Mt. Gox is an unlicensed money exchanger dealing in "crypto-currency."

[EuroTrash]

I suspect the DHS has nearly 7 of my bitcoin    I knew i should take it out last night, but I didn't.

They don't.  Not even 1.

You think I'll be able to get it?

Just 5 minutes ago I managed to move 100 of mine away.
It took patience and a lot of retries.

Next appointment with Gox withdrawals for me is in 24 hours and one second.

[QuantPlus]

Proper MSB licensing doesn't seem prohibitively expensive, other bitcoin exchanges have obtained it. The seizure has not provided any basis to conclude that the gov would shut down an exchange, other than failure to have the proper MSB license. Therefore this is very good news because more exchanges will be properly licensed in the future, and so far the focus of gov regulations and enforcement is narrow and does not appear to threaten bitcoin infrastructure or liquidity.

Some comprehensive legal advice:

http://moneytransmitterlicense.blogspot.ca/

An interesting "payments startup" site:

http://www.paymentsbusinessideas.com/

I still think Bitcoin and MSG are a Catch-22...
Sure, you can get all appropriate licensing...
But they will eventually come after BTC itself...
All roads lead offshore.

[Hawker]

I suspect the DHS has nearly 7 of my bitcoin    I knew i should take it out last night, but I didn't.

They don't.  Not even 1.

You think I'll be able to get it?

Of course you will.  This Dwolla thing is a nuisance - not a disaster.  It will be over and forgotten in a month or so.

[myrkul]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/05/15/the-feds-are-cracking-down-on-mt-gox-not-on-bitcoin/

They came for MTGox, but I was not MTGox, so I did not speak up...

(That said, dude knowingly lied on his application to the bank, this is a "clean" bust. Still, a bad sign.)

Well technically he check the "no" box in 2011 and it was only a couple months ago that the government clarified that they consider cryptocurrency to be money so he did not knowingly lie on the application.

The government always considered Dollars to be money. And Mutum Sigillum transmits money to and from MTGox and it's various customers. It exists solely for the purpose of transmitting money. One of the questions he answered no to was:
"Does your business accept funds from customers and send the funds based on customers' instructions (Money Transmitter)?"
The other was "Do you deal in or exchange currency for your customer?"

Even if Gox was outside of those particular regs (until the FinCEN ruling), Mutum Sigillum wasn't.

[anu]

The fact that Gox could overlook this requirement is inexcusable. Most everyone else was doing their due diligence to ensure that they were meeting regulatory requirements even before the FinCEN guidance. Now it leaves me wondering what other details they may have overlooked or not considered. Perhaps they are not even operating legally in Japan and if that is the case, a seizure of their servers will most definitely happen eventually. What assurance do we have right now that they are operating legitimately? Personally, I would not feel safe keeping anything of value in their servers right now. Time to jump the Gox ship as far as I'm concerned.

No idea about the US, but there are more than 90,000 pages of relevant BaFin regulation in my country. Expect MagicalTux to read all that crap? We  all probably violate regulations when taking a leak the wrong way. This is the whole point, tyranny through complexity. Whatever you do, you violate the law or regulation. So it's completely to the discretion of the so called authorities to seize your property or worse.

So, yeah. MagicalTux probably overlooked a couple of thousand additional regulations and laws.

There is no doubt that governmental regulation is onerous, difficult and obscure, but unfortunately such is the world we live in. The point here is that they don't even seem to be trying. Reading and parsing thousands of pages of obscure documents is exactly what lawyers are for and why they get the big bucks. Hire a fucking lawyer Gox, do your job. They have been doing this for years now, none of these issues should be coming out of left field, at least not if they were serious or competent about their business.

I worked in banks as a contractor for more than 20 years. Much more serious cases than this are no problem. THEY approached me for things like this and in one instance they were fine with me to go skiing for 2 weeks and fix the issue after returning.

This is an agenda and MtGox can't do anything. Do you believe the system we live in has anything to do with concepts like "rule of law" since 12 years?

[Babylon]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/05/15/the-feds-are-cracking-down-on-mt-gox-not-on-bitcoin/

They came for MTGox, but I was not MTGox, so I did not speak up...

(That said, dude knowingly lied on his application to the bank, this is a "clean" bust. Still, a bad sign.)

Well technically he check the "no" box in 2011 and it was only a couple months ago that the government clarified that they consider cryptocurrency to be money so he did not knowingly lie on the application.

The government always considered Dollars to be money. And Mutum Sigillum transmits money to and from MTGox and it's various customers. It exists solely for the purpose of transmitting money. One of the questions he answered no to was:
"Does your business accept funds from customers and send the funds based on customers' instructions (Money Transmitter)?"
The other was "Do you deal in or exchange currency for your customer?"

