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Major Bitcoin Exchange Ceases Operation

Posted by Unknown on from the but-mom-money-does-grow-on-gpus dept.

First time accepted submitter Sabbetus writes "On Monday the CEO of prominent Bitcoin exchange Tradehill announced that they are shutting down. Ars Technica ran a story on this stating that 'After Monday's news, the currency's value fell from $5.50 to $4.40, a decline of 20 percent.' Tradehill is returning all funds and meanwhile their competitors are fighting over who gets Tradehill's customers."

1 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Bizarre and Confusing Summary by subreality · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Mt. Gox being the only other exchange

    MtGox is the only exchange bigger than TradeHill, but there are lots of smaller exchanges: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:Exchanges

    Quite simply put, no BitCoin exchange -- neither Tradehill nor Mt. Gox -- is going to be able to comply with the Bank Secrecy Act.

    First, Bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous. Second, the important part: while it's very difficult to positively identify who sent you some Bitcoins, the exchanges know exactly who receives them, trades them back and forth to fiat currencies, and then sends them back out. They have names and bank account numbers, or they're using fiat payment services that have bank account numbers. Know Your Customer is not a problem for most exchanges.