If a bank grunts at them they can point to the two thousand pages of questions and documents from each customer plus the photographs of their urethras and colons that they forced them into taking.
Even though I'm being buttfucked by Bitstamp at the moment I managed a cathartic laugh at that. Lol.
I don't care if it's crypto and therefore scary, if I can run a few million dollars through a stock trading company with nothing other than 1 piece of ID and 1 proof of address, plus they will have an office I can burn down if they attempt to fuck me, then no way will a bunch of creeps in hiding get any more than that out of me.
EXACTLY. [*If I had a few million dollars] I could do the same, just ID and proof of address. And indeed, crucially, if they at any point even attempt to fuck me, a stockbroker has a physical address that you can go to where you can seek answers accompanied by law enforcement if need be, plus a very serious regulator, often FDIC or equivalent coverage for deposits. The fact that
no one knows where Bitstamp is hiding, with all your most sensitive personal information, is hypocritical, cowardly and downright disturbing.
My hunch is that they know if they revealed their location, they would probably not be safe. I don't think any bunch of people would, who freeze tens/hundreds of millions of dollars of assets belonging to other people. If they were operating legally, and customers weren't being robbed, I don't think there would be any need to hide behind empty mailboxes as registered addresses. Bitstamp is clearly avoiding the shitstorm that would come their way if their true location was found. They also have the funds to move so even if one location was found then it would be like a game of cat and mouse.
EDIT: It seems a few of these are being made public every week:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitstamp/comments/cxhh7c/usd_deposit_hold_at_bitstamp_and_withdrawal_fees/As they become more strict, Bitstamp is in danger of its customers turning against them if they do this to enough people. Soon it will develop a reputation for holding funds hostage and when that becomes common knowledge, no one will want to risk any kind of deposit there.