51–60 of 256 posts
2) If you run online exchanger and have a single US customer, then you have to register your operation in USA. I find it ridiculously stupid.
Now the top 12 or so volume-ranked Bitcoin exchanges listed at https://cryptowat.ch are perfectly legitimate trustworthy companies. The ones I'm not sure about are CEX.IO and Luno (not saying they aren't trustworthy, I just don't know them that well) and, well, Bitsquare which as a decentralized exchange is bound to have some shady participants.
The question for me is: why US? He is a Russian citizen, the company is based in Bulgaria, servers in Russia, legal HQ in Cyprus and all the services operated from Seychelles - arrested in Greece. The MtGox hack affected a Japanese company. I'm not debating the nature of the crimes, etc - I am just wondering, when does it become a US case? I can get the "there were US customers" - but why not Europe? Or Japan? Or Rus…
> Russian gay laws What are those?
The question for me is: why US? He is a Russian citizen, the company is based in Bulgaria, servers in Russia, legal HQ in Cyprus and all the services operated from Seychelles - arrested in Greece. The MtGox hack affected a Japanese company. I'm not debating the nature of the crimes, etc - I am just wondering, when does it become a US case? I can get the "there were US customers" - but why not Europe? Or Japan? Or Rus…
In these sort of situations, the main thing that tends to apply is not the ability to get a judgement in court but the ability to get that judgement enforced. So if, say, Fiji were to make up a law and convict, say, Donald Trump under it, no one would care--Fiji would have no practical way to enforce that judgement. But the US can generally get its judgements enforced, even outside the US.
In the specific case of the financial world, the size and importance of the US financial markets gives the US unparalleled power to enforce judgements. The US could not only lock you out of dealing with USD transactions directly, they could also direct banks that do business in the US to not do business with you.
There's been no mentions of coin seizures anywhere as far as I can tell. Usually you'd see some boasting about that. Perhaps these guys were actually smart about their cold storage?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you start a gay social network in US, can Russia come in (the first time you are flying in one of the Russia's partners territories) and say "you are breaking Russian gay laws, you are under arrest"? Yes.
Countries charge foreign nationals of crimes all the time. The fact that this is surprising to many people in these comments is horrifying.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you start a gay social network in US, can Russia come in (the first time you are flying in one of the Russia's partners territories) and say "you are breaking Russian gay laws, you are under arrest"? Yes.
People often don't realize that if you fly through US airspace after violating certain US laws as non-citizens, you will be apprehended through an emergency layover coordinated with the carrier. That's a contributor to why US federal three letter agencies constantly ingest passenger manifests.