I think the World Police BS that America engages needs to stop. That said, these guys have made it really really hard for regulators NOT to act.
You can't just put "No Americans (no proof needed)" on a US based website with a lot of US citizen clients dealing in synthetic USD products that's 110% non compliant with almost any US law and expect a nice outcome. Not with those sort of assets and market share.
>I think the World Police BS that America engages needs to stop
Not American and I'm annoyed by the US pretty frequently but I'm not really sure why the US having teeth when it comes to clamping down on global money laundering is a bad thing.
The financial sector appears to be the one sector where US authorities actually do a good job to stamp out crime, and I can obviously understand why the US will not tolerate an completely unmonitored shadow economy that could easily be used for sanction avoidance by Iran or any other rogue state.
I think that sort of depends on your opinion of US foreign policy. Anti money laundering laws are basically there to stop people doing things the US doesn't like. So if enforcing them means (say) less terrorist attacks GREAT! But the same laws are used much more frequently to try and enforce drug prohibition. That's meh at best in my opinion. And occasionally you see the US use them to prevent countries like Iran buying medical supplies in a pandemic. That's pretty shitty.
I'd give the US more points for enforcement (which you are correct is strongly pursued) if I thought the laws being enforced were less self serving in the first place...
> But the same laws are used much more frequently to try and enforce drug prohibition.
Drug cartels in the western hemisphere turn out to be pretty violent, to the point where you can think of them as terrorists -- bombings and other mass casualty events.
No, companies wouldn't behead people. That's silly. It's way too messy and doesn't scale.
Terrorist companies would be smarter than that. Sell and market a highly addictive, deadly drug, and profit from it making it look like it's all above board.
Then they blame the users for getting hooked on it on the first place after getting the doctors to prescribe it heavily using kickbacks. And thousands upon thousands of people die.
> The financial sector appears to be the one sector where US authorities actually do a good job to stamp out crime
Yeah, they're really great at that /s. It wasn't just last month that it was revealed that US banks laundered $2T. How many people got arrested for that? The Fed even said the disclosure of the banks internal reports was the crime.
How is the number of employees relevant? The point is the massive hypocrisy and inconsistent enforcement. Personally I think the $10k SAR threshold is stupid, it hasn't been adjusted up for inflation since it was put in place in 1970 when an oz of gold was $35.
Internally I am sure they are filtering them somehow, likely ignoring lower amounts, but why would the government voluntarily increase the minimum? They would then have less data. Better to just collect it all and selectively use some of it.
Sure, it's better for them if their goal is total financial surveillance. It's not better for people who care about financial privacy, and it makes a mockery of the rule of law when laws are enforced selectively in secret like that.
Not really surprising that increasing numbers of people would just stop caring about breaking such laws.
The US government decides what checks a financial institution must perform when dealing with US customers. In this case, BitMEX knew there were serving US customers while not performing the US-required checks.
You, as a non-US citizen, can do any transaction you want with BitMEX. BitMEX, as a company with US presence in NY, must make sure that you are not a US citizen (maybe based on your declaration that you are not one).
Your account is immediately frozen if you log in just once via a US IP address. They track funds from known hacks and are not considered a safe option for hackers to liquidate. They have a much better reputation for service, exchange quality, and account safety than any of their non-KYC competitors. Not a single US dollar has passed through their platform -- nobody is using it for money laundering, but for speculative trading. They still have to convert to fiat somewhere. The fiat on their platform is synthetic. What more were they supposed to do?
I just hope this witch-hunt doesn't end the same as the Dread Pirate Roberts case for the government's political game on controlling cryptocurrencies and maintaining their monopoly over the financial system. Hayes is a great comedic writer and insightful analyst on the global financial system -- I highly recommend his posts on the Bitmex blog. However, I fear the tongue and cheek and comedy will be used against him in the case.
> Your account is immediately frozen if you log in just once via a US IP address.
The complaint alleges that the check for a US IP address only happened once and that they did not take any precautions against VPN usage, so as long as you VPN'd once, you could login from US addresses as much as you wanted afterwards.
Furthermore, the complaint alleges that the company leadership received analytics reports broken down by country, including the US; and that the team did not monitor the funds from a hack in 2018, which allowed the hackers to launder those funds.
These allegations may be false, but the case seems strong that Bitmex 1. served US customers, 2. did not comply with the necessary US regulations to serve those customers.
The complaint is factually incorrect. I visited BitMEX while on a holiday trip to the USA. Immediately I got a notice of account closure, banning me from trading and telling me to withdraw my funds in 7 days.
I petitioned support and was unable to get my account restored.
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It's impossible to monitor EVERY single hack in the crypto space, but BitMEX has actively worked to do their best to track and freeze hack funds.
Their customer service is incredible, when I had an issue with their API, I got a direct response from the CTO fixing my code for me, within the same hour.
When I had a dispute with instrument methodology, one of the founders got back to me in the same day, explaining why.
It has never been hacked or suffered a serious security breach. The only thing I remember was a one-time accidental CC instead of BCC in the newsletter program.
Unfortunately, this is very accurate -> I just hope this witch-hunt doesn't end the same as the Dread Pirate Roberts case for the government's political game on controlling cryptocurrencies and maintaining their monopoly over the financial system.
*
They went after Kik and Telegram also
They basically don't want anyone to have any option to bypass the Petrodollar
Their securities laws only apply to those under US jurisdiction. BitMEX does not accept US customers.
BitMEX immediately closes the accounts of anyone who ever signs in with a US IP, no matter what. I've been there: my bitmex account is permanently closed because I signed into it while I was holidaying to the USA.
> I think the World Police BS that America engages needs to stop.
I legit thought it would've been reduced with Trump because of his isolationist positioning. I guess this is going to be the norm for a distant future. I don't see how this box is closed without an aggressive shift in Geopolitics. I don't see how this would be a peaceful transition but if you see a solution like that, I'd love to hear!
I think that "locking up foreigners" nationalism is more trumps flavour than "trade with all, allies with none" etc.
He's very good at convincing people he supports their ideological position when he's really just using it to justify what he wants to do right now for his own reasons and will drop it the second it's not useful. That whys he's anti China until he has to actually take an action on China or exporting jobs or crime and punishment etc. :(
I mean, you're right he should act on China, a lefty Liberal like me agrees, he promised to do so, and he has all the reasons you listed plus more. So why hasn't he?
Because he has no interest in doing anything, he's not committed to any actual policy, except for whatever suits him right now. And that's the real danger: soft power works sometimes, hard power works sometimes, "I'll give you whatever you want if you leave me alone and let me build a hotel" doesn't work (except for building hotels).
That's the issue here. Trump is pro trump. He not an isolationist except if (claims of) isolationism forward the trump self service agenda. He'd be a leftist internationalist pro-china stogge if he thought he'd make a buck or get a vote more doing that.
Yet people refuse to see this obvious, data driven conclusion...
We are getting a bit off topic, but it’s pretty clear Trump only has one agenda: say anything, do anything to get re-elected. He has no real ideology. No real policies. One might suspect that he is motivated more by fear than by anything else.
You can't just put "No Americans (no proof needed)" on a US based website with a lot of US citizen clients dealing in synthetic USD products that's 110% non compliant with almost any US law and expect a nice outcome. Not with those sort of assets and market share.