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Mt. Gox will happily accept any amount of real money you wish to send them, as well as any amount of BitCoins.... They will also be happy to allow you to withdraw BitCoins. However, if you attempt to withdraw real money, even if you have gone through the process of 'validating' both yourself and your bank, they will refuse to honor that request.
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Maybe, maybe not. Might be worth keeping an eye on this thread:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/beware-of-mt-gox-cant-get-bitcoin-out-now-without-photo-id-313343and scanning for recent complaints.
I think it is fair to say that sometimes Mt. Gox will fuck with people who they believe (often correctly) are criminals of some sort. It could be that the person or persons victimized by this policy are a minority. OTOH, another similar thread indicates that a similar policy went into place at Bitstamp the other day, so if this is true and widespread, the two largest exchanges are now holding customers
BTC hostage using an identity theft kit as the ransom. I am just about 99% sure that the individual who pitched a bitch about it on Bitstamp is 100% non-criminal.
Caution is advised. If this requirement for high quality identity docs for
any withdrawals of any type is now SOP, and if the exchanges doing this are allowing any inflow of value without first 'verifying', then that is IMO simply setting the table for extortion. None of these jack-ass exchanges have ever been clear about their policies in their FAQs, and I've studies them extensively because I value my identity documents very highly and identity theft would be an expensive hassle to me. Plus these flakey fucking exchanges get hacked and lose data every other day it seems. Probably every day and they don't even know it.
- edit:
Not to be so lazy, here is the similar complaint about Bitstamp. Or one of them:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/solved-how-to-get-btc-out-of-a-bitstamp-account-without-verifying-309270It's especially droll that these guys used Facebook as some sort of a supposed communications channel and didn't send e-mail about this hardly trivial change. Facebook? In Bitcoin-land?!? I would not touch Facebook with a 10 foot pole, and a fair number of my geeky and privacy conscious friends do not either.