He makes a point, but I will take up for MtGox. (scantily)  MtGox is a broker, an yea some laws apply since he chose to conduct the service in the U.S. at the time of said transaction.  However, if MtGox had a TOS that covered this event, and said that accounts would be frozen, until it is worked out, and evidence acquired, Baron would effectively be SOL since he is obviously in another country.

Now the straight dope, there is consideration here. These Anonymous trades will be considered illegal in the U.S. Even Switzerland requires that an anonymous person show that the money going into a secret account is legitimate and from a proper source of revenue (even though they have to prove it to a select few) Most of us can't afford that service.

The next way to look at these BitCoins is to rename them BitCoin Bearer Bonds. Still illegal in the U.S. if issued after 1982. The physical Bearer Bond would be your .dat file even including transaction amounts (cool).

The actual currency exchange won't fly, how ever, a company registered in Guatemala Corporation can still legally issue Corporate Bear Bonds with anonymity. This would be an option for a serious investor in BitCoins because it could cost upwards of $500,000 dollars to set one up.

The other "smart way" is don't sell the BitCoins for USD, sell some stupid PDF Books (copyright the book, <--that is just to funny) that costs $1.00, the customer could buy 1 book or 10,000 books.  Deliver the Books, to the supplied address, which would be just 1 pdf but with 10,000 user rights(to fight charge backs because charge backs suck right, but not if you show good faith, and especially if your pay portal can tell if it is a debit card and not a credit card) Now you are not selling the BitCoins you are selling the Books, but since he was a good customer, as consolation prize you give them 10,000 BitCoins (which are technically worthless, but the books aren't, you even copyrighted them) Keep logs on the customers, the supplied information should match the C/C info. Now for stolen cards it won't but you showed good faith as to not hurt your charge back ratio and the card will/or should get declined.  No for people just protecting anonymity for whatever reason (mistress, bad habit, gambling, porno, etc...) Go buy a pre-paid under John Doe at 123 Sesame St, Canton, Ohio or what ever and use that info when registering with the exchange so Name/ Address, etc... will match.

Now you are protecting anonymity while trying to eliminate illegal behavior. You are a good net citizen. It is not the Xchanges fault the customer lied when purchasing the prepaid (you had no control over that).

The downside, now that you are operating just a hair on the right side of the fence, the business and its owner won't have anonymity, so if a dissatisfied customer thinks his money is more important than his anonymity, he a will be coming for ya !!!  Which you could argue that you did give him the book with the rights to the judge ( but you know what is really going on, so expect to be swimming with the fishes)


Didn't ya ever buy a Scalped Sports Ticket with a funny shaped paper clip on it. ( You didn't buy the ticket, you bought the paper clip, the ticket was a consolation prize)

The same thing is happening "legally" right now when people are giving you bitCoins for clicking their ads, and taking surveys, and buying items through someone's Amazon store,  just at a lessor amount.  Even Google Adsense and Amazon are getting in on the action.

I would personally recommend that you stay away from large transactions at least until the BitCoin takes off, because if you sell $45,000 dollars worth of BitCoins and the customer can't use it anywhere, you just pissed someone really off. Stay < under $100