This is pretty much it. There are also some withdrawals which for various reasons need to be handled manually by us before being sent out, and there are only so many transactions that can be carried out by our staff in a given day.

Because Dwolla withdrawals are delayed, a number of our users have cancelled their Dwolla withdrawals and are performing wire transfers. This has increased the number of wire transfers being sent out, slowing down some wire transfers in America slightly. No particular banks are affected, it simply depends on the number of withdrawals in the queue and a number of other factors like withdrawal limits for a given Mt.Gox owned account, and so on.

Hi All,

I apologise for the delayed response. I'll now answer what questions I can:

@Serge - A driver's license with printed address is fine as long as it was issued within the last 3 months. If not, we need an alternate form of proof of residence.

@Ente - Unfortunately, I cannot discuss the specific mechanisms which trigger an account flagging in detail for obvious reasons - making this information generally available would allow those who do want to perform illegal activities to find loopholes and fly just below the radar. I'm very sorry I can't give a better answer than this.

@Bruno - I'm unfortunately not that clever. In hindsight, it would have been far better to create this information thread on a Monday when I could respond to everyone in a timely manner. I'd also like to clarify that I'm very far removed from our PR department, and only created this thread to help explain to users how our AML process works, dispel some common misconceptions, and hopefully make my job easier by reducing the number of incorrectly submitted account verification requests.

Now, to answer your question specifically:

We do not allow users under 18 to use our service as per our ToS. With regards to Zhou Tong, I've discussed it with Zhou and he's very kindly allowed us to share his personal circumstances - in his case, we received written consent and documents from his parents so that he could continue to keep an account with us, as he did indeed create an account before we had our ToS.

@dancupid - Essentially, all personal information collected by us enters into the same "pool" of data, which is a secure data store where files are kept for 5 years as legally required. We can't delete records from here, unfortunately.

@Bitco - The Japanese requirements are fairly obtuse as they've been written specifically with Japanese citizens in mind. They basically boil down to:

• A valid photographic identification document must be collected and,
• A letter must be sent by registered mail to the user's address as proof of residence.

We are currently working on putting in place a system that will let users receive registered mail to prove their residential address, but for now we are collecting alternate forms of proof of residence documents. We are very sorry for the inconvenience. With regards to returning funds, we absolutely do return funds as soon as any AML investigation is completed, unless legally required to pass the funds onto law enforcement pending additional investigation. There is no situation in which Mt.Gox will keep customer funds for itself as part of an AML investigation.

@CryptoCoinMedia - We are currently looking at outsourcing and partially automating our AML operations, although this has more to do with efficiency than transparency. We'd be very happy to hear any opinions our users might have on this point, actually. Would you prefer to provide personal information to Mt.Gox directly, or a trusted third party?

I would finally like to thank repentance for the excellent information he has also been providing throughout both threads, which is always accurate and useful.

If anyone has any additional questions, please feel free to ask.

Hi All,

Unfortunately I can't reply to everyone individually due to the volume of responses this thread.

First to cover some general points:

I apologise for creating two threads for the same issue, but was attempting to make this information as widely available as possible. Most new users will look at the Bitcoin Discussion page before they come here, and AML information is more useful for new users. I will of course reply to questions in this thread here, and questions in that thread there.

I apologise for perhaps taking too light-hearted an approach to a topic which for some users is a very sensitive issue. To reiterate, we absolutely don't sell personal information and would not do so even if we were legally able to.

To answer some more specific points:

---

@Goat, according to MagicalTux, your account was banned because there were many indicators on your account which pointed to money laundering. I'm very sorry that I inadvertently implied that you were linked to terrorism, I was speaking very generally at that point. Furthermore, as you know we've now cleared up the misunderstanding with you and have since re-enabled your account. To give more details, we noticed that fiat currency withdrawals were going to accounts with different names multiple countries. It also initially appeared that stolen identities were being given in the AML process, as multiple individuals from various countries' IDs had been submitted. As such, we were under the mistaken impression that criminal activity was going on under your account.

