Mt Gox thinks it's the Fed. Freezes acc based on "tainted" coins. (unlocked now)

[Dusty]

@556j
What's the problem in giving mtgox full id card and everything asking for identification?

If you want to remain anonymous you simply need to never touch an (online) exchange again: use only btcs and acquire them only in exchange of cash, hand to hand.

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[muyuu]

@556j
What's the problem in giving mtgox full id card and everything asking for identification?

If you want to remain anonymous you simply need to never touch an (online) exchange again: use only btcs and acquire them only in exchange of cash, hand to hand.

Not all exchanges are necessarily the same.

MtGox is:

- shady as fuck. Basically a scam, with ridiculous ToS to back whatever they want to come up with.
- a proven incompetent shop.

* not all exchanges want your full details/scanned docs.
* not all exchanges have ToS as ridiculous as MtGox.

[Clipse]

@556j
What's the problem in giving mtgox full id card and everything asking for identification?

If you want to remain anonymous you simply need to never touch an (online) exchange again: use only btcs and acquire them only in exchange of cash, hand to hand.

Not all exchanges are necessarily the same.

MtGox is:

- shady as fuck. Basically a scam, with ridiculous ToS to back whatever they want to come up with.
- a proven incompetent shop.

* not all exchanges want your full details/scanned docs.
* not all exchanges have ToS as ridiculous as MtGox.

Must be a great scam to consistently handle 90%+ of traded bitcoins

[Dusty]

Not all exchanges are necessarily the same.

Fine, just use the exchange that best fits your needs, then.

I suppose every business tends to comply with the regulations: the more they do, the more probability they are still around after some time.

Others can try to be more on the edge and thus better accomodating some users, but that can lead them to be more easily shut down by the autorities if/when some problem arise.

I for one, hope that every kind of exchange will pop up, for every kind of need

[Matthew N. Wright]

Not all exchanges are necessarily the same.

Fine, just use the exchange that best fits your needs, then.

I suppose every business tends to comply with the regulations: the more they do, the more probability they are still around after some time.

Others can try to be more on the edge and thus better accomodating some users, but that can lead them to be more easily shut down by the autorities if/when some problem arise.

I for one, hope that every kind of exchange will pop up, for every kind of need

Agreed.

[muyuu]

Must be a great scam to consistently handle 90%+ of traded bitcoins

It certainly is a boss scam.

[vampire]

While on the topic of verification how MT Gox deals with corporate accounts (specifically US based LLCs and C corps)?

[guruvan]

hmm, used to keep some coins there, i am glad i dont keep coins there anymore, intersango is the best.

While I have heard this many times, and have used Intersango, and understand that they have the respect of well respected members of the community, I have serious concern about
- 1) their repeated discovery of other exchanges security flaws
combined with
- 2) the manner in which they bring this (apparently) to the public attention before alerting their competitor that they have been engaged in #1.

This is one of the first things I saw online about Intersango (in fact it was BTC-e's response to the blog post about their security flaw they sounded pissed). I have seen this at least one other time, very recently.

While this may be completely benevolent, and performed as a service to the community, it raises some red flags. Are they trying to discredit competition? Are they trying to break in? If so, why, and would my information be safe with them?

These are the types of questions that one must ask when one competitor repeatedly discovers security flaws in others. Each repetition makes the behavior more suspect.

As I would like to have an additional exchange that I truly trust, and as there seems to be some relationship (at least in overlapping people) with the GLBSE, I would like to find out the whole story here, so that I might be able to trust Intersango. (because, despite the above, they still seem to have the best rep here!)

[MPOE-PR]

Must be a great scam to consistently handle 90%+ of traded bitcoins

MtGox handles ~80% of all exchange trade. When people buy bitcoins on OTC or in person or so forth that doesn't show up as exchange trade. When people buy bitcoins by renting equipment from miners that doesn't show up as exchange trade. These two markets are each larger than the exchange trade, so MtGox handles maybe 20 to 35% of "traded bitcoins", and this mostly because trading bitcoins for actual items is rare and low ticket yet. Somebody was offering to sell a house for bitcoins, and so this third market is probably going to baloon larger than MtGox's in the near future.

