It seems that a lot of people see us as "EVIL" and the next bad thing to kill or abolish... Well this is "normal" after all, MtGox has been the leading exchange since quite sometimes now and despite having many different new players coming in we are still on top, so yes we understand that to some we can be seen as monopolistic despite the fact that we are just a drop in the Bitcoin Ocean. Mt.Gox is not Bitcoin and will never be, we are just an exchange with a huge volume and more track records that many others today. Today it is us, tomorrow it may be someone else and we live with it, but we are working hard to keep our edge with our Merchant Solution and this new Trusted Vendor program.
Now to make things worse (for us) we have a fully acknowledge Withdrawal problem with Dwolla and by now you must ALL KNOW the reason why, there is also a small number of international withdrawal that are affected, but this as well we have been explained many times : most of the time user affected reach a threshold with several withdrawal that can trigger a check from a GVT or a BNK. And when a company with our volume start to send huge amount of money on a daily basis to international costumers we are subject to random checks, like for example at the airport/immigration.
Most people do not understand the situation here and see the problem with their local point of view. Tomorrow Mr Jon Doe could start an exchange in the US, Open an account and deal with US customers. This I can tell you will not raise any problems at first, start to deal with a lot more of money and customers and become the 2nd Tradehill (in Volume) and you will see how things will turn. Now add a layer of "Internationalization" to it and "voila" you do not have one more country or bank to deal with but a lot more and a lot more potential problem and risks.
Tight verification, yeah I know you all hate it, after all Bitcoin was supposed to be the holy grail of anonymity, and actually Bitcoin is pretty close to it IF and ONLY IF you Mine coins and spend coins without ever needing to cash IN/OU these coins. But reality force us, at some point to deal with Banks that are not seeing the overall Bitcoin thingy the same we we see it. We are no different than you, we value our privacy but we do not have a choice. If we do not comply with such basic verification process we will sooner or later loose all our financial partner due to fraud and risk meaning that ultimately you will no longer be able to buy or sell your coin. And this my dear friends ANY Bitcoin company Helping you yo cash IN/OUT have or will have to deal with it at one point, this is JUST a question of time.
Are we perfect? No! But we are working into making things faster and safer for our customers and hope to achieve perfection at some point. So this Trusted Vendor Program is nothing more than a seal (that will be soon be improved) let people know : Yes we know this merchant, they are legit and they gave us all documents to prove us that they are who they are.
+100
My thanks to Mark and the other members of the MtGox team for being patient enough to explain all this (over and over again)
MtGox really is critical and we're lucky that the 'Tux is willing to spend so much time dealing with bankers and lawyers on our behalf.
I'm sure he gets a very fair compensation for his trouble