We are very sorry for the inconvenience, and the mistake on our part. To make a definitive statement, we are now aware that you are not carrying out any criminal activity using your Mt.Gox account. For those wanting more information, this has also been answered elsewhere: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=78244.0

---

@The Joint, I've been given authorisation to answer some of your questions as follows:

1)  What is the exact number of customer service representatives employed by Mt. Gox? 

At present, 3. However, we are about to finalise a contract with an external support provider which will increase this number to 4-5.

2)  What are the exact minimum and exact maximum number of customer service representatives working and available for support at any given time? 

At present, all 3 staff work during Japanese business hours, Monday to Friday. This will soon change to include 24x7 support, including live chat and phone support.

4)  How many hours does a typical customer service representative employed by Mt. Gox work each week?

Staff work roughly 40 hours a week.

5)  In what manner does Mt. Gox hold itself accountable for relaying false information to its customers?  I'm thinking of Inaba's recent- and ongoing thread as I type this question.  It appears that it has been a theme for Mt. Gox to respond to such accusations indirectly, for example by citing AML/KYC regulations, and not directly by responding to the specific accusation.

Unfortunately, like any company Mt.Gox is prone to the occasional mistake. When we do we always try to correct it as quickly as possible, as happened in Goat's case. However, we are legally obliged to not discuss the specifics of ongoing AML investigations which sometimes forces us to be vague and indirect. We are always very sorry in these cases for the manner in which we must communicate.

6)  Is Mt. Gox willing to implement a 'guarantee' policy related to statements made to its customers (e.g. a time-frame wherein Mt. Gox has indicated that it will release frozen funds, wherein a transfer of funds will take place, etc.)?

We can't do this, as much as we'd like to (if I'm understanding your question correctly.) This is mainly because often, the funds won't be frozen by us but by one of our banking partners. Once this happens we have no control over the investigation, we just have to support it as much as we are able or risk having our entire account frozen. If we were to make a statement along the lines of "if your funds have been marked for AML investigation, they will be returned to you regardless of the outcome after XX days" it would be both unenforceable and untrue, as in cases where money laundering can be proven the funds are transferred to the relevant financial regulator pending the outcome of a law enforcement investigation.

---

Tainted coins are an issue completely separate to AML, and as such I can't offer any information on this point. I believe MagicalTux has explained the tainted coin policy elsewhere on the forum recently, for those who are interested.

Bruno, with regards to our terms of service quoted, we are legally obliged to do so. Even though we are based in Japan, we have American customers and as such, under U.S. law, are forced to comply with American authorities. All U.S. users should be aware of this fact, but please note that we would not perform any actions until receiving the relevant court order.

Regarding releasing funds when an account is held for AML processing, we cannot do this for the reason noted under point 6 above in general. In cases where an internal AML investigation is underway (in other words, an investigation being performed by us rather than an external banking institution) then we do have some leeway on this issue depending on the legal circumstances of the hold.

I hope this answers most of the questions which have been asked, I'll now head over to the other thread and answer any outstanding ones there.

@Goat, I'm having a hard time catching MagicalTux, if I can't catch him by COB today I'll have an answer for you on Monday. I'm very sorry for the delay.

@The Joint, I'm aware that there have been a lot of complaints recently about how customer service has been handled by us. I'm only authorised to talk about the activities of my division at the moment (AML/KYC), but I'll see if I can get an answer for you on each of your points. I should warn you ahead of time that I probably won't be allowed to discuss specific staff salaries for obvious reasons, but I'll see.

Sorry that I can't give better answers than this right now, but please be patient and I'll see what I can do.

Thanks Maged. Perhaps repentance would be willing to put together something more generalised? I'd be more than happy for this thread to be cannibalised for information.

Hi Goat,

For point 1 - We don't give, sell, offer or in any other way make available our documents to law enforcement agencies unless we are legally compelled to do so  ... With the following exception:

For point 2 - We only report customers to the police relevant financial regulator when we have actual proof that they are actively involved in severe financial crimes such as money laundering or terrorist financing as we are legally obliged to do so. With regards to your particular case, I'll have to ask MagicalTux and get back to you. Would you prefer a public answer or for me to PM you?

