Hi there,
I am in Canada and have account with Virtex. Not very satisfied with them, mostly because of high trading fees so for last 2 weeks I am trying to open account with Bitstamp. They proved to be major pain in the ass. I already sent them scans of all kinds of documents proving that I am who I am and live at address I live at. In Canada there are only 2 possible photo IDs, passport and driver's license where only driver's license shows black on white correct and latest address.
Not good enough for Bitstamp. They want something else and I have impression that even they are not clear with what they want because when I send them my credit card statements, bank statements again it's not good enough. WTF?
Anyway this opens new can of worms; I want to send my hard cash to people who don't want to be found,
I am stupid or what? Google searches reveal scam city practices your mom told you to avoid at all costs:
They are based in Slovenia (EU) but there is no address or phone number. Then they are based out of UK. People found address to be simple forwarding address. Phone number is nowhere on the site. You can communicate with them only through on-line forms. Of course, only clear thing posted there is where to send money to, everything else is obscured. Obviously those people don't want to be found and contacted. They are hiding something and yet handling millions of dollars of other people's money.
Reminds me of Flexcoin from Alberta, Canada that recently went belly up. Only then it was found that it's single guy running it almost literally from garage, having PO box for "company address", "exchange" running software was somebody's trial and reject ... and more. Why things like that have to surface only after people lose all their bitcoins or cash? I am sure now some people will jump to defend Bitstamp but you tell me what kind of company, even in developing world does not have physical address (that you can actually walk into), telephone number (that you can actually call and get person to answer and talk to you), published e-mail address (that actually gets monitored and answered), corporate or bank structure (that is actually present and functioning)?
Last picture that comes to mind is US Mt. Gox crook walking in Tokyo as free man, holding coffee cup and laughing at US reporters