Topic: [ANN] Changes to AML Policies - Mt.Gox (Read 8307 times)

The transactions for smaller amounts will migrate to one of the many fixed-rate exchanges which is already starting.

We will make this more visible Soon.

By the way, I think the clarifications you have made throughout this thread are important, and should be visible in a more prominent location, such as the OP. Not everyone is going to wade through several pages of discussion.

Ah, I get it. That's good to know.  So don't try to bypass limits by having lots of accounts.

In your case you are safe, however if more than one account is accessed from the same IP this will mostly trigger an AML verification.

You are correct, the Level 1 does not required an apostille. Our first announcement was actually more targeted for Level 2, sorry for the confusion

These limits seem pretty reasonable considering the amounts of money involved. I'll probably never even approach Level 1 myself.

But I do have a question. You state "public shared IP" causing Level 1 identity check. But it's very common for people to have dynamic IPs for their home service. Mine changes roughly every day pretty consistently. But I do have a web server for my business with a Fixed IP that never changes. So in this case I'd be better to use a secure proxy on that server to access MtGox as it would keep my IP consistent and the same. Do you actually capture user IPs that carefully or is a typical user going to be fine accessing from within the same IP block typical of a service provider? IP tracking seems frought with difficulties. I could see checking IPs against known bad lists and maybe Tor nodes as a more useful form of monitoring.

Do I understand correctly that "verified" status does not require an apostille?

The original post in this thread made it seem like the new requirements apply also for "verified", which I think is what most of the negative reaction came from.

For the kind of company that requires "trusted" status, the trouble of getting an apostille is trivial.

Hi everyone.

We’ve had a strong reaction regarding the policy change to our AML verification process. One which we expected and honestly, understand. We would like to clarify a few things regarding this matter and to make sure that everyone is aware of who needs to own a verified account and what does such account offers.

As for today, using Mt.Gox does not require you to own a verified account, and everyone is free to trade with us and exchange Bitcoins within however certain boundaries.

The AML levels we employ are as follows:

1. No verification needed (Level 0)
Being “level 0” has the following limits: A maximum monthly withdrawal of 10,000 USD (or equivalent) capped to a maximum of 1,000 USD per 24 hrs and a 400 BTC withdrawal per 24 hrs without any monthly limit.

“Level 0” is designed for basic users, consumers and Bitcoin enthusiasts where the 10,000 USD monthly cap is enough for most needs.

2. Verified Status (Level 1)
Copy of a Valid ID and Proof of residence (Utility bill...)

Being “verified” has the following limits: A maximum monthly withdrawal of 50,000 USD (or equivalent) capped to a maximum of 10,000 USD per 24 hrs and a 4,000 BTC withdrawal per 24 hrs without any monthly limit.

The verified status is designed for active traders and/or small companies.

3. “Trusted” Status (Level 2)
A Notarized and Apostilled copy of a valid photo ID and Proof of residence. Companies are also required to send a notarized copy of their certificate of incorporation/registration, identity & address verification of shareholders entitles to 10% or more in voting rights, company constitution or articles of memorandum and a copy of Trust Deed for the Trust involved as part of shareholders. Please note that all document required in “level 2” must be sent by priority mail.

Being “trusted” has the following limits: A maximum monthly withdrawal of 500,000 USD (or equivalent) capped to a maximum of 100,000 USD per 24 hrs and a 40,000 BTC withdrawal per 24hrs without any monthly limit.

The “trusted” status is designed for day traders, professionals, and companies.

Please note that any suspicious activities can trigger a level 1 AML request from our side, resulting in the blocking transfers temporarily until the owner of the flagged account can prove their identity.

Also please note that using services like TOR or any public networks where more than one user have a shared IP address(Public school, University...) will automatically trigger an level 1 AML request from our side; this is in order to make sure that you are the owner of the account you are trying to access.

Once again, this AML system that has been put in place in order to not only protect Mt.Gox from fraudulent activities but also to ultimately protect you and your assets.

That said, to make everyone’s life easier and to make our services more user friendly, we are actively looking for simpler and less intrusive ways of verifying people’s identity.

The importance of being licensed

The AML requirements that we employ is really just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Mt.Gox being licensed; we are indeed working on being fully licensed in several countries to ensure we can continue to do business. Us being licensed will also offer our customers peace of mind when it comes to us holding funds and personal information.