Edit - oops, edited for clarity.

Hello Polvos,

As I work in the Compliance Division, I can really only comment on your last point - freezing money.

Unfortunately, we are legally obliged to occasionally hold customer funds pending the outcome of an investigation by the banks we work with. We don't have any control over this, it's simply one of the consequences of carrying out a large number of large bank transfers. Of course, transferring funds person to person carries much lower risk of needing to provide AML documents, as the size of the transfer is usually much smaller, and is usually either a once off or done only occasionally.

If you only need once off or occasional conversion of Bitcoins into currency in small amounts, and can find someone you trust on Bitcoin-OTC, you are probably better off going through them if you don't want to risk one day having to provide personal information.

I do apologise that you are not satisfied with our service.

I know, but honestly this will have the biggest impact on new Mt.Gox users who are far more likely to come here than the Trading Discussion sub-forum. I hope the mods will show a little leniency on this one, but if not that's quite understandable.

Good point, I'll contact them now.

(Copied from the Trading Discussion forum for greater visibility)

Hi Everyone,

My name is Dylan, and I work in Mt.Gox's Compliance Division. Our division is responsible for handling the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) activities for Mt.Gox, and we thought some of our users and the wider community might be interested in having an insight into how the whole process works. For those who may not be aware, AML/KYC checks involve us collecting from our users one piece of photographic identification, and one proof of residence document to help us identify you. Once you've read through it all, feel free to post any questions you might have about the process, as I'd be more than willing to answer any you may have.

Why do AML/KYC?

We are often asked both by email and on the forum why Mt.Gox does these checks. To give a very basic explanation of this issue, Mt.Gox handles both Bitcoin and fiat currency (Dollars, Euros, etc.) As a result, we are bound by the laws of Japan and America, along with various international regulations which cover the fiat side of our business. Very similar to how a bank in most countries must be regulated to ensure they are not facilitating money laundering, terrorist financing or the like, we are obliged to follow the same rules.

Whilst we could simply ignore our legal obligations, as a number of smaller, successful exchanges have done in the past, we have found that this invariably causes problems for both us and our customers. By not performing adequate AML/KYC checks, the banks that we must operate through can and have shut down bank accounts, trapping customer funds and causing us a lot of headache. Therefore, we try to follow this process as best as we are able with as little impact to our users as possible.

What does the process involve?

First, we ask you to provide one piece of government issued photographic identification, which is usually either:

• A driver's license,
• A passport, or;
• A military identification card (surprisingly, we have a large number of customers in the armed forces of various countries.)

We then ask you provide some form of proof of residence document, which is an official document issued within the last three months bearing both your name and full street address. For obvious reasons, we cannot accept addresses with PO Boxes. Usually, we receive one of the following:

• A utility bill,
• An internet bill,
• A cell phone or mobile phone bill,
• A tax return,
• A residency certificate issued by your local government,
• A voting registration form, or;
• A medical insurance bill

Whilst many of our users submit bank statements as their proof of residence, we unfortunately cannot accept bank statements from our customers. This is because it is relatively easy for fraudsters to open an account at a less reputable banking service which does not check the accuracy of a person's stated address. It is then possible to use this bank's statement as a seed to open accounts at increasingly trustworthy establishments without ever having provided proof of residence in the first place.

What does your division do?

The main job of the Compliance Division is to check documents we receive from our customers, and make sure that all of the necessary documents have been submitted, and more importantly, that none of the submitted documents are forgeries. We check submitted documents against our database of received documents, against publicly available sources of information and also put them through advanced image analysis to identify forgeries. This is done to protect both Mt.Gox and our users from fraudulent activity.

What happens if my application is rejected?

