Topic: [ANN] Introducing the Mt.Gox Trusted Vendor Program (Read 3773 times)

I had just assumed this idea had died on the vine. How odd that a relatively unknown site is chosen as a "trusted" vendor over any that Mt. Gox has a professional relationship with.

The design of the trusted vendor logo at btradeaustralia.com instills very little confidence, however.

Any update on this?  I found this thread because I saw a particular business claiming to be a Mt.Gox trusted vendor and I want to verify it.
btradeaustralia.com

Has MtGox really implemented a 'trusted vendor program' without any easy way to confirm?? Bizarre.

All the previous (and old) discussion aside, I cannot find a list of currently trusted vendors available on Mt.Gox Website. The way I see it now, anyone can put a logo on their Website and link to https://mtgox.com/press_release_20120705.html

How does this "improve confidence in Bitcoin businesses for consumers"? A consumer cannot easily verify that a business is verified by Mt.Gox as trusted.

Personally, I do not see Mt Gox as evil and I applaud the work that they are doing in the front lines of where BTC meets national currencies. Furthermore, their non-US legal jurisdiction should serve them well in the future.

Just to be clear, I have never had a problem with Mt. Gox and I use them on a regular basis. I've even corresponded with Mark and others and they've been nothing but professional.

A "trusted by Mt. Gox" emblem, however, seems to me will be as helpful as belonging to the Better Business Bureau: giving the impression of more integrity than what's been earned and easily susceptible to corruption. My first boss once told me that the BBB kept files on businesses with details of customer complaints and your file "conveniently" improved once you joined and began paying dues. I never had an opportunity to verify this, but the point is, the checks and balances necessary to prevent it just aren't there.

+100

I'm sure he gets a very fair compensation for his trouble

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.

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.

This is the essence of the issue, really, for any BTC exchanger or vendor. As bitcoin moves into the area of Tor and 'lex mercatoria' with less dependence on State-invented regulations like AML/KYC or the BSA of 1970, trust without jurisdiction moves to the forefront.

We are reminded that money laundering is an artificial crime totally made up and non-existent about 20-30 years ago. Before it was invented as a term, it was merely called "banking".

http://www.caseyresearch.com/cdd/doug-casey-cashless-societies

I think that some people are reading too much into this based on some weird government paranoia. This has nothing to do with the government, it has to do with Bitcoin users being able to trust that a merchant is a real person or a real company. Bitcoin is the wild west of the Internet after all and trust is what keeps it together. More trust is better.

There are other ways though, for instance the extended validation certificate is a good way of adding trust. Our company doesn't quite afford that yet but we'll make the upgrade at some point.

I don't see how this could be leveraged into monopoly unless people stop trusting any merchant that isn't MtGox verified. If that happens, all it means is we need to do a better job of building out trustworthy markets and dispute mediation protocols. Not a problem.

My point exactly... monopolies are bad, monopolies taking it upon themselves to anoint who is "trusted" and who is not, is even worse. This is a predictable step for an overpowering player in a market to make to cement their control of the market eg: If Business X is willing to play with Gox, then X will become a trusted vendor, regardless of what X might be up to because Gox has to validate their system by having "trusted vendors". Just as I wouldn't trust an auto company to make reasonable standards for the safety of their product, I don't consider the 800 pound gorilla of exchanges deciding who is a good vendor or not by criteria that they and they alone set.

And that's before we even get to the AML/KYC issues. Anyone who has had legal or business dealings in Japan can speak to the challenges if government decides they want to access your data/customer base/transaction histories, and Mt Gox is based where? There you go. They have no choice but to lay down and play nice if a single ministry so much as looks at then sideways, no court orders, no due process and no particular reason required.

I don't believe Mt. Gox said anywhere that they will share verification details. All they are doing is vouching for vendors who have gone through their verification process, giving them permission to use a logo that basically says "Mt. Gox vouches for us." As LoupGaroux point out, this opens the door to all manner of shady practices. It doesn't matter if Mt. Gox succumbs to the temptation to use their position for unethical dealings or not, the opportunity for it exists.

Another good step in the right direction would be to actually pay people the funds they withdrew. 

AurumXChange and Bitinstant have had 'Trusted Vendor' status for a few months now.

The only difference is now I can put a MtGox Logo on my website?

Ummm how exactly do these two compare? The way I read it they're just saying that they'll share these verification details with the public so peeps can know that the person on the other end is who he/she say she is. That way you don't have to run around too much knocking on wrong doors with a bat sticking up over your shoulder, while trying to collect if you've been ripped off. All this is going to do is make scamming harder, or not?

Will there be an other way to benefit form the trusted vendor program? We do a lot of trading trough mtgox, but we don't use the mtgox payment services. Maybe provide a list on which we could refer to?

An equally useful approach would be to put General Motors in charge of automobile safety standards. I expect we will soon see accelerated processing for "trusted" vendors and their customers. This is one of those sad moments when you realize your child is maturing and turning out to be just as evil and stupid as his parents.

This is a much needed step in the right direction.

 I have no issue with a certification or verification program at all. Im also sure that in a free market mt gox will have competitors in the rating and verification of sites. I hope an impartial entity that also verifies and rates Mt Gox themselves comes about soon.