Finally, we all have a part to play here if we want to see Bitcoin succeed as a viable international medium of exchange.  We are doing our best to balance our responsibilities to the financial authorities, while taking into account the needs of our customers.

This year I had a $10k withdrawal limit and withdrew MtGox USD in multiple transfers.  Because of Dwolla's 25cent fee, they reached me as $9999.75.  Someone will probably look at that and call it a red flag and I should be prepared for questions.

Exactly. Suspicious how?
Just because someone chooses to withdraw slightly below the limit doesn't mean they did anything wrong. It just means they don't want the hassle of having to go thru an expensive and time consuming ID process.

Let's say you have $600 and want to withdraw but the limit is $500. Are you going to pay up to $100 or more plus wait two weeks and go thru an apostille process just so you can do it in one transfer?

Or are you just going to suspiciously withdraw $400 one day and $200 the next?

Right now it looks like you're better to withdraw $60 / day for 10 days and not have some authority jump on you as being "suspicious". Again, suspicious of what? What makes this desire to get your money any different from anyone elses?

I've been paid $2400 for a sale via Paypal and they didn't even blink at me about that.

If you ask me all this AML stuff is simply Wall St. creating an unfair playing field across the world to squash non-Wall St. banking interests. Everyone knows the US Govt is in Wall St.'s back pocket. Goons and Thugs, just with fancy wording!

You didn't get 556j's joke.

Seems we have another case:

This is what I was referring to. If the limit on transactions for reporting to your local tax agency is $10k and you receive some transfers for $9999.99 then that would definitely raise some red flags.

Is a withdrawl slightly below slightly below the limit also suspicious?

So we have one case so far. This is a bit disturbing but at the same time I could see a withdraw slightly below the threshold being viewed as suspicious.

dude, this is exactly what happened to me.

I did just Google it, and its all about DIRECT DEBIT reversal! Do you understand the difference between debetor-initiated transfer an a direct-debit (creditor initiated)?

The "you can just phish bank accounts and transfer away with zero consequences" is complete bullshit - no single bank allows you to make a transfer without a one-time password sent to your mobile phone or hardware token.

If someone did phish your account, the bank will surely not reverse the transfer - think about it - everybody could make a transfer to another bank, pay for something, and the call the bank and claim they where "phished" and get the money back. No, they don't! It doesn't work! And I did read many stories of a similar thing on banking forums in Poland, because many banks allowed, and some still do, to make a transfer in the banks branch by handing a paper-filled form with the transfer and your signature - and people had money from their accounts stolen by having the signature forged and the bank teller not noticing it - and the bank did NOT reverse these transfers - not in a single case! They had to sue the bank, and in some cases the bank claimed - its not our problem - sue the teller if you want! If they could reverse the transfer, they would do it, and not go into such lengthy legal battles with the customer - but they can't, and if they lose the case, the bank would have to refund the customer from the banks own money.


http://www.bzwbk.pl/

But that bank actually charges fees for SEPA (both in/out) to everybody.

But no bank in Poland will actually mind about currency-exchange and lots of transfers. There are lots of currency-exchange private companies (PLN/EUR and etc) doing exchanges through bank accounts in all different banks in Poland. There is even a company http://www.bluecash.pl which has accounts open in 23 polish banks, and provides a service that you transfer money with an internal bank transfer to their account in your bank, and they make a transfer from their account in the bank your recipient is - within 10 minutes - so your transfer arrives in 10 minutes, and not hours/next-day like with normal intra-bank transfer.

And none of these companies has documentation requirements ANYWHERE near the ones of MtGox - none of them requires to send anything on paper, just fill out your data on the web, and off you go! They just warn you that information about transactions above 15000 EUR can be forwarded to a government financial inspector, but nothing more is required to make such transactions.

And even more: two banks in Poland allow you to open accounts completely online, without sending them anything on paper, if you already have an account in some other bank in Poland and send them a transfer from that account - they consider data from the incoming transfer as sufficient identification. And I have an account in one of these banks, and my daily limit for online transfers is 1000000 PLN which is about 250000 EUR.

Every single bank has a reversible policy if the transaction is due to fraud, otherwise you can just phish bank accounts and transfer away with zero consequences. Google debtor SEPA payments reverse, or read up on SEPA fraud.

