Topic: Bitcoin-Central, first exchange licensed to operate with a bank. This is HUGE - page 25. (Read 191876 times)

We'll see when most large exchanges and >51% of the commercial miners "partner" with the banks and their government regulators in their respective countries

And further shows the center of BTC gravity is EU not US based. 

  Nothing has been "bought out by the current banking system."  To even suggest that Bitcoin can be bought out betrays a gross misunderstanding of how it operates.

This French exchange, to the extent that it has partnered with a banking institution (again, not the same as being "bought out") has simply given you one more option in the manner by which you utilize Bitcoin. No options have been taken from you, only given to you.

And as I said before, integration with the traditional financial world is A) inevitable, B) important, and C) not something to be feared.
...
By this point, Bitcoin will have won, and we can all open a bottle of champagne (paid for with BTC) and celebrate, because the fiat system will have  collapsed.
We should be encouraging integration wherever possible, and indeed that is what I spend much of my days trying to accomplish (90% of what BitInstant does is build these integrations).

So, to recap:

• Not a bank.  Not a PSP.  "Partnered with a PSP."
• Bitcoins still not regulated.  Services that hold and transmit fiat money for others regulated.  Just as before.
• Bitcoins not insured.
• Still supporting US and UK users, only now without any USD/GBP exchange.

Ironically, your first act after becoming "licensed" is to make a public announcement insinuating that you are a "bank" and that Bitcoins are regulated and insured.  None of which, apparently, is true.

What marvelous value licensing thus brings to the Bitcoin community!  The value of marketing bullshit under color of law!

Of course, as demonstrated by this thread, none of this makes the least bit of difference to the uncritical legalists in the Bitcoin community.  All you have to do to gain their unwavering trust and support, apparently, is to say magical words like "regulated," "legal," "institution," "funds," and "insured" enough times to cause their higher faculties to shut down due to authoritative goodness overload, and they begin signing up for your service and handing over all their Bitcoins.

Ah well, regardless, good luck in whatever it is you are attempting to accomplish, I suppose.  Perhaps it will provide some value to someone.

The second way is far nastier and more insidious. They are planning to impose a recursive "passthru" 30% withholding tax. That means if you do business with the USA you must follow US law and if you don't, your US assets will be taxed at 30% (essentially bankrupting you or making you uncompetitive). But any business that comes into line because of that must also impose the 30% tax on any other financial institution they deal with, even if that institution does not interact with the US in any way shape or form! Because the financial system is a fully connected graph, this essentially means that US law spreads through it like an infection and eventually every financial institution will be forced to comply or face crippling sanctions from other financial institutions they interact with. This happens even in cases where US law conflicts with local law.

Dave, as you're the one exposed to this stuff, please make super sure you have fully researched this topic. The US will force you to follow its rules whether you like it or not and the French government will not save you - this is not a paranoid hypothetical but a phenomenon that is already happening. Your best bet is to do what all other financial institutions are doing and deny access to "US persons"  (citizens, residents and people who have held a green card in the last 10 years, iirc). This doesn't exempt you from FATCA but it minimizes the amount of paperwork and reporting to the IRS you'll have to do.

I'm thrilled with this new development in Europe, it's amazing news, and wonderful precedent.

I largely agree, except that the final step isn't tiny and in my opinion won't happen on a global scale until exchange rates stabilize.

So, SEPA sounds like a fast ACH. Most people in the US don't know what ACH is though. If I say to a European customer, "The best method to pay me will be probably making a SEPA transfer; here's my IBAN number.", are they going to know what I am talking about and not be reluctant to do it?

mtgox could open an account with us, but not to store their user's funds. to store their own funds would be OK.

Anyone in Europe (the civilized part) can transfer Euro to you for free or minimal charge.  You can do the same the other way.  SEPA transfers are quite fast.  The regulations say maximum D+1 (banking days), and in my experience same day transfer is quite common if you send early.  D is either the day you issue the transfer, if you do it before an afternoon deadline published by your bank, or the first bank day afterwards.

SEPA bank transfers are not harmed by weird USAnian regulations which forbid you to send money where you want (e.g. to companies with relations to Cuba).  Some bank I tried for one day refused to send money to Intersango because of some issues with an USA based intermediary bank, and I guess you must have a lot of these problems if you are trading all over the world.  (I filed a complaint to my national regulators.  The bank called me the day after with a lot of excuses and sent me a compensation because they hadn't specified the restrictions imposed by the intermediate bank in their terms of service.  Tried the bank once due to free international transfers, but I would rather pay a fee than cope with unreliable service.)

Mike Hearn... you're such a smart guy, but everything you say depresses me  

i thought while davout is still reading this thread i might as well make a proposal for a very simple functionality. its really very simple so its probably already planned anyway, but maybe not 

so, what i would like to have is the option to do transfers in all supported currencies directly without converting btc manually first. say, for example i need to pay someone 27€. i just fill out a standard (sepa?) form with the account information and 27 in the value field, select euro as the currency and there is an automatically updating field somewhere saying
"this will deduct 2.554345679 btc form your account (exchange rate 1 : 10.5423408)"
click ok, done. one step, no euro dust on my account, no extra hassle. its basically like euro doesnt really exist or is just a unit like converting feet to meter.

doing it like that without prior manual calculation and conversion would make it really fast and convenient and cool.

I guess you are pretty busy right now I'd like to know how long your KYC verification takes?

If you don't see value here too bad, just don't use us.

I largely agree, except that the final step isn't tiny and in my opinion won't happen until exchange rates stabilize (which will take a long time).

Baby steps. First the merchant accepts a card that converts BTC into dollars. From there it's just a tiny stem for the merchant to use his own service that accepts BTC and converts it into dollars (like BitPay). This would be good for the merchant, because instead of being locked into VISA or MasterCard, the merchant can accept almost-fee-free BTC transactions, and chose from a very large selection of competing exchange services to convert the money for him. After that it's just another tiny step to simple keep BTC.

In a grocery store I pay with dollars coz noone accepts bitcoins. In 20 years the situation will be the same. Because some guys made a bridge between dollars and bitcoins. Because they hid a wallet with coins in a bank vault and gave ppl paper money. Because they made Bitcoin an instrument to store wealth.