In short no, MtGox is not nearly as important as it makes itself out to be, nor does it have much of a future at the current rate of misbehaviour.

[muyuu]

While this may be completely benevolent, and performed as a service to the community, it raises some red flags. Are they trying to discredit competition? Are they trying to break in? If so, why, and would my information be safe with them?

I can't see the contradiction. Discrediting MtGox is a service to the community at this point.

[muyuu]

Must be a great scam to consistently handle 90%+ of traded bitcoins

MtGox handles ~80% of all exchange trade. When people buy bitcoins on OTC or in person or so forth that doesn't show up as exchange trade. When people buy bitcoins by renting equipment from miners that doesn't show up as exchange trade. These two markets are each larger than the exchange trade, so MtGox handles maybe 20 to 35% of "traded bitcoins", and this mostly because trading bitcoins for actual items is rare and low ticket yet. Somebody was offering to sell a house for bitcoins, and so this third market is probably going to baloon larger than MtGox's in the near future.

In short no, MtGox is not nearly as important as it makes itself out to be, nor does it have much of a future at the current rate of misbehaviour.

Handling ~80% of all exchange trade makes them infrastructural. It would be virtually impossible to introduce a sizeable number of new users at this point without exchanges, and they hold 80% of that capacity.

Also, that 20~35% of BTC trade already is a lot of money. So it is a great scam really.

[guruvan]

While this may be completely benevolent, and performed as a service to the community, it raises some red flags. Are they trying to discredit competition? Are they trying to break in? If so, why, and would my information be safe with them?

I can't see the contradiction. Discrediting MtGox is a service to the community at this point.

I wasn't actually referring to Mt.Gox in that paragraph.

[muyuu]

While this may be completely benevolent, and performed as a service to the community, it raises some red flags. Are they trying to discredit competition? Are they trying to break in? If so, why, and would my information be safe with them?

I can't see the contradiction. Discrediting MtGox is a service to the community at this point.

I wasn't actually referring to Mt.Gox in that paragraph.

What other competition are you talking about?

[Otoh]

following & to see Gox's further info re their policy on this, like how much money do they have locked down atm - either because they believe it may once have been stolen or because people have not provided the ID that Gox requested/demanded & what is going to happen to these funds, how much money have they ever returned to those who claimed it stolen from them - if any, when Gox say that you may have to explain the where, why & from whom you received your coins just how can they prove what you say is true in this regard or not, especially if the Internet person (I've both sent & received large quantities of coins from peeps that I have no clue about in rl - just a forum name) you claim to have received the funds from chooses not to cooperate with the inquisition

[guruvan]

Rather than just taking an opportunity to fail at discrediting Mt.Gox by quoting my post out of context, maybe you could have read it?

[muyuu]

Rather than just taking an opportunity to fail at discrediting Mt.Gox by quoting my post out of context, maybe you could have read it?

I've read it and I don't see what's the point to be honest.

You don't need to trust Intersango to have your ID, they don't have mine. So what's the point again?

Also, didn't you imply that discrediting MtGox was somehow a bad thing?

[556j]

Must be a great scam to consistently handle 90%+ of traded bitcoins

No one said it's a scam the most I said was "dishonest and unethical business practices"

The 'conspiracy' I'm suggesting is gox uses some algorithms that looks for accounts with a high chance to not verify then lock the account "pending review". Either the person sends docs and makes it easier for gox on the regulatory side of things or they forfeit the account. It's a win/win for them. You can decide how crazy I am for thinking that way. There's multiple other posters on reddit and other forums where others have also had their accounts locked like this right after deposits.

I'm saying if you use gox and convert to USD (buy or sell) it's not if they will lock the account, it's only a matter of when. I used gox for months before they locked my account so people saying their unverified account made withdrawals without problems will be back here soon posting about their locked accounts.

