't want to provide personal information or risk their deposits being frozen if they don't provide it.  The exchanges don't need to be the be all and end all of the Bitcoin economy.

You're probably under-estimating how hostile many Aussies are to illegal trafficking of our native wildlife.  It's an especially cruel industry not just because a lot of animals die in transit but also because many of them have special dietary and other requirements which can't be met outside their native habitats or specialised care facilities like zoos and animal parks.  

You can pretty much guarantee that if Bitcoin becomes associated with the illegal smuggling of Australian wildlife, then Bitcoin itself will come under considerable public scrutiny here.  A lot of people who couldn't give a shit about what drugs people choose to use in private and how they purchase them will give a fuck about anything which is perceived as making smuggling our native wildlife easier.

They've posted in the other thread that their launch will probably be delayed until October.  Until they post basic business information about themselves and who's behind the company, you'd be insane to deal with them no matter how many buzzwords they use on their website.

And they smell.  Dear god do they smell.

I don't think it's a flaw of Bitcoin per se.  I can do irrevocable, unidirectional transfers from my bank account to merchants too and in many cases I can do them without revealing my identity - when I pay for my groceries by EFTPOS at the supermarket the merchant doesn't receive identifying information about me.  Likewise, I can order a lot of stuff online using just an order number and without disclosing my personal details.  But I'm not going to transfer money from my bank account to the account of a merchant whose credentials I can't check in some way.

I think the trap people have been falling into is thinking that because they want to be their Bitcoin dealings to be somewhat it's not reasonable to ask that those offering goods or services provide information about themselves.  Just because Bitcoin offers the potential for transactions to be mostly anonymous on both sides doesn't mean that it's vital or even desirable for most transactions to be conducted that way.

The exchanges have repeatedly had problems with having their accounts containing user funds closed or frozen.  By now they should all have contingency plans for dealing with this issue because it's a foreseeable one and trying to fly under the radar when they adopt new deposit taking or payment processing methods does nothing to prevent it.

Likewise, users should also realise by now that if they choose to use unregulated exchanges there's a non-trivial chance that at some point they'll find access to their funds frozen because the exchanges have run afoul of either AML laws or the anti-fraud measures of the services through which they are channelling payments.

It's probably time that the exchanges explicitly stated on their websites that they cannot guarantee their users will be able to withdraw their funds "at call".  I'm quite sure that most people won't bother to read any product disclosure statements or expanded terms of service, but at least full disclosure of the circumstances under which users might not be able to access their funds immediately might cut down on the number of threads complaining about delayed withdrawals, additional user verification requirements, etc.

After all that's in the Bitcoin world over the last few months, why are people still so willing to do business with entities about whom they have no real life information?

It's also relatively easy to get hold of legitimately prescribed opiates through the black market here at a fairly low price.

The whole cocaine thing was weird though.  It virtually disappeared as a drug of choice here for about 15 years and has only recently main a comeback in popularity.  It's still nowhere near as popular as other illegal stimulants which probably has a lot to do with its high price/short duration.  Crack never really took off here so we've never had low cost cocaine available and there are plenty of other cheap, long-acting stimulants out there for the party all night brigade.

Hash and hash oil have also pretty much disappeared from the market here over the last couple of decades even though they commanded a high price twenty years ago.

And anyone who wants a koala is nuts.  Not only are they hard to care for in captivity due to their limited dietary range, they're nasty fuckers when they get pissed off.