I looked into it but I couldn't find a method for US resident to open a SEPA capable bank account.  Not sure if there is some explicit law or if the banks just don't want the hassle.

There are some offshore banks (barclays is big on this in places like Isle of Man) which are SEPA capable but the fees make it pointless. 
Something like $20 per month, $10 per check draft (yes per check), $7 per SEPA transfer, $30 per ACH, and $50 per international wire.  Oh yeah don't forget 2.99% surcharge on debit card usage.

I don't think this has ANYTHING to do with AML/KYC.  I am level 2 verified, and I was told level 3 wouldn't help speed the process up.  

This part of the quote is telling:

in the past Mt.Gox has indicated that when funds are frozen due to AML they CAN'T cancel/refund the funds.  Even on amounts as trivial as <$100 coming from Dwolla they insist the funds have to remain frozen.  Mt.Gox giving me (and Inaba as another example) the option to cancel, pay even more fees converting to BTC and withdrawing without delay all but guarantees this has nothing to do with AML/KYC.

AML/KYC is a nightmare but Mt.Gox hiding behind it (either explicitly or implicitly) is an abomination.

I would point out that in my last round of 2 week delays Mt.Gox never contacted me once to verify source of funds, ask questions regarding my financial activity, or make any other inquiries.  It was simply delayed day 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14, and then BAM the wire was finally submitted to their originating bank and I had my money 4 days later.

It is no wonder a bank wire "takes 19 days" when the originating bank doesn't even get the request (per their wire confirmation) until 15 days after I requested it.   I mean they had any more information on day 15 that they didn't have on day 1.  So what happened on day 2 to 14?

Now Mt.Gox claims this is due to Dwolla and if that is true, STOP ACCEPTING DWOLLA.  I am paying >$40 for an international wire and yet funds flow slower than a paper check sent by ground mail.  If Dwolla issues are constraining their ability to issue wires in a timely manner then they should accept Dwolla has failed and prioritize international wires.  The only possible scenario that I can think of is they are funding their Dwolla account via a US bank and using bank wires to get the funds their.  They could be running into wire limits imposed by their Japanese bank due to the volume of Dwolla they need (Dwolla funding has become very onsided, all outgoing).  Once again this is just a guess because they haven't provided any real information.

The complete and utter lack of any transparency is worse than the delays.   WHY EXACTLY does it take them 14 days to give the already approved (months ago) wire instructions to their OWN BANK.  This has been going on for two months now and delays are getting longer not shorter.  Customer have a right to know WHY funds are being delayed.

R:  If the post seems hostile it isn't directed at you.  Obviously you can't answer some of the questions they are more rhetorical in nature.

Rant mode on.


Their response:


1) 3-5 days?  I wish.  Hell I would pay you a bonus if my same day wire "only" took 3-5 days.  Is 3-5 days the gox version of BFL 4-6 weeks?

2) Use another funding option?  What funding option?  Bitcoins?  Kinda useless to be an exchange where the recommend method for cashing out fiat is Bitcoins which you take to another exchange.  Please tell me the funding option I should use.  It can't be Dwolla.  It can't be a bank wire.  Is Liberty Reserve at 3.75% loss the "solution".

3) IF I cancel the withdraw and buy back Bitcoins will you refund me the useless 1% (0.5% selling the coins for funds which can go nowhere and then another 0.5% buying my own damn coins back)?  I know you won't but just pointing our how utterly shady it is to profit double at your customers expense for your own incompetence.



Rant mode off.

Or don't use an exchange.

*cough* *cough* sig.

No. I wish they did.

Updated.

CampBX, Intersango, and "the gox" do.
Bitfloor doesn't.

Those are the only four I use.

You might as well cancel now and get your money back early.  There is a 0.0% chance you will be getting one in less than 6 weeks.  Not a single unit of a single order has ever shipped in less than 6 weeks.  The delay was getting shorter back that looks to have stagnated now.  The most recent orders are going on 80 days.

I could use another DropBox account.  Anyone done a deal w/ dbox?  Any feedback?

I will try to provide a better & more detailed explanation but this might help:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees

Most tx are "free" as in no REQUIRED fee.  This thread is about the ability to add an OPTIONAL fee in order to gain priority access.

Seperate from that in order to protect the network some tx have a REQUIRE fee.  Those are
a) "dust"  tx with an output less than 0.01 BTC
b) "low priority tx".  The formula is kinda complex so it easiest to remember it as 1 Coin Day.  If sum of the inputs for your tx is less than 1 day * 1 BTC per KB it is low priority and must include a fee.

The exact formula is:
priority = sum(input_value_in_base_units * input_age)/size_in_bytes
priority >= 57,600,000 is required to avoid mandatory minimum fees (0.0005 BTC per tx)

Don't worry if there is one thing BFL is good at it is not delivery enough product to make a difference.   I am still waiting on my single from over two months ago.

Dispute it saying you sent to wrong email address.   Don't make it any more complex than that.  Certainly don't use the "B" word when it comes to PayPal unless you want the funds frozen until US goes back on the gold stand in November eleventy never.

The belief that "gift" are indisuptable is nonsense.  If someone hacked into your account and made a "gift" to his scammer friend for your entire PayPal balance plus the max they could draw from your CC & and the max balance of your checking account & the max of your overdraft line do you think PayPal is going so say "sorry dude it is a GIFT!  that $28,700 is irrreversible".   This is PayPal not Bitcoin.

Thank You. 

Well he did say cheap.

Optimally I would say a bitcoind tailored to all merchants & service providers.  Something designed to communicate only via API and using an enterprise DBMS as its datastore and log output. 

While we are writing a wish list incorporate some method for strongly signing inter-node messages (Possibly using public/private keys).   That would allow my node to identify other nodes it trusts.  If Gox, BlockChain.info, and DeepBit all ways I received a 1-confirm tx I have a higher confidence I am not being subject to an isolation attack then is 6 random unknown and untrusted nodes (which may be the same attacker) say so.

I don't think "mean POS" is in starfish DNA.

lolwut saw a scam I was blind too.  I will put my money on lolwut.  He may annoy me sometimes but his "scam-dar" is second to none.

Really that is the security risk?

Propogation should take at most a few seconds so miners would be wasting work on a bad block for a few seconds and only on the few time (<1% ?) that a bad block w/ valid header is propagated.  Current miners are wasting hashing power on every block from the time it is found until the time it is propagated to them.

Remember the header can't be faked a valid hash on a block with a random nonce as the merkle root hash requires the same amount of work as a valid hash on block header with a merkle root hash which corresponds to an actual set of valid txs.    Not much attack there (attack would by definition needs to waste 100x to 300x as much resources as he causes good miners to waste).  Maybe in very isolate incidences a miner may produce an invalid block and that error isn't detected for a few seconds but miners that do that aren't getting compensated so they have a vested interest in fixing that flaw.

In the US (and in many other countries) the word "bank" has specific legal meaning.   It would be a good way to attract the wrong kind of attention from regulators.  You are prohibited from even incorporating a company with the word "bank" in the name unless you registered bank due to the potential confusion it would lead to.

Also the client is more like a processing node in VISA network than a bank.  Personally I would love to see the two aspects completely split; the processing node and the wallet/client.  To be a node I don't need a client/wallet and to have a client I don't need a node on the same machine but currently those two independent functions are tightly integrated which is a pain for custom development.