[Donald_Norman]

hmm, used to keep some coins there, i am glad i dont keep coins there anymore, intersango is the best.

While I have heard this many times, and have used Intersango, and understand that they have the respect of well respected members of the community, I have serious concern about
- 1) their repeated discovery of other exchanges security flaws
combined with
- 2) the manner in which they bring this (apparently) to the public attention before alerting their competitor that they have been engaged in #1.

This is one of the first things I saw online about Intersango (in fact it was BTC-e's response to the blog post about their security flaw they sounded pissed). I have seen this at least one other time, very recently.

While this may be completely benevolent, and performed as a service to the community, it raises some red flags. Are they trying to discredit competition? Are they trying to break in? If so, why, and would my information be safe with them?

These are the types of questions that one must ask when one competitor repeatedly discovers security flaws in others. Each repetition makes the behavior more suspect.

As I would like to have an additional exchange that I truly trust, and as there seems to be some relationship (at least in overlapping people) with the GLBSE, I would like to find out the whole story here, so that I might be able to trust Intersango. (because, despite the above, they still seem to have the best rep here!)

Most of the things we've discovered we haven't brought to the public's attention. We have become known to be able to investigate and resolve manners much more reliably and have been paid to do penetration tests for other bitcoin exchanges.

For mtgox there were people for over a week specifically complaining that their account was hacked into. After less than 40 seconds of investigating MtGox's security, Patrick Strateman was able to verify a security flaw. We spent hours trying to contact Mark however knowing it might be a week before MtGox replied and that they could potentially have been losing 10s of thousands per hour we made an alert. This almost certainly sparked the price drop exclusive to mtgox as the person exploiting mtgox realized now he or she only had a limited time to deplete as much as they could instead of staying under the radar. We could not have known that there was another mtgox security flaw aside from the CSRF flaw which allowed someone root access.

To this day users like our friend who had their accounts hacked into with the CSRF have not been paid.

In the case of BTC-e someone specifically asked us to check a potential vulnerability. We did attempt to contact BTC-e (just like with mtgox). After being unsuccessful we reported the issue. The person who asked us to investigate was doing so because they had heard from someone else that there was a problem meaning that knowledge of a potential problem was at least wide spread.

We keep security vulnerabilities private unless we feel it is unethical to do so. One exception is when keeping it secret is completely useless as it is already public to the extent that it is likely either already being exploited or someone is actively working on exploiting it.

It is wasn't for Patrick Stratemen alone the value of a Bitcoin would, in my opinion, be at most $2.

[neofutur]

Must be a great scam to consistently handle 90%+ of traded bitcoins

No one said it's a scam the most I said was "dishonest and unethical business practices"

 you mean being a real company trying to respect local laws and world AML laws is "dishonest and unethical business practices" ?

 mtgox need to have bank accounts, to have banks accepting to open ( and not close later ) a bank account for a bitcoin exchange is real hard, and you have to respect many laws, including AML laws , which means requiring Id docs for any suspect account.

[556j]

Must be a great scam to consistently handle 90%+ of traded bitcoins

No one said it's a scam the most I said was "dishonest and unethical business practices"

 you mean being a real company trying to respect local laws and world AML laws is "dishonest and unethical business practices" ?

 mtgox need to have bank accounts, to have banks accepting to open ( and not close later ) a bank account for a bitcoin exchange is real hard, and you have to respect many laws, including AML laws , which means requiring Id docs for any suspect account.

I explained what I mean like 6 times now. They marked my account nothing to do with AML, suspect linode hacked coins is their excuse. I think MtGox is going above and beyond legal requirements for profit. I think they probably have a system to do this with up to hundreds of different variables to maximize profit by locking accounts most likely to not verify after deposits. That's what I think is dishonest and unethical. You can disagree with my opinion there as I have no evidence of that and never have claimed to.