As for banks dropping you every old school Liberty Reserve exchanger on the talkgold forums had said this has happened to them after they started getting a lot of transfers. European banks don't like ecurrency exchangers and bitcoin is included: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.409957

If that polish company can manage to do it that's great, what bank are they using? Most banks will just dump you unless you start agreeing to paying SEPA fees

LR/Pecunix and their exchangers have survived for years before bitcoin was even a glint in satoshi's eye learn from their mistakes and how their model has worked over time. There's a reason you can't directly buy into LR, Pecunix or Cgold

Source of that information? Did you actually see a single case of this happening?

Any link to SEPA rules/terms&conditions/whatever saying that this can be done?


Never heard of such problems. A lot of financial service companies (peer-to-peer loans, currency exchange, etc) have accounts in Poland, where they receive a gazillion of transfers, and banks don't give a shit about it, never heard of a bank dropping a customer because of it.

Intersango.com SEPA account is in Poland, and isn't that one of the few (only?) Bitcoin exchange account that is there a long time and there has never been a problem with it (dropped/suspended)?

If there is some kind of fraud involved it can be reversed. Same with wire transfers the banks will seek to claw the money back and your bank will just debit -1,000 or whatever out of your account.

It's very hard to get a bank account in Europe where you can receive a lot of incoming/outgoing SEPA. Banks will drop you quickly as it costs them extra money and they don't like doing it. Maybe there's some sort of SEPA payment gateway Gox could use instead of direct payments

SEPA transfers potentially reversible? How did you get that idea?

I have never heard of a single SEPA transfer being reversed, and I do read a lot about financial transactions in Europe, are on many groups and forums, and I would have heard about it if it was the case.

There are no more reversible then mailing a bunch of cash in an envelope to someone by mail.

AFAIK to "reverse" a SEPA you have to sue the recipient claiming you made a mistake, get a court order, and then a debt collector to get the money from the recipients account. That's the closest to "reversing" a SEPA as you can get.

Maybe you heard about SEPA direct debit being reversible, and made wrong conclusions? Direct debit is reversible, but that's a transfer initiated by the receiver - so like MtGox pulling money from your account. A sender-initiated SEPA transfer is not reversible (without suing).

Well, OK, but can you please accept bank statements instead of utility bills?

I am a permanent traveler and don't have any bills/residence, but it doesn't mean that I don't exist!

How can I verify my account?

With a fuel bill from the petrol station or what?

Why would anyone in their right mind give Gox this much personal information when they can't even keep passwords safe?

Big, fat honey pot waiting for the bear to show up ... sounds like he is snuffling around the door, no?

Perfect Money doesn't require this and they move way more $$$ than MtGox. Problem is Gox does business in the US so therefore will get the screws tighter and tighter until every transaction must be reported to the IRS and fingerprints/eye scans/DNA lol.

There's a reason all the digital e-currencies fled the US, and why there are no more exchangers there. Unless you want to end up like the founders of egold register your BTC trading corps offshore like Cgold/Pecunix and let exchangers handle all the KYC/AML nonsense to pay into your system and withdraw through voucher codes.

All the more reason to use off the record trading user 2 user and avoid big exchanges

I'd bet that there's more room for prosecuting people who fake an apostille though and that the penalties are harsher. 

It's kind of ironic that once upon a time you had to pay to obtain fake documents whereas now you cat n fake documents yourself with ease but have to pay to re-authenticate authentic documents (which you've probably paid to obtain).

Any organisation which is bound by AML/CTF/KYC requirements needs ultimately to be able to prove that they took adequate measures to verify the true identities of their users.  The more complex the ways in which people try to fake their identities become, the more onerous the procedures are going to become for verifying when it can't be done face to face with the original documents present.  The verification process itself costs companies money, quite apart from upsetting their customers.  That they are pushing ahead with a verification process which they know is going to lose them a portion of their users suggests that they believe not requiring this level of verification exposes them to potentially greater losses than those that will result from customers going elsewhere.


In some nations, privacy laws protect information held about individuals and there's no way Mt Gox or the other exchanges could legally obtain access to that information except for the individual themselves obtaining it and forwarding it to them.  This is especially true of information which relates to unique government identifiers.

