As a part of a three part series GoldBroker’s CEO Fabrice Drouin Ristori will be asking the same market manipulation questions of Chris Powell, Egon Von Greyerz and Jim Willie. Below is the interview with Chris via GoldBroker.com
Fabrice Drouin Ristori:How long can the manipulation of the precious metal markets last ?
The 2013 San Jose Bitcoin Conference has proven to be rather controversial. While it is considered to have been a success, being well attended and attracting high profile speakers, it has brought up a very divisive topic in the Bitcoin community…regulation.
By Paul Rosenberg, FreemansPerspective.com
An increasing number of people have complained about governments and central banks in recent years, even using the word “tyranny” to describe them. They are, of course, called names in the establishment press: conspiracy theorists, mainly.
Calling someone a name, however, does not erase their argument (at least not among rational people) and both the governments and the big banks stand accused.
Up till now, however, these accusations were never accepted by the general public. The average guy really didn’t want to hear about the evils of government money. After all, that was the only thing he had ever used to buy food, clothes, gasoline, cars, and so on. He didn’t want to acknowledge the accusations because he feared what might happen to him without his usual money.
Now, however, we have a brand new currency (called Bitcoin) available to us: something radically different. This gives us a new way to directly address the subject of monetary tyranny, providing a clear test for the governments and money masters of the world:
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which aims to defend “your rights in the digital world”, has announced that they will again accept Bitcoin donations.
Today, we’re happy to announce that we will be accepting Bitcoin donations through our website. You can use them to make one-time donations, set up monthly donations or get an EFF membership (which includes awesome membership swag like EFF hats and digital freedom t-shirts).
While we are accepting Bitcoin donations, EFF is not endorsing Bitcoin. EFF does not typically endorse products or services, and we certainly do not endorse any of the electronic payment methods that we currently accept (credit cards, PayPal, and now BitPay).
The EFF stopped accepting Bitcoin donations two years ago. They give the reasons for the reversal of this decision as…
The Russian based online payment service allows users to store their funds in different “purses”. For example WME for Euros and WMG for gold. The new purse, WMX, is denominated in Bitcoin where one WMX = 0.001BTC.
WebMoney has its own exchange to allow users to convert between the supported currencies. This change means that users will be able transfer Bitcoin(WMX) to any of WebMoney’s other denominations.
More details here.
The problem here is that Mt. Gox is operating as an unlicensed money transmitter.
With their recent guidance, FinCEN decided that virtual currency exchangers are money transmitters.
“An administrator or exchanger that (1)accepts and transmits a convertible virtual currency or (2) buys or sells convertible virtual currency for any reason is a money transmitter under FinCEN’s regulations.”
Mt. Gox is not a US company; however, it does a lot of business in the States and is not registered with FinCEN.
An informant working with a Homeland Security agent signed up for both Mt. Gox and Dwolla accounts. After making a few transactions, he was able to determine that his funds had gone through a Wells Fargo bank account owned by Mt. Gox and opened by the exchanges’ CEO Mark Karpeles. The account was opened by Mark in May 2011 who at the time signed a Wells Fargo form declaring that his business was not a Money Services business or a Money Transmitter. Of course this was almost 2 years prior to FinCEN’s guidance on the issue.
The Warrant states that Mt. Gox is in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 1960. The punishment for this can include fines and up to 5 years in prison.
Ars Technica obtained a copy of the warrant which can be read here.
Via 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 Dwolla representative confirmed the move to Betabeat.
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.”
Update: Linden Lab changes its mind and allows third-party exchanges with some conditions. Details here.
The online world SecondLife comes with its own currency, Linden Dollars. A number of virtual currency exchanges make a significant portion of their income buying and selling Linden Dollars. Third party exchanging of Linden Dollars has been happening for years and is an important service particularly to SecondLife players outside the States who otherwise do not have a means of purchasing Linden Dollars.
Last week Linden Lab, the SecondLife operator, changed their terms of service to prohibit third-party trading of Linden Dollars.
After the success of services such as M-Pesa, Kenya’s mobile-phone based money transfer service, it is clear that there is a large under banked population in the non-western world. A population that is quick to adopt low cost mobile based solutions.
A new mobile payment system, Dinero MPS, aims to offer a wide variety of mobile payment services starting with the unserved markets in Africa, South America and Asia. Founded by financial cryptographer Ian Grigg and entrepreneur Ken Griffith, Dinero’s Ricardian-Contract based system is set to launch later this year with the release of an Android phone app.
Dinero’s co-founder Ken Griffith shared with DGC insight on the businesses’ plans and motivations.
As Forbes’ Kashmir Hill demonstrated last week, the Bitcoin economy is small. Hill attempted to live on Bitcoin for a week going through coffee withdraw and losing 5lbs in the process. She should have waited a week.
Gyft, a mobile gift card app, has announced that it will partner with BitPay to accept Bitcoin payments for gift cards.
This means you can use your bitcoins (although indirectly) to buy a whopper at Burger King, a bed to sleep in at Marriott, some new shoes from Nike and hundreds more. Gift cards purchased through Gyft can be spent at over 50,000 locations. However, the service is only available in the US. If you want to live on Bitcoin elsewhere better move to Berlin.