If we reject your documents, we will always explain by email what went wrong in the verification process. The top 5 most common causes for rejection are:

• Not submitting all the documents. Many people only give us a driver's license or passport on their first attempt, without providing any proof of residence. This is the most common reason for rejection, and costs our customers the greatest amount of time in having their accounts verified.
• Submitting documents which are too dark or low-resolution to read. The second most common cause for rejection, illegible documents cannot be accepted. Usually this is the result of trying to take photos of documents using a webcam or camera phone, where poor low-light performance and grainy / low resolution images are the norm.
• Providing files in the wrong format. We have a specialised interface for reviewing documents and putting them through image analysis. At the moment, it can only handle files which are either JPEGs, PNGs or PDFs.
• Submitting a proof of residence document which has a different name on it to the photographic identification. This often happens when a user is still living with their parents, or if a spouse or room mate pays the utility bills. In these cases, a signed, notarised statement that you reside with whoever's name is on the proof of residence will be enough for us to verify you.
• Submitting documents in non-latin script. Unfortunately, the Compliance Division doesn't have any staff who can read Cyrillic, Korean, Arabic or Hebrew. As a result, when we receive documents in these languages we must ask our customers to provide English translations of them.

Please note that even if you are rejected the first time around, there is nothing wrong with this - we will keep working with you until we are able to get you verified.

Myths and rumours

I'd like to address some myths and rumours that have sprung up surrounding our AML/KYC process, just to allay any fears people might have about our mysterious need to harvest everyone's identity.

Mt.Gox sells personal information to the DEA

If we were going to sell your personal information to a law enforcement agency, it probably wouldn't be to the American Drug Enforcement Administration. We would make much more money selling it to our local Tokyo Metropolitan Police, since we wouldn't be losing any money on the currency conversion. This rumour probably sprung up because of an interview our CEO (MagicalTux for those on the forums) gave some time ago, where he mentioned sending a letter to the DEA explaining what Bitcoin was. This was back when a certain American Senator was investigating Bitcoin over the growing popularity of Silk Road.

We invite our users to read our privacy policy and repeated posts on the forums where we state that we will only provide your personal documents when legally required to do so. This will usually involve law enforcement agencies issuing us a court order compelling us to release an individual's information and is a very rare event even in the fiat banking world.

Mt.Gox makes money from personal identification some other way, like selling it to advertisers

While it would be a great income stream for us, sadly we are not legally allowed to sell your personal information. This is both because of our privacy policy, and because we are based in Japan, a country with some of the strictest privacy laws in the world. In fact, hiring staff to fill our Compliance Division, hosting and securing an extremely large amount of image data and carrying out the AML/KYC process is one of our more significant company expenses.

So while we'd love to be able to offset the costs a little, if we were ever caught doing this as a company, we would face serious fines and even jail time. We hope that knowing that this threat to us exists gives you confidence that we're being kept honest.

Mt.Gox has stricter AML/KYC requirements than other companies

This is actually true, in some cases. For example, before Dwolla changed their terms of service they allowed some users to become verified with only a driver's license, or only a proof of residence document. While we truly regret that we must ask for as much documentation as we do at Mt.Gox, we are providing services to users internationally in Europe, America, Russia, South-East Asia and elsewhere, and as such have to meet the harshest requirements of all of the countries we operate in.

Many of our German and Polish users have probably experienced a great deal of frustration getting verified with Mt.Gox, as Germany and Poland both issue an identity card which includes a person's current address. Unfortunately, because we must also follow American and Japanese rules, we also have to ask for separate proof of residence documents.

Conclusion

I hope you found my post interesting, or at least informative. If you have any questions about our process, please feel free to either PM me or post here and I'll be sure to answer! If you have a question about your specific application to become verified, please email our AML email address so we can maintain the confidentiality of your application.

Hi Everyone,

My name is Dylan, and I work in Mt.Gox's Compliance Division. Our division is responsible for handling the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) activities for Mt.Gox, and we thought some of our users and the wider community might be interested in having an insight into how the whole process works. For those who may not be aware, AML/KYC checks involve us collecting from our users one piece of photographic identification, and one proof of residence document to help us identify you. Once you've read through it all, feel free to post any questions you might have about the process, as I'd be more than willing to answer any you may have.

Why do AML/KYC?