I am just not sure why they think an apostille service is needed.  One way to reduce fraud would be to have the customer send the documents directly to mtgox via mail and not accept scanned documents.  This might cost the customer $30 but the customer would not need the added cost of an apostille. 

The other would be for them to do some minor checking on each one, such as using a drivers license identity verification service.  I admin that these vary by state (in the US) and country (if they exist), but for an international company they will need to have people do this work.  They can charge the customer for this service if necessary though personally I think that is a bad idea. 

In short, verifying an account in a first world country should not cost more then $30 or require me to drive to another city (as it seems like it would in Maryland). 

Just to be perfectly clear, the answers to the questions I asked are not under Settings->Verify, otherwise I would not have asked them.  The issue is that the information on that page is not clear, and not that I have not visited the page.

MtGox should also consider accepting the originals sent to them by courier, agreeing to return them promptly (even if that means the customer must pay the return shipping).  If I weigh the possible outcomes, the odds of losing my documents to MtGox (random guess: 1:50) and having to maybe replace them, are far more favorable than a 100% chance I will eat the cost of the apostille service and all of the courier costs getting that done (which cost almost as much as replacing a passport in the first place).

In the Brtish Commonwealth and Dutch Kingdom you need to visit the ministry of foreign affairs. I believe this is the case for Scandinavian countries.

To state this can be done through a notary is incorrect. Some notaries may provide a service where they will travel on your behalf and expense to foreign affairs.

It's under SETTINGS->VERIFY

What kind of documents should one submit to an apostille service?  I actually called one and asked about this.

I asked if I should send them my passport.  They were like... "No, please send a copy of the passport, because the apostille will be attached to it, and will only be useful if you're sending the original."

I did not ask them if I should send them my electric bill.  I imagine they would say, WTF?

However, it DID sound like they actually confirm the legitimacy of a passport copy with the State Department, a process that would take two business days and cost $90.

Am I on the right track?  Will someone from MtGox Support please clarify what documents, exactly, should be sent to the apostille service?

Oh, please, everybody knows AML has nothing to do with protecting honest people, its main purpose is to help the several IRSes out there by catching those who want to protect their money from taxation.
Unless by "protect you, our honest users" you actually mean "protect us from getting shut down and not being able to provide you any service any more".


Finally, you clearly admit you were forced to do it. Thanks.


I find that a naive hope. Control of the money supply and money flow is not something that "all governments" will abandon easily.
But anyway, thank you for trying, if it actually happens this way it will be great.

Actually they do.
The one time I needed an apostille was when I wanted to open a Swiss bank account.
If I had turned up in person a passport would be fine but to open an account when not in person they required an apostille.

Thank you all for your comments and concerned, there are indeed some very good points that has been raised here, and we will make sure to check all of them to make your life easier. This said, you have to understand that we are all doing this for good reasons and not just to bother you guys (do you think we really like having to check anyone IDs?), and what's going on right now at MtGox regarding our change in AML policies is to protect you, our honest users!

And don't get me wrong here, but what we are going through will be forced upon other exchanges sooner or later regardless of their location with all the financial burden tied around them.

Once again we are aware that some of these changes may not always please everyone, but they are here for the best and for the overall acceptance of Bitcoin as a viable, honest, and trustworthy medium of exchange that all governments, regardless of their political orientation, will understand and respect. We, and here I mean us the Bitcoin enthusiast and community, have to work our way to make this happen, and the only way right now is to comply with some basic rules that are forced upon us on a daily basis to win this battle and then impose our own rules (The Bitcoin Community rules) and change how things will be done in the future.

If unfortunately, I cannot disclose everything, but as we discussed with some of you at CES, we MtGox are working to make things right, and this take time as well as a lot of money and effort, so yes we may appear to be slow on some stuff our rough on others, but we are working for you and the community, not against you.

Spread the word, Spread the Love, Enjoy Bitcoins!

That's why, as I sad before, I don't think this is out of their own initiative.  They probably were forced to require these things.

For a while now verification requires any documents to have a notarized translation if they do not already contain the necessary details in Latin script.

I don't think the new requirements apply retroactively.