Even if Gox was outside of those particular regs (until the FinCEN ruling), Mutum Sigillum wasn't.

They accept and send dollars, also Euros and other money.

[notlist3d]

I transferred to Dwolla from Mt. Gox yesterday.... now i see no bit coin and no money transferred from all this.

Any idea if i will ever see what was being transferred again?

[myrkul]

I transferred to Dwolla from Mt. Gox yesterday.... now i see no bit coin and no money transferred from all this.

Any idea if i will ever see what was being transferred again?

Most likely. Look for headlines that start: "DHS buys new..."

[not.you]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/05/15/the-feds-are-cracking-down-on-mt-gox-not-on-bitcoin/

They came for MTGox, but I was not MTGox, so I did not speak up...

(That said, dude knowingly lied on his application to the bank, this is a "clean" bust. Still, a bad sign.)

Well technically he check the "no" box in 2011 and it was only a couple months ago that the government clarified that they consider cryptocurrency to be money so he did not knowingly lie on the application.

The government always considered Dollars to be money. And Mutum Sigillum transmits money to and from MTGox and it's various customers. It exists solely for the purpose of transmitting money. One of the questions he answered no to was:
"Does your business accept funds from customers and send the funds based on customers' instructions (Money Transmitter)?"
The other was "Do you deal in or exchange currency for your customer?"

Even if Gox was outside of those particular regs (until the FinCEN ruling), Mutum Sigillum wasn't.

They accept and send dollars, also Euros and other money.

I have a bank account setup specifically for sending and receiving money from my paypal account.  I use my paypal account to buy and sell stuff online all the time and I send money back and forth from paypal to my bank account.  I also transfer money from that bank account to my other bank accounts.  Does that mean I am a money transmitter?  They setup a bank account to use with their dwolla account. The only difference I can see is that on the end of those dwolla transfers they are buying or selling bitcoins to people as opposed to real world goods as I do.

My read is that after the announcement a few months ago they should have starting playing ball with FinCEN.  They apparently didn't and now they are paying the price.  What he did or did not say when he opened the account will probably mean absolutely nothing when all of the legal dust clears,

[mmortal03]

The real panic sells haven't even started.

Not gonna happen. If their USD accounts get frozen, nobody wants to hold USD. Expect buy-ins and transfer to other exchanges instead.

People keep saying this. I don't know about that. Bank runs happen for a reason. Most people have not picked up on the possible ramifications of this yet. But many understand what happens to the price of bitcoin it something serious happens to Gox.

Man, I had just recently been going over my fears about this... but I thought it was a ways away.

The price on other exchanges will drop as people transfer their bitcoins that they've just bought on Mt. Gox over to the other exchanges and then sell them there for dollars.

[myrkul]

I have a bank account setup specifically for sending and receiving money from my paypal account.  I use my paypal account to buy and sell stuff online all the time and I send money back and forth from paypal to my bank account.  I also transfer money from that bank account to my other bank accounts.  Does that mean I am a money transmitter? 

No, but Paypal is.

They setup a bank account to use with their dwolla account.

They set up a company to handle their money transfers in the US. That company then opened a bank account, and answered that they were not a money transmitter. It doesn't get clearer than that.

Play by the rules, or don't. This half shit is what gets people in trouble.

[samson]

The real panic sells haven't even started.

Not gonna happen. If their USD accounts get frozen, nobody wants to hold USD. Expect buy-ins and transfer to other exchanges instead.

People keep saying this. I don't know about that. Bank runs happen for a reason. Most people have not picked up on the possible ramifications of this yet. But many understand what happens to the price of bitcoin it something serious happens to Gox.

Man, I had just recently been going over my fears about this... but I thought it was a ways away.

The price on other exchanges will drop as people transfer their bitcoins that they've just bought on Mt. Gox over to the other exchanges and then sell them there for dollars.

Do you realise that just one bank account in the USA has been closed. An account that was used to service Dwolla customers.

MtGox banks with a Japanese bank and that's where the wire transfers come from so all your USD is in Japan and not the US.

[mmortal03]

The real panic sells haven't even started.

Not gonna happen. If their USD accounts get frozen, nobody wants to hold USD. Expect buy-ins and transfer to other exchanges instead.

People keep saying this. I don't know about that. Bank runs happen for a reason. Most people have not picked up on the possible ramifications of this yet. But many understand what happens to the price of bitcoin it something serious happens to Gox.

Man, I had just recently been going over my fears about this... but I thought it was a ways away.

The price on other exchanges will drop as people transfer their bitcoins that they've just bought on Mt. Gox over to the other exchanges and then sell them there for dollars.

Do you realise that just one bank account in the USA has been closed. An account that was used to service Dwolla customers.