We are often asked both by email and on the forum why Mt.Gox does these checks. To give a very basic explanation of this issue, Mt.Gox handles both Bitcoin and fiat currency (Dollars, Euros, etc.) As a result, we are bound by the laws of Japan and America, along with various international regulations which cover the fiat side of our business. Very similar to how a bank in most countries must be regulated to ensure they are not facilitating money laundering, terrorist financing or the like, we are obliged to follow the same rules.

Whilst we could simply ignore our legal obligations, as a number of smaller, successful exchanges have done in the past, we have found that this invariably causes problems for both us and our customers. By not performing adequate AML/KYC checks, the banks that we must operate through can and have shut down bank accounts, trapping customer funds and causing us a lot of headache. Therefore, we try to follow this process as best as we are able with as little impact to our users as possible.

What does the process involve?

First, we ask you to provide one piece of government issued photographic identification, which is usually either:

• A driver's license,
• A passport, or;
• A military identification card (surprisingly, we have a large number of customers in the armed forces of various countries.)

We then ask you provide some form of proof of residence document, which is an official document issued within the last three months bearing both your name and full street address. For obvious reasons, we cannot accept addresses with PO Boxes. Usually, we receive one of the following:

• A utility bill,
• An internet bill,
• A cell phone or mobile phone bill,
• A tax return,
• A residency certificate issued by your local government,
• A voting registration form, or;
• A medical insurance bill

Whilst many of our users submit bank statements as their proof of residence, we unfortunately cannot accept bank statements from our customers. This is because it is relatively easy for fraudsters to open an account at a less reputable banking service which does not check the accuracy of a person's stated address. It is then possible to use this bank's statement as a seed to open accounts at increasingly trustworthy establishments without ever having provided proof of residence in the first place.

What does your division do?

The main job of the Compliance Division is to check documents we receive from our customers, and make sure that all of the necessary documents have been submitted, and more importantly, that none of the submitted documents are forgeries. We check submitted documents against our database of received documents, against publicly available sources of information and also put them through advanced image analysis to identify forgeries. This is done to protect both Mt.Gox and our users from fraudulent activity.

What happens if my application is rejected?

If we reject your documents, we will always explain by email what went wrong in the verification process. The top 5 most common causes for rejection are:

• Not submitting all the documents. Many people only give us a driver's license or passport on their first attempt, without providing any proof of residence. This is the most common reason for rejection, and costs our customers the greatest amount of time in having their accounts verified.
• Submitting documents which are too dark or low-resolution to read. The second most common cause for rejection, illegible documents cannot be accepted. Usually this is the result of trying to take photos of documents using a webcam or camera phone, where poor low-light performance and grainy / low resolution images are the norm.
• Providing files in the wrong format. We have a specialised interface for reviewing documents and putting them through image analysis. At the moment, it can only handle files which are either JPEGs, PNGs or PDFs.
• Submitting a proof of residence document which has a different name on it to the photographic identification. This often happens when a user is still living with their parents, or if a spouse or room mate pays the utility bills. In these cases, a signed, notarised statement that you reside with whoever's name is on the proof of residence will be enough for us to verify you.
• Submitting documents in non-latin script. Unfortunately, the Compliance Division doesn't have any staff who can read Cyrillic, Korean, Arabic or Hebrew. As a result, when we receive documents in these languages we must ask our customers to provide English translations of them.

Please note that even if you are rejected the first time around, there is nothing wrong with this - we will keep working with you until we are able to get you verified.

Myths and rumours

I'd like to address some myths and rumours that have sprung up surrounding our AML/KYC process, just to allay any fears people might have about our mysterious need to harvest everyone's identity.

Mt.Gox sells personal information to the DEA

If we were going to sell your personal information to a law enforcement agency, it probably wouldn't be to the American Drug Enforcement Administration. We would make much more money selling it to our local Tokyo Metropolitan Police, since we wouldn't be losing any money on the currency conversion. This rumour probably sprung up because of an interview our CEO (MagicalTux for those on the forums) gave some time ago, where he mentioned sending a letter to the DEA explaining what Bitcoin was. This was back when a certain American Senator was investigating Bitcoin over the growing popularity of Silk Road.