Questions:

1. Since when require notarization to get verified? I dont remember i've submitted a notarization.

2. If i have got verified, do i need to submit notarization with apostille ?

It would be much easier if there were a designated agent where you could send your documents.  Somehow I suspect that MtGox sees many more "Photoshop" forgeries than physical ones, and I can't blame them for having an issue with that.  I am admittedly in a biased position though - they've seen my docs, they've met me face to face (CES), and I will probably never have to go through the process ever again.

I suppose they could offer that you send the physical documents to them in Japan in lieu of "apostille".  Likewise, I suppose they wouldn't get too many takers.  However, if what they're asking for really costs that much, then it's on par with just overnighting your crap to MtGox in Japan and then back.

Too bad notaries don't understand cryptography.  Even if they didn't, but offered a service where they scanned and digitally signed Adobe PDF (which requires two factors - a password and a hardware USB signing key) - this would be a no-brainer.  The PKI infrastructure would certify that the notary is legit.

If MtGox had independent but trusted representation in the US, for example, it would make things easier.  Example, a trusted party under contract with MtGox to scan and certify documents and attest to them looking reasonably legit.  I have thrown that out as an idea once upon a time when I was talking about digitally signing PDF.  One could overnight their documents to them, have that party scan and certify them, and send them back - eliminating the international expense, the added risk (customs, etc.). and just the plain risk that MtGox - known to be busy - might not get around to sending them back right away.

I have a cousin that told me last year he got an Illinois ID card under false pretense. He used that ID to get some piece of paper notarized. I'm guessing (here) that he can use that same ID to get an Apostille here in Illinois.

Now, I don't know how he went about getting a fake Illinois ID card, but I now have one, too. Last November, I received two traffic tickets (don't ask, but if I ever find out that woman's name...). In Illinois, if you get two tickets, they take your DL license for bond. You get it back once you go to court on your court date--not before. My bank told be that I needed a photo ID even though they've known me for years. It's their policy. So, to Plano, Illinois, I went to get my first ever state issued photo ID card. This is what they told me I needed. My Social Security Card and two pieces of mail with my current address on them. Luckily, I found two pieces of mail in my truck so that I didn't have to drive back home. Both junk mail. When I used it at my bank for the first time, they looked at it, handed it back to me, and proceeded to finish my transactions without writing any information down from the ID card. I've used it once at another bank, one I've never been to before, to cash a $1,000 check from a client and, they too, did not even bother to write anything down. Just looked at it, looked at me, and handed it back. (that shocked me, too) I now have a legal ID accepted in the state of Illinois and should have no problem going to Chicago and get an Apostille. And either should my cousin.

Now, here's my take. This could all possible be a game played by MtGox. I sure do hope not, for Bitcoin's sake.

That said, I DON'T LIKE PLAYING GAMES!!!


~BRUNO~

Nonsense.  I have NEVER needed to jump through the hoops Mt.Gox is asking for.  Not for bank accounts, not for corporate banking, not for brokerage accounts involving 6 figures.  The worse part isn't the hoops it is the utter stupidity of it.

Mt. Gox requires documents for proof <- no problem with this
Mt. Gox requires documents to be notarized <- well this is kinda stupid but it is minimally invasive
Mt. Gox gets a lot of FAKE DOCUMENTS (not fake notaries but FAKE DOCUMENTS) <- kinda to be expected

Mt. Gox solution is to required harder to locate and more expensive notaries.   

A notary DOESN'T GUARANTEE A DOCUMENT ISN'T FAKE.  That isn't their job. 

While us Bitcoiners are spoilt by the regulation-less environment we live it, we should remember that Bitcoin businesses which connect us to the legacy systems will be pressured to comply with laws. It is probably a good thing that they do, so that Bitcoin can grow faster before the Gov comes in with a vengeance against the currency itself.

Bitcoin operates beyond regulation.
But, those touchpoints of the standard financial system do not.

Don't get mad at Gox specifically for this phenomenon. They will draw the most attention from authorities, and should probably do their best to coddle them whilst we develop...

MTGox, I would like you to tell us how many exceptions you have made to the withdrawal limit rules. I.E. cases which you required ID to withdraw amounts less than specified, or proxy cases as we seem to have come to the conclusion that those can trigger ID requirements.

If there are ANY other cases which you are requiring ID then we have the right to know.

I deposit 350btc sell high, buy low, then withdraw a little less than 400 purposefully to avoid having to deal with ID requirements. Now I can totally see my btc being held hostage on some random day that I need the liquidity, so will I get hit?