MtGox banks with a Japanese bank and that's where the wire transfers come from so all your USD is in Japan and not the US.

I'm with you on that. I'm not saying a run IS going to occur, but that if a run on Mt Gox does occur, where people are buying bitcoins with their dollars and then transferring them out to their personal wallets, people are saying that the price there will go higher, which it would, but then if those people try to get back into dollars elsewhere, it would drop the price on those exchanges.

[dave111223]

I can't believe how stupid Mt Gox could be...

Opening up bank accounts and businesses in the US for the sole purpose of transferring money in and out...it's madness that they didn't think that wouldn't be a problem.

Hopefully they didn't leave too much funds in their US bank/Dwolla account when it was seized.  It would be interesting who takes the hit for this missing money...customers who were in the transfer process I guess.

I had always assumed they were fully based on Japan...why on earth did they decide to setup in the US too?  Greed I guess as they wanted to get US customers without forcing US customers to do wire transfers...

If I was Mark and I had actually signed those papers in the US about not being a money transmitter...I'd be shitting myself no joke.

Mark really showed his naivety prior to the Coinlab deal when he repeated slapped down remarks that going in the US would be a hornets nest (turns out he was already sneaking in the backdoor too).

[joesmoe2012]

I can't believe how stupid Mt Gox could be...

Opening up bank accounts and businesses in the US for the sole purpose of transferring money in and out...it's madness that they didn't think that wouldn't be a problem.

Hopefully they didn't leave too much funds in their US bank/Dwolla account when it was seized.  It would be interesting who takes the hit for this missing money...customers who were in the transfer process I guess.

I had always assumed they were fully based on Japan...why on earth did they decide to setup in the US too?  Greed I guess as they wanted to get US customers without forcing US customers to do wire transfers...

If I was Mark and I had actually signed those papers in the US about not being a money transmitter...I'd be shitting myself no joke.

Remember, the US govt has a way of blowing things out of proportion. Usuaully when they files things in court they make them sound far more out of line than they really are.

I'm sure that mtgox had legal counsel present when signing anything setting up a bank account, and that's how they were specifically advised. I'm not sure why its the way they did it, but I'm sure they had a reason.

[dave111223]

Remember, the US govt has a way of blowing things out of proportion. Usuaully when they files things in court they make them sound far more out of line than they really are.

I'm sure that mtgox had legal counsel present when signing anything setting up a bank account, and that's how they were specifically advised. I'm not sure why its the way they did it, but I'm sure they had a reason.

Nevermind what was signed, or what paperwork etc...the point is Mt Gox had a US company setup (http://www.mutumsigillum.com/) which from their website appears to be claiming to offer hosting services etc...when infact probably 100% of their business is transferring money to Mt gox....

That is madness that you think you can do that (in the USA)...

[myrkul]

I'm sure that mtgox had legal counsel present when signing anything setting up a bank account, and that's how they were specifically advised. I'm not sure why its the way they did it, but I'm sure they had a reason.

Riiiight... I'm sure they did. Look at the history of MTGox, and ask yourself if Mark has the forethought to have had legal counsel there.

[notme]

Remember, the US govt has a way of blowing things out of proportion. Usuaully when they files things in court they make them sound far more out of line than they really are.

I'm sure that mtgox had legal counsel present when signing anything setting up a bank account, and that's how they were specifically advised. I'm not sure why its the way they did it, but I'm sure they had a reason.

Nevermind what was signed, or what paperwork etc...the point is Mt Gox had a US company setup (http://www.mutumsigillum.com/) which from their website appears to be claiming to offer hosting services etc...when infact probably 100% of their business is transferring money to Mt gox....

That is madness that you think you can do that (in the USA)...

Mutum Sigillum and it's subsidiary Kalyhost has been around longer than Mark has owned MtGox.  Hosting was previously their primary business.

[joesmoe2012]

Remember, the US govt has a way of blowing things out of proportion. Usuaully when they files things in court they make them sound far more out of line than they really are.

I'm sure that mtgox had legal counsel present when signing anything setting up a bank account, and that's how they were specifically advised. I'm not sure why its the way they did it, but I'm sure they had a reason.

Nevermind what was signed, or what paperwork etc...the point is Mt Gox had a US company setup (http://www.mutumsigillum.com/) which from their website appears to be claiming to offer hosting services etc...when infact probably 100% of their business is transferring money to Mt gox....

That is madness that you think you can do that (in the USA)...

Mutum Sigillum and it's subsidiary Kalyhost has been around longer than Mark has owned MtGox.  Hosting was previously their primary business.

Wow, really? You certainly could never tell.

Unfortunately it seems they aren't much better at the exchange business than they were the ghosting business.

[myrkul]

I'll just leave this here...

http://evewho.com/pilot/MagicalTux