Knight22: Thank for the link. I will definitely check it out and see if it can work for me.

ThomasV: Perhaps the money (minus service fees, I assume) will eventually appear in my Mt.Gox account again. I will wait a few more days before I can officially declare it "vanished." I will open a ticket with Mt.Gox, who have been helpful in the past.

I have discussed the issue with my bank manager, who has known me personally for a decade. He was very polite when he explained several apparently contradictory things. He said that it was his discretion to accept or refuse any wire transfer from outside the country, but at the same time despite our history and his saying he "believed" my "story" he could not allow a "precedent" to be set that might get him in trouble. Like the customer service tool who originally contacted me, he kept repeated that since he couldn't understand what bitcoin was, he was going to play it safe by refusing to have anything to do with it whatsoever.

Naturally, I have escalated my being pissed to somebody at corporate HQ and hold out some slim hope of remedy. I'd pull my accounts but I renegotiated an insanely great mortgage deal six months ago I'm not in a position to walk away from. Thanks for your advice.

M49r88

I'm a small-time miner operating in Canada. I recently moved a bunch of coin to the Mt.Gox exchange in Japan, and was able to successfully convert my BTC to $CDN. I jumped through all the hoops of getting my identity and bank account verified with Mt.Gox, then made an international wire transfer of the funds to my bank account.

That's when the bank called me. "We don't know what this is. Is it gambling?"

"No. It's a decentralized electronic currency. Because of work my computer did on the network, it has accumulated a small amount of currency I've exchanged to Canadian and would now like to spend on Christmas."

"I don't understand that. Is it gambling?"

"No. Here, I have forwarded you some documents that define bitcoin. That should help you understand."

"I'm reading these documents and I don't understand. I'm not a computer programmer. This sounds like money laundering to me."

"[Tedious and patient explanation of the BTC basics using small words and friendly tone.]"

"Yeah, well -- I'm not really into computers, and that sounds untraceable."

"What do you mean?"

"I can't verify where the money came from."

"If I deposited cash you wouldn't know either. Besideswhich I just told you. Here's a screenshot of my account, my mining software GUI, and my transaction history with Mt.Gox."

"Yeah, I don't understand this at all. I'm refusing the transfer."

"Um. Where will my money go?"

"I don't know."

"What about all the service fees?"

"I have no idea."

"With all due respect, you're ruining Christmas."

"Yeah, I don't mean to, but I just don't understand what this is."

So...WTF are my fellow countrymen doing to extract your BTC into government-backed currency? I'm at a loss here. Scotiabank just flushed my entire hoard down the toilet (it never re-appeared at Mt.Gox after being "refused") and I'm hesitant to restart my rig until I know there's a way to actually profit and/or transact!

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

M49r88

Ah-ha, so that's what the specifics of the restrictions are! Thanks for posting the details.

M49r88

I've been small-scale mining for six months using night time idle time on graphics workstations.

I recently transferred my stash to Mt. Gox and since I'm having trouble finding an institution in my country that'll allow me to withdraw to it I'm looking forward to busting my newbies restrictions cherry so I can join the discussion on the appropriate sub-board and hopefully find answers from my fellow Canadians who have surely solved this problem before me.

I probably should've stopped lurking a long time ago so that my hands wouldn't be tied in this way now, but I'll probably come to regret regretting that. I usually rue regret.

M49r-88