AML/KYC is often associated with the company sending financial information to the government on the activities of their client. However, verification is different.

Exactly


In the context of this solely being used to verify that people are who they say they are where exactly does the government part come into this?

I think this is a good step forward, so thanks to MtGox for effectively donating to the community the ID verification work they are doing.

The KYC requirements boil down to establishing a difficult-to-forge proof of identity. Is it really difficult to forge? I don't know, but it's better than nothing. The SSL Extended Verification certificate system is another example of such a scheme and EV SSL is certainly useful for Bitcoin merchants and companies to deploy (it gives you the green company name in the URL bar).

Erik is correct that that being identified does not imply the merchant will deliver on a transaction. I assume MtGox would not allow a company that repeatedly got bad reviews from customers to display the logo (I mean, linked to an entry on their website, obviously anyone can display a logo), but the second requirement to "have a minimum level of trust" is also a quite vague.

Whilst this program is a useful start, longer term the right solution is a proper implementation of low-trust dispute mediation protocols. A dispute mediator could intervene on a transaction-by-transaction level, raising your trust in a given trade, without them needing to hold the coins (making them a tempting target for hacking).

Note that MtGox KYC federation and low-trust dispute mediation are complementary: dispute mediators operate in a market, but some may well require that the identities of companies for which they mediate have been verified, as a way to help them satisfactorily resolve disputes.

I think Mt Gox should send us their government issued ID just so we can be sure we trust them

I am not sure if you understand the concept of this program. We are not asking ANYONE to spy or send us Client's data or whatever. We at Mt.Gox have a very strict AML/KYC system that help us to get an accurate information of the merchants and being sure that they are who they say they are and not a virtual company with no one behind.

While the system could be improve and we will work on improving it, this is a first step, we hope in the future to make it better for both side. What we want is that people start shopping without wondering if the store they are visiting is real or not...

+1

Hear, hear!

I fully support and encourage any voluntary certification program that establishes the identity, location, reputation, and trustworthiness of a specific vendor.

However, I oppose any certification program that establishes AML or KYC compliance... these are statist standards that have nothing to do with respectability nor trustworthiness of the vendor (and nothing to do with protecting customers). They have everything to do with obedience to government, and breaching privacy between two voluntarily contracting parties.

To use Coinabul as the example here: I want them to provide the goods they promise. I do not want them to spy on customers and report that information to governments wishing to steal property.

So Gox - you get a +1 for creating a certification program, but -1 for lumping AML/KYC nonsense into that certification.

It's good to see my idea for the UABB is finally happening. The community didn't take it too fondly when I presented it 11 months ago, but I guess all the scamming finally got them to change their mind. It's kind of like 9/11 making everyone not want their freedoms anymore. Maybe Bitcoin really is the entire world's economic and political history on fast forward.

I dropped the UABB idea after it was argued excessively that anything to do with the BBB model of "guaranteeing" trust is a failure. I have sense come to grips with this and think the UABB was at least partially a bad idea (the ratings system wasn't, and the OTC borrows a lot from that as well).


EDIT:


Shut up Atlas.

This of course means you need to trust Mt Gox first....

We're excited for this opportunity and the program as a whole!

Thanks,
-Jon

https://mtgox.com/press_release_20120705.html

TOKYO - JAPAN - July 5, 2012 - Mt.Gox has officially accepted Coinabul, LLC (Coinabul.com) as the first "Trusted Vendor" in the new Mt.Gox Trusted Vendors Program. This program will identify trusted merchants and websites in the Bitcoin community and is intended to usher in a new age of confidence and security for Bitcoin consumers.

What is the Trusted Vendor Program?
There has always been an issue for the Bitcoin consumer: Trust. Today, Mt.Gox is tackling the problem by creating the Trusted Vendor Program.
The Trusted Vendor Program is designed to improve confidence in Bitcoin businesses for consumers. It guarantees that the business in question is a legitimate entity which has complied with all of Mt.Gox's Anti-Money Laundering and Know Your Customer requirements.

How the Trusted Vendor Program works?
The Trusted Vendor Program is entirely voluntary and free of membership fees. However, vendors and merchants may face expulsion from the program if they do not meet the standards listed below. Also please note that only companies can apply to the Trusted Vendor program.

• The first step in becoming a "Trusted Vendor" is to obtain a "Trusted" account by providing the Mt.Gox Legal Affairs & Compliance Division the appropriate documents. The list of needed document can be found here on our Mt.Gox Support page: https:// support.mtgox.com/entries/20920158-aml-policies
• A minimum level of community trust must be maintained within the wider community. One example for doing this is by merchants ensuring they keep a high rating on BTC-OTC.
• Once approved as a Trusted Vendor, the Mt.Gox payment page will automatically display an Mt.Gox Trusted Vendor Program Logo and a Trusted Vendor Program Logo will be made available for use elsewhere on the merchant's website pages.

How to Apply to the Trusted Vendor Program?
Vendors wishing to be entered into the program may send their company information to [email protected]

Regards
Mt.Gox Co. Ltd Team.

Media Contacts
[email protected]