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DHS Shuts Down Dwolla Payments To and From Mt. Gox
An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from BetaBeat:
"The Department of Homeland Security appears to have shut down the ability to use Dwolla, a mobile payment service, to withdraw and deposit money into Mt. Gox, a Bitcoin trading platform. ... A representative for Dwolla told Betabeat that the company is 'not party' to this matter and encourages those with questions to reach out to Mt. Gox or the DHS. 'The Department of Homeland Security and U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland issued a 'Seizure Warrant' for the funds associated with Mutum Sigillium's Dwolla account (a.k.a. Mt. Gox),' he said. 'In light of the court order, procured by the Department of Homeland Security, Dwolla has ceased all account activities associated with Dwolla services for Mutum Sigillum while Dwolla's holding partner transferred Mutum Sigillium's balance, per the warrant.'"
The government finally decided to care and used the one achilles heel of BitCoin...conversion to and from dollars. If BitCoin had some innate value, it wouldn't be a problem, but since it's primary use is as an exchange currency for dodging taxes and selling goods on the black market, this change is going to seriously impact the value of the currency.The government can't control BitCoin, but it can control US financial institutions and other companies that need to interact with those financial institutions.
We'll now see how well the BitCoin market can operate as a completely stand-alone entity.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
A warrant from the district court of Maryland, does anyone know whether thats likely to be a state tax issue? If it were truly a federal concern, youd think the warrant would come from a federal court....
Can any lawyers comment?
In fact, I think we need a new Department: DERP - Department of Earnings from Role Playing. Then we can finally shut down the other online currencies like WoW Gold that threaten the almighty buck!
I think maybe some one from DHS wanted to generate some bad publicity for bitcoins. Now they can buy some and make a little money.
I'm not a lawyer, but I used to work in a law library, and that's know enough to know that "U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland" is a federal court, not a state one.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
And if they use the revenue to fund military research, they could call it DERPA.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
I can't believe we've gone this many comment and nobody has mentioned that "Mutum Sigillium" sounds like the name of a inter-galactic criminal from Dimension X.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Actually, it is more correct to say that the Obama administration can be as GWB-like as it wants, and its reputation will remain amazingly high with Democrats. It's proof that Democrats didn't hate GWB's policies, they just hated GWB personally.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I've bought some pretty nice stuff with bitcoins that I've mined.
Anyways, people like you are the suckers who will let the government do anything it chooses because the evil thing they do only targets ( kiddieporn | gambling | drugs ) so they should be allowed to do it as they please, because clearly only those people will be affected.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
I had no love for Bush, but I think it's quite a smear to compare him to Obama. Bush's administration wiretapped suspected terrorists. They never sank so low as to wiretap reporters. And you'd have to reach back to Nixon to find an administration using IRS to target political opponents. I also don't recall Bush starting any wars without Congressional approval (albeit approval obtained under very, very questionable auspices).
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
There's no such thing as innate value. Value is context-dependent. All money is funny money. It's just a question of what brand of humor you prefer.
The US Dollar is like Jay Leno. Dull and unimaginative, but shows up for work on time every night.
Bitcoin is like Richard Pryor. Offensive, unstable, unpredictable, implicated in tax-evasion, and prone to setting itself on fire.
Love it -- hope you get a plus 5 insightful. That was a nice reworking of the "calling him an idiot is an insult to the wider idiot community" type quip.
I totally agree that Obama has been worse than GWB but what is even more disturbing is how Democrats don't even want to know about it and have gone totally silent now that it is their guy doing the abuses.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
The likelihood that Mt Gox was complying with the "Know Your Customer" anti-money-laundering rules that apply to all financial institutions that handle currency was approx. zero. I'm not surprised in the least. If a bank was doing what Mt. Gox was, (as in, not even pretending to comply with the law), the same thing would happen.
(That's not to say that disobedience of money laundering never occurs, just that experienced banks are substantially better at hiding it.)
You mean "theft through inflation carried out by the Federal Reserve Bank."
(Pro-Tip: The Federal Reserve, despite its name, is not a government entity.)
Kid-proof tablet..
For a small customer like yourself, nothing more than ID is required, which you've supplied. Once you start moving decent amounts of cash, the institution receiving the money is required to know something about the activities the cash came from. It doesn't matter that the currency was BitCoins; the same rules still apply. There are reports to file, records to keep, etc. For instance, a bank is expected to report activities like a hot dog cart suddenly depositing stacks of $20's well out of proportion to a plausible amount of sales.
Not complying with these rules (which is "Financial Institution Regulatory Framework 101") is not going to end well.
Mt. Gox was a shoestring operation that got in WAY over its head. (As in, actual banks have entire departments of employees dedicated to pretending to comply with these kinds of rules, warehouses (or tape libraries) full of documents stored away, etc.)
All anyone needs to know:
I've often wondered why TSA seems so unresponsive to the American public, and this book offered me a plausible explanation. Hawley seems to view TSA almost exclusively as a weapon in the US war against Al Qaeda. When TSA implements policies that seem crazy or ineffective to the rest of us, it doesn't use outside opinions to judge the effectiveness of its policies. Instead it uses information gathered from the intelligence community unavailable to outsiders. A policy change is considered effective if Al Qaeda reacts in a desirable way. For example, if a TSA operation deploys VIPR teams at public transportation centers and suspected Al Qaeda operatives leave the US afterwards, the operation is considered successful.
(From here.)
Which, really, is despicable and absurd all on its own.
But it does lend a lot of strength to the theory that all strange law enforcement actions of agencies created by or in the spirit of the PATRIOT Act are actually direct responses to some form of undesired activity.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Up to the GWB administration wire tapping was a case by case basis, after 911 the Bush administration asked for direct links to all the telecom operators. ATT, Verizon and all the others provided direct fiber optic connections to their networks and funneled copies of everything going across their network directly to the government. This is the reason Congress was forced to give them immunity because if they didn't the class action suits would have sunk the phone companies. The need for immunity alone should point to just how serious of an expansion in wire taping occurred under the Bush administration.
In fact as the previous poster said, it was those very links that caused the creation of the Data Center in Utah. I live in Utah and I can tell you that Data Center was already planned and sited in 2008 when Obama took office. The formerly 2-lane highway leading up to Camp Williams (where the data center is) was upgraded in 2008 in anticipation, new power lines were installed at the same time (the data center uses more power than the entire salt lake city valley). Though Obama has done nothing to stop this massive expansion of federal power it most certainly did start under Bush. And though I agree that the government's been spying on people for a long time, the passive acceptance of full monitoring of every single communication didn't start till after 9/11/2001. You are arguing that tapping a few phones here and there is no different than recording every single phone call/text/internet traffic going across the network. And there is a very big difference.
"MtGox has read on the Internet that the United States Department of Homeland Security had a court order and/or warrant issued from the United States District Court in Maryland which it served upon the Dwolla mobile payment service with respect to accounts used for trading with MtGox. MtGox takes this information seriously. However, as of this time MtGox has not been provided with a copy of the court order and/or warrant and does not know its scope and/or the reasons for its issuance. MtGox is investigating and will provide further reports when additional information becomes known.
Regards
Mt.Gox Co. Ltd Team."
https://mtgox.com/press_release_20130515.html
Except that no wiretapping occurred.Records of calls to and from AP were obtained.
This rises to the level of wiretapping. This information was enough to figure out who the reporters' sources were. Which is the only type of information which otherwise stays secret as a result of such a phone call. All news-worthy information contained in such phone calls gets published. Only the sources stay secret. So the content of the call actually is less secret than identities of the individuals making the call.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.