So they got a couple of the questions wrong on one of the thousand documents they had to fill out for compliance with the US government. Big deal. Anybody else would have to just resubmit the forms at worst and nothing would come of it. Anyway, maybe ripple or some other decentralized, peer-to-peer based exchange can solve this problem.
Actually, technically Mark might have filled it out correctly.
If under US regulations Bitcoins are treated as commodities, it is not a money transmitting activity. It is simply a purchase of a digital good, just like buying mp3s.
So that's the first problem based on definition of what Bitcoins are.
So if they go ahead with this, it is an implicit acknowledgement that Bitcoins ARE money.
Even if that's so, Mutum Sigillum LLC in the US is a separate entity from MtGox in Japan.
Even if it is owned by the same person, the money transmitting is never happening. It is just a deposit of funds on a US company, period.
The exchange and transmitting is happening only in Japan.
The DHS should eat it.
As was states... This has almost nothing to do with BTC, so whether it is considered currency or commodity doesn't really matter.
The account was used purely to transmit customer funds from one account (dwolla) to another (MtGox) and vice versa. The account was probably setup specifically to handle dwolla transfers and had to be stateside... thus the US regulation.
I would guess he set up the account quickly while they were smaller, either not knowing what he was doing or thinking the account would be too small to get attention.... Then he/gox just plum forgot. Either that or they are idiots like everyone says... which wouldn't surprise me.
No, they don't send the money
to MtGox, because Mutum Sigillum
IS MtGox.
From Mutum Sigillum's account they didn't have to transfer it anywhere but to their bank account in Wells Fargo.
And it has everything to do with BTC, you fail to understand what's going on between the lines.
No, you see, here's how it works:
I send dollars to Dwolla, via my bank account.
They send dollars to Mutum Sigillum.
Mutum Sigillum sends those dollars to MtGox.
MtGox deposits those dollars in my account.
I've bolded where Mark fucked up. Mutum Sigillum sends dollars overseas per the request of it's customers (MtGox, and myself). Hey, guess what? That makes them a money transmitter.
That bolded step simply doesn't exist.
It is actually like this:
I send dollars to Dwolla, via my bank account.
They send dollars to Mutum Sigillum's Dwolla account.
MtGox uses Dwolla's API to automatically check the deposit and then it shows credited in your MtGox account.
You withdraw money from MtGox through Dwolla.
MtGox uses the API again to program a withdrawal from Mutum Sigillum to your Dwolla account.
There is no such thing as "sending money from mutum sigillum to mtgox", mutum sigillum IS mtgox.
All the actual fiat money ends up in Mutum Sigillum only and never leaves the US.