LIVE: Bitcoin Processors Going Legit to Avoid DOJ – Will ID Verification Save M.T. Gox?
On today’s SiliconANGLE Live NewsDesk Show (see live feed below or visit youtube.com/siliconangle to watch on-demand), we discuss how M.T. Gox is looking to legitimize its Bitcoin operation.
Bitcoin is feeling the pressure on the heels of the Department of Justice’s takedown of Liberty Reserve, a similar web currency platform. In fact, less than 24 hours after the DOJ outlined its case against Liberty Reserve, M.T. Gox stated that from now on, it will require valid ID verification from anyone who wants to deposit money in order to purchase Bitcoins. M.T. Gox is Bitcoin’s largest exchange site, so this is big news. Is this putting the cart before the horse and overreacting, or is M.T. Gox answering one of the DOJ’s biggest gripes about the payment processor by better securing account signups?
Plain and simple, M.T. Gox is making an effort to go respectable. The introduction of user verification for currency deposits and withdrawals is a good move for the Tokyo-based exchange. It excludes deposits and withdrawals of Bitcoin itself, but it does mean that in order to spend dollars, euros, etc. to buy or sell Bitcoin, pretty much all user actions will now be logged and tied to a verified individual.
Joining us now to provide his breaking analysis on their efforts to appeal to the mainstream is SiliconANGLE Founding Editor Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins. (See the live broadcast, embedded below ~ if you missed today’s topic, check our YouTube channel for archived clips.)
Some of the things we’ll be discussing with Hopkins include the possibility of M.T. Gox’s verification process scaring away anonymous users, the benefits of M.T. Gox’s preemptive decision to verify users, and whether or not this is a knee-jerk reaction to Liberty Reserve’s recent take-down by the DOJ.
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