We invite our users to read our privacy policy and repeated posts on the forums where we state that we will only provide your personal documents when legally required to do so. This will usually involve law enforcement agencies issuing us a court order compelling us to release an individual's information and is a very rare event even in the fiat banking world.

Mt.Gox makes money from personal identification some other way, like selling it to advertisers

While it would be a great income stream for us, sadly we are not legally allowed to sell your personal information. This is both because of our privacy policy, and because we are based in Japan, a country with some of the strictest privacy laws in the world. In fact, hiring staff to fill our Compliance Division, hosting and securing an extremely large amount of image data and carrying out the AML/KYC process is one of our more significant company expenses.

So while we'd love to be able to offset the costs a little, if we were ever caught doing this as a company, we would face serious fines and even jail time. We hope that knowing that this threat to us exists gives you confidence that we're being kept honest.

Mt.Gox has stricter AML/KYC requirements than other companies

This is actually true, in some cases. For example, before Dwolla changed their terms of service they allowed some users to become verified with only a driver's license, or only a proof of residence document. While we truly regret that we must ask for as much documentation as we do at Mt.Gox, we are providing services to users internationally in Europe, America, Russia, South-East Asia and elsewhere, and as such have to meet the harshest requirements of all of the countries we operate in.

Many of our German and Polish users have probably experienced a great deal of frustration getting verified with Mt.Gox, as Germany and Poland both issue an identity card which includes a person's current address. Unfortunately, because we must also follow American and Japanese rules, we also have to ask for separate proof of residence documents.

Conclusion

I hope you found my post interesting, or at least informative. If you have any questions about our process, please feel free to either PM me or post here and I'll be sure to answer! If you have a question about your specific application to become verified, please email our AML email address so we can maintain the confidentiality of your application.

If you haven't already, please lodge a support request with us so we can investigate. Unfortunately, once BTC has left our system we have no control over it, but we can at least return the account to your control (if that hasn't been done yet) and investigate what happened here.

We're very sorry for the negative experience you've had with our service, and hope we can do something to help.

Commenting as an interested individual, taking company hat off.

As someone who has worked in related industries in the past, I can confirm that the document is either an extremely well put together fake written by someone with extensive knowledge of government writing style and organisations, or real.

Honestly, going off experience I believe it's real. The fact that it has spelling / grammatical errors or doesn't use the sort of language you'd expect an employee of the government to use is irrelevant - whoever wrote it was human, and I've come across more than my share of spelling and grammatical errors in official government documents. Taking it as a given that the document is real, its contents are pretty bog-standard boring stuff - a general overview of Bitcoin, possible tie-ins to organised crime and the like. It doesn't include any actionable items, which would be contained in a more highly classified report anyway.

Overall impact to Bitcoin and Bitcoin community: zero

Not saying that won't change in the future, but for now it's just an interesting look at another perspective on Bitcoin.

As for LoupGaroux's refutations, to disassemble them quickly:

1.  The FBI does not watermark their "internal documents" with a badly shaded, homemade Seal of LEO authenticity.

You'd be surprised how much of a pain it is to get your hands on department templates sometimes.

2.  A quick search of the entire database of the Directorate of Intelligence indicates that the phrase "bitcoin" has never been used in any official document, and the only positive links to a press release from March 18, 2011 about von NotHaus and NORFED.

Not everything discussed internally makes it onto public sites. This doesn't even have anything to do with classifying documents, (although I believe this one was "for official use only") but more to do with the fact that the guys responsible for posting up documents publicly are far fewer and slower than the people producing the original internal documents.

3.  No US agency identifies Classified status by the paragraph, especially not any document that would have For Official Use Only status. The entire document would be identified as such on the cover, only.

I can't comment on FBI policy, but this depends on the document - particularly for overview documents, it can help people to gauge how classified certain topics are considered to be within the department.

4.  No US agency would use a cut and paste graphic on the cover of the document, especially not when that cover is a template from Word '95.

Ref point 1.