If you go to the settings page I saw you cannot connect through TOR or proxies. I did not see this anywhere else but it would be my guess as why some people claim "unknown" triggers. This should be better documented and perhaps even on the main page before you log in. If you were using a proxy for watching online tv in another country and forget to disable it then that could cause it.

This is not true. There are unknown triggers.

Each one of those provisions is tough and combined they become a completely unnecessary burden.  

In the US the service is almost unheard of and when available can cost >$100 per document.  That sucks but when the document needs to be defaced to state Mt. Gox it means this is a one time use.

The worst part is A NOTARY DOESN'T PROVE THE DOCUMENT ISN'T FAKE AND NEITHER DOES AN APOSTILLE.

what
that's non sense

time to meetup locally and exchange cash

SEPA transfers can potentially be reversed. Any time you deal with reversible methods verifying identity reduces risk. It might not be enough, but it's a start. Bitcoin exchanges operate on really small margins. If Mt Gox is defrauded 1000EUR they're going to have to do 100,000EUR to make it up.

I personally feel the new AML Policy is over the top but they can go about it how they choose. I'd assume they're basing it on something or doing it for a good reason.

Jered

If it was only this I wouldn't be so pissed about it. But the SEPA transfers for European users have been "verified members only" for a while now. That is what pisses me off the most.

This is identical to the scenario where mtgox users had their btc stolen when their passwords leaked, and mtgox demanded that they contact the police and demanded some kind of document that their computers have been scanned, "which might be the cause of their loss" or something like that. This happened to my brother and I still feel like crap for telling him to use mtgox. My brother also thinks bitcoin will not succeed simply because its full of crooks (he lost money in both mtgox and mybitcoin... imagine how I feel for being the one to tell him to try bitcoin).

And why would I believe that this isnt an attempt to rob customers of their money? Everyone has heard of people getting their accounts frozen for no reason. Now they even demand you to provide a document which might not even be possible for you to get.

How so? You only need to do AML verification if you want to withdraw more than 400BTC or $1000USD per 24 hours. I would hardly call anyone exceeding this a small or casual user.

Another reason you might need to verify is if you connect through a proxy or the TOR network which you would probably only be doing if you were up to no good. At first I wondered what was going on here but the more I look into it the more of a non issue it is. Amounts over this could very well be used for money laundering.


With all this MTGox needs to get their stuff together! That api charting problem and system lock up yesterday was completely unacceptable and I have seen no official explanation. This is what would drive users away more so than a verification process that is required for bigger players only. EXPLANATION PLEASE MTGOX!

"In February 2009 the Hague Conference decided to amend the wording on the Apostille to make it clear that no one was checking whether the document being attested was genuine or a fake. The new wording to be used was as follows. "This Apostille only certifies the signature, the capacity of the signer and the seal or stamp it bears. It does not certify the content of the document for which it was issued"


The preceding makes this useless form of signing no more valid than that of a Notary.......................

I hope Gox atleast intends to make a list of what U.S. states and other countries, states, etc would qualify to submit a Notary or have to go to the sec of state for a fancy notary, which is all this is.

I'm fairly certain Notaries here in the state of Florida qualify because they have their signatures registered on file with the state. If not, I can tell you now, I am sure as hell not driving 4 hours to the state capital just to get a friggin fancy notary.....

weird stuff, gox..

This means MtGox is not suitable for small amounts or casual users at all.

Too bad... Now most people will need to get money(bitcoins) the old way, earning them.
Exchange bitcoins for goods and services instead of fiat currency.

I share this opinion, I'd never do such a thing on my own initiative. We can only suppose they were threatened. And, as you say...


This probably means officials are already striking harder on bitcoin exchanges, in comparison to other money-related services. As usual, instead of blatantly banning it, they will try to regulate it to the point of making it barely usable.
Don't forbid bitcoin completely, but make it so hard to use it that most people won't even bother.
Sad.

I'm dead serious about this. There are sites out there that I've used, that handle amounts of money MUCH larger than Mt. Gox, yet they do not ask for 3rd party verifications of this sort. I'm well aware of the issues exchanges have had, especially in Europe, but it has not been stated that this is directly related to that. My point was that this is, especially to European users, absolutely unacceptable. What it will lead to is nobody in Europe using Mt. Gox anymore except people who actively trade and those people will probably go to Bitcoinica once its an independent exchange.

