Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: machina on August 26, 2012, 04:09 am
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It appears that Mt.Gox has become a large enough player in the BTC exchange market that they became 'institutionalized' and bowed to foreign pressures for "anti-money laundering" (AML) regulation. Which would be OK if they were serious about this. However, they are not. Mt. Gox has arbitrarily and unilaterally blocked me from accessing approximately $1,000 worth of my BTC's held by them.
Case in point: I opened an account there to use to transfer some e-currencies. I accessed the site through a paid-for VPN, never once through Tor, which is against their ToS. I accessed the site on several occasions before putting any currencies into my account, and received no communications regarding a flagging of my account, the need for verification of my account, or anything other than that I could interface with their website freely and accessibly.
Accordingly, I deposited some currencies gradually and processed exchanges through their platform. (Learned mistake) I did not first verify their reputation by withdrawing an initial small amount. Accordingly, a balance built up in my account. Finally, I did want to withdraw, and so I entered information to process a withdrawal, well under their stated amounts that would trigger verification procedures.
Suddenly, my account is more suspect than a Jew at a Nazi rally. They accused me of having multiple accounts, presumably because my IP had been used by someone else to create an account. Suddenly, I too am required to submit verification procedures, despite having only one account and requesting a withdrawal well within their ToS for unverified accounts. Suddenly, Mt. Gox "MUST abide by the law" and "verify all accounts to be in accordance with AML."
Is that right Mt. Gox? Well you don't seem to be asking for verification when you allow people to put money INTO your platform. You don't seem to practice Know Your Customer procedures as practiced in the USA. You don't ask questions about where the money is coming from.... These are all parts of good AML practice.
So, long story short... Market forces brought Mt.Gox to the top. And now, they've turned on the portion of their customer base that believes BitCoin should be as it was made for - an ANONYMOUS and FREELY trade-able digital currency. May their reputation be spread, and may market forces bring them to the bottom.
Fuck you Mt. Gox, for poisoning the spirit of what BTC is.
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More generally than MtGox, that's the favorite trick of a lot of new on the block banks, to be delighted to accept black market money, and then to be ultra leery of giving it back out again. If you study prisoner's dilemma (game theory), you'll say the bank has played a "Defect" move. The best policy in most cases is an algorithm called Tit-for-Tat. This is where you just stop Cooperating with them. i.e. stop doing business there and move it to elsewhere.
It sucks that your money is under lock and key. However this is a valuable lesson to you :
1. Diversify. The guys at Intersango didn't do this either, they relied on 1 provider to send them cash as electronic credit, MetroBank and they lost a lot more than you because of it.
2. Don't use the Tor network with MtGox. (I know you know this, just pointing it out to the others because it's probably the most common reason for account freezing), you should route your Tor traffic via an ip address you know wouldn't be used by anybody else. It is seriously bad luck that somebody else was using your VPN for MtGox.
It's hilarious actually that reusing an ip address leads to an account being frozen, you surely can't scale that up without interruptions in service for everybody, I mean ipv4 space is limited and ISPs have to continually recycle the same old ip addresses with DHCP they assign to you.
It has frequently come to my attention that English and Japanese share a common characteristic, not all, but many of them. That's that they think of running a business as essentially adhering to a series of fixed rules. They are in the habit of continually kowtowing to authority, even when completely unnecessary. I attribute this, literally, to their countries becoming more socialist over time. Yes, I consider that a character flaw. I think their ancestors would be abhorred by this generations weak minds. Pro statist socialists are some of the most stupid people I have ever meet in my life, it would be a pleasure to purge them from the earth. It is difficult to adhere to a principal like NAP when faced with such thinking. /pinochet pine
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tldr: MtGox is a piece of shit platform. If you all stop doing business with them, than we can kill their market share stone cold dead. Maybe you can make a thread to encourage people to take a Do Not Use MtGox pledge or something. You could call yourselves the AGoxs or something (sounds like a pokemon!).
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All good points.
I've been both scammed by buyers and sellers while doing commerce among the interwebz (and I don't just mean SR, but all the way back to when eBay was new. Fortunately such cases have been the exception.); but this is the first time I've been seriously scammed by what I presumed was a legitimate intermediary.
...Comes with the territory I suppose! I just wish I could have learned my lesson at a lesser tuition bill :(
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Would you be able to verify your account then withdraw all your bitcoins? If you could do this then maybe switch to another bitcoin provider..
Sorry if this is a stupid suggestion just trying to help :)
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Can you get a friend who's totally crime-free to verify for you? Then you can make the withdrawal and close your account!
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I've never used mtgox. It seems completely pointless when you can send bitcoins directly to a btc address.
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I've never used mtgox. It seems completely pointless when you can send bitcoins directly to a btc address.
But first you have to buy the coins, that's what Mt.Gox is most used for I'm sure. Before I moved on to BitInstant (don't trust Gox myself any more) I used to use it for legitimate trading.
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I've never used mtgox. It seems completely pointless when you can send bitcoins directly to a btc address.
But first you have to buy the coins, that's what Mt.Gox is most used for I'm sure. Before I moved on to BitInstant (don't trust Gox myself any more) I used to use it for legitimate trading.
Yea bitinstant is definitely the way to go.