5.  No US agency would ever give attribution for a graphic below the graphic, and especially not ever do so on the cover. Attributions would be in the notations and citations, basic Strunk and White. They have entire libraries devoted to the correct style of document production.

True, but again whoever wrote it was human. For the average analyst who has a list of documents he needs to write longer than his arm, most of them far more important / interesting than Bitcoin, I can believe that a little sloppiness would come through.

6.  Distribution lists come at the beginning of official documents, so that any official considering disseminating the document can check quickly if it can be shared.

This is true, but does not preclude the inclusion of a distribution list later on, particularly because these things get re-forwarded like crazy on a regular basis.

7.  An official document of this sort would not be released as an attempted slick looking report, it would be very straightforward text blocks, and almost always block-justified.

I can't comment on the FBI's particular style of documents. This could be true, but on the other hand I have seen some very nicely put-together packages before.

8.  No self-respecting FBI Junior G Man would ever sprinkle phrases like "vendor acceptance", "actors" , "malware" or "botnets" in a report that would ever be read by a superior. It would probably cost them their job.

Depends on the audience.

9.  A real report would not mis-identify the entity that money transmitters must register with. They are not legally required to register with "FinCEN", that is where reports are filed by Law Enforcement, and advisories developed to coordinate the efforts of Law Enforcement to combat financial crimes, not as a registry for money exchangers. They would be far more likely to be required to register with their respective Secretary of State, or Corporate licensing
agency on a state by state basis, licensing of financial institutions is done on a state level, not on a Federal one.
This is untrue. MSBs must also register with FinCEN - http://www.fincen.gov/financial_institutions/msb/

10.  The language is wrong.

Again, regardless of what you might think of the FBI, it is primarily composed of humans, not robots. The kind of kid who's likely to get the junk assignment of doing a writeup on Bitcoin probably isn't going to be that entrenched in the style guide yet.

IMHO.

If you'd like more granularity in your volume information, I hope you'll be pleased with our new trade data drop-down. Just click on the orange graph icon on the new Mt.Gox site, and you'll have real time data of trade volume available on any page.

I hope this helps!

Whilst it is true that the requirement is currently self-imposed, financial laws in the majority of markets Mt.Gox supports require that only transaction fees be taken from users' accounts with the rest left untouched by the company, except where processing payments. Whether these laws apply to Mt.Gox would of course depend on the type of business that Mt.Gox is classified under.

Sorry to bring up an earlier post, but I thought I'd address this point for clarity's sake. Mt.Gox Redeemable Codes for either bitcoins or traditional currency automatically "remove" the relevant sum from a user's account on their creation. These funds are then held in limbo until the code is redeemed. As such, it is impossible for a user to create a redeemable code for more funds than they have access to.

Since these funds are drawn from a user's account, a redeemable code represents funds which are in existence at the time of its creation, which are held for as long as it takes for the code to be redeemed. Since the actual amount of bitcoins or dollars won't vary in a user's account over time (unlike the value of those funds) then as long as an entity which accepts Mt.Gox Redeemable Codes exists, they will be valid.

Of course, this assumes that Mt.Gox does not access, use or alter user's funds in any way (apart from the taking of trade fees), but I hope the community is willing to trust us on that point.

If there are any other questions or concerns in relation to Mt.Gox Redeemable Codes, feel free to contact us on the forums, or at support@mtgox.com.

Hello,

The volume counter is a real time display of volume over the last 24 hours. It might occasionally decrease as particularly large orders drop off as the 24 hour clock progresses.

For example, you look up and see the volume is 100,000. But exactly 23:59 ago someone did a 1,000 bitcoin trade. If you wait a minute or two and refresh, you'll see the volume drop to 99,000 assuming no one had any orders fulfilled in those two minutes.

This is a fairly simple explanation, but hope it helps! If you'd like more detail just let us know, or contact support@mtgox.com.

Hello,

I'd like to ask that this account be whitelisted, it was created by our Mt.Gox support staff to assist users on the forums.

If you need any proof that this account is linked to Mt.Gox please let me know.

Kind regards,

Dylan
Mt.Gox Support