DHS Shuts Down Dwolla Payments To and From Mt. Gox 302
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from BetaBeat:
"The Department of Homeland Security appears to have shut down the ability to use Dwolla, a mobile payment service, to withdraw and deposit money into Mt. Gox, a Bitcoin trading platform. ... A representative for Dwolla told Betabeat that the company is 'not party' to this matter and encourages those with questions to reach out to Mt. Gox or the DHS. 'The Department of Homeland Security and U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland issued a 'Seizure Warrant' for the funds associated with Mutum Sigillium's Dwolla account (a.k.a. Mt. Gox),' he said. 'In light of the court order, procured by the Department of Homeland Security, Dwolla has ceased all account activities associated with Dwolla services for Mutum Sigillum while Dwolla's holding partner transferred Mutum Sigillium's balance, per the warrant.'"
Re:It's started... (Score:5, Informative)
Flash-news for you, there are other currencies apart from the $$....
It's federal, not state (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not a lawyer, but I used to work in a law library, and that's know enough to know that "U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland" is a federal court, not a state one.
Re:It's started... (Score:5, Informative)
In what way does gold have innate value?
In a rare display of insight, yahoo answers actually explains why the whole premise is absurd...
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20120303200416AABp0fx [yahoo.com]
Re:It's started... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's started... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:It's started... (Score:2, Informative)
why do you think Europe were so anti invasion?
Primarily because the leading politicians were pocketing large amounts of cash from Saddam Hussein's government (or did you miss the revelations about how much money various European politicians were discovered to have received from that government after its fall?).
Re:It's started... (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to talk about innocents being killed, the current guy is much worse. That, and he himself made the argument that he has the right to hit Americans with drone strikes without due process. Personally I'm happy with the one time that this has been done because that asshole had it coming, but it still sets a bad precedent.
Emphasis Added
More than 92,000 civilian deaths in Iraq via armed conflict from 2003-2008 [iraqbodycount.org]
4000 deaths by drone strike since 2004 [thebureaui...igates.com]
Please! Get some facts straight there friend.
Blowing my mod points on this thread as you clearly need correcting.
Yes, other information is required sometimes (Score:5, Informative)
For a small customer like yourself, nothing more than ID is required, which you've supplied. Once you start moving decent amounts of cash, the institution receiving the money is required to know something about the activities the cash came from. It doesn't matter that the currency was BitCoins; the same rules still apply. There are reports to file, records to keep, etc. For instance, a bank is expected to report activities like a hot dog cart suddenly depositing stacks of $20's well out of proportion to a plausible amount of sales.
Not complying with these rules (which is "Financial Institution Regulatory Framework 101") is not going to end well.
Mt. Gox was a shoestring operation that got in WAY over its head. (As in, actual banks have entire departments of employees dedicated to pretending to comply with these kinds of rules, warehouses (or tape libraries) full of documents stored away, etc.)
Re:It's started... (Score:2, Informative)
If you're going to compare BTC to MMO currencies, don't forget Linden Dollars. Those are still kicking somehow.
They're shutting down the exchanges on those, too:
http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2013/05/lindens-no-outside-currency-trading/ [hypergridbusiness.com]
http://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2013/05/currency-venues-fight-for-survival/ [hypergridbusiness.com]
Of course, Secondlife still has it's own exchange which can convert into dollars; but will probably be monitored up the wazoo if it continues to exist.
Posting anonymously because I need to get a first life, not karma.
Mt.Gox initial response (Score:5, Informative)
"MtGox has read on the Internet that the United States Department of Homeland Security had a court order and/or warrant issued from the United States District Court in Maryland which it served upon the Dwolla mobile payment service with respect to accounts used for trading with MtGox. MtGox takes this information seriously. However, as of this time MtGox has not been provided with a copy of the court order and/or warrant and does not know its scope and/or the reasons for its issuance. MtGox is investigating and will provide further reports when additional information becomes known.
Regards
Mt.Gox Co. Ltd Team."
https://mtgox.com/press_release_20130515.html [mtgox.com]
Re:It's started... (Score:4, Informative)
You make is sound like unregulated gambling was a good thing. Only an idiot would bet at an unregulated house.
While not all, a good number of the offshore houses WERE regulated in their respective countries. It was just the US government not liking that others were getting a slice of pie and they were going hungry.