Again this is only a problem temporarily. We will see more startups offering exchange services, even simple ones. Especially after an announcement like this, the demand is there big time. The reason I'm vocal about this is because I like Mt. Gox and I don't have a clue what they're thinking. This is an absolute disaster which will make using Bitcoin that much more inconvenient. I would at least like to know more about why they're doing this, if it were my business I wouldn't do this unless it was absolutely necessary.

In that case there is nothing they can do but see more and more users spread out to smaller services because the number one advantage Mt. Gox has, which is high volume and good depth, is not going to be enough anymore. At least for me it wouldn't if I wasn't already verified. Many European non-verified Mt. Gox users or potential users are looking at this development with angry feelings, money transfers have been inconvenient and expensive already but now they are simply a total pain in the ass.

Mtgox... Is there any other hurdles you wish us to jump for you ?

I have my Commadore 64 here, could I send it to you so that you may upgrade Mtgox.live ?  Its horrendously pathetic..

Bitcoinica independant exchange FTW!

Not sure if serious. Mtgox aren't doing this because they feel like spiting you. All exchanges have been through tons of shit with legal and banking issues. It stands to reason that Mtgox, dealing with volumes orders of magnitudes more than other exchanges, suffer from more fraud and are subject to more scrutiny than the others.

Another exchange may or may not succeed Mtgox, but they will suffer the same problems and will likely come up with similar solutions.

Right now Mt. Gox is the number one exchange and they do not have SEPA withdraws nor do they even allow SEPA deposits without being verified. This new process makes verifications ridiculously hard to send, I've been forced to verify myself on dozens of major gambling sites over the years and I've never seen anything like this.

What is going to happen next is that Mt. Gox is going to lose customers. With Bitcoinica considering to become its own exchange, I think the days of Mt. Gox being the number one exchange are numbered. None of the smaller exchanges have these kinds of requirements, this is taking inconvenience to a whole other level. Unacceptable.

In the short term this is a MAJOR hit especially to European Bitcoiners. I know a lot of people who have already been pissed how difficult money transfers are, after this announcement many are going to say "fuck it". I'm just lucky to already be verified at Mt. Gox but if I weren't, I would also say fuck it.

On the other hand this is a big opportunity for everyone else in Europe who provide services that allow people to buy and sell bitcoins. Mt. Gox is going to get increased competition this year, in fact a hell of a lot more than before. Personally I don't understand why they're doing this because I've never even heard of a site that does this so it's hardly a legal requirement.

I can all but guarantee that any issues or amount of work they currently get from the excess amount of fake documents is going to be small compared to the amount of customers they will lose over this. Reconsider what you're doing.

With all these demands I hope people will finally start using bitcoins instead of exchanging them back to fiat.

Here in Australia - looks like you have to get it from DFAT



So.. .$60 per document??  .. and because of that silly “Notarization for the purpose of verifying on MtGox.com”
Each such apostille can presumably only be used for this one purpose.. Ouch.

These are almost impossible to get in many countries. I tried once here in Thailand years ago. No one had a clue, even lawyers and the local government was even more clueless. I was told to contact the Minstry of Foreign Affairs by the bank that wanted one of these. No one there had any clue and wouldn't lift a finger to find out either. Good luck if you're not in a developed signatory nation with this. It's just another nail in the soon to be coffin of Bitcoin.

How much money can you withdraw before you need to go thru this hassle?

AML = anti money laundering.
The view wikipedia, just press ESCAPE when the page is loading, before the javascript runs.

This one is quite handy now.

http://dumps.wikimedia.org/

Due to a increased amount of forged documents being received by our AML department, we will be adding extra provisions to our AML requirements starting immediately(*).
Going forward:

• Your notarization must include the wording “Notarization for the purpose of verifying on MtGox.com”
• Notarization alone will not suffice; we need an Apostille. Notaries can do this in most countries (please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostille_convention)

Please be advised that documents received without the above may not be accepted as valid account approval documentation.

Thank you for your cooperation.

The Mt.Gox Team

(*) : In practice we're going to give 1-2 days leeway (based on the date of notarization).