
Dwolla Begins PayPal-Style Account Suspensions for Bitcoiners - enmaku
http://codinginmysleep.com/dwolla-begins-suspensions/
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redegg
I've had my account for 2 years with no problems; however, that doesn't ease
me the fear that my account may be suspended and require government ID when I
hit some limit.

I barely use Dwolla now. Coinbase (YC S12) has replaced it for me.

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loceng
Do you not have government ID or is it because of not wanting to be attached
to purchases you make / services you order or render? Not meaning any
accusatory tone, just to note. I understand privacy.

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kiba
Overzealous patrol of fraud activities is how payment providers survive, but
it also decrease utility, which allows cryptocurrency like bitcoin a niche in
all sort of areas.

~~~
kapilkale
As an operator of a payments company, I second this.

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waterlesscloud
Bitcoin provides me more utility than Dwolla at this point.

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fossuser
What do you use as an exchange to buy bitcoins? Have you just been mining for
a long time so you've accumulated a bunch? Do you use Mt. Gox?

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barmstrong
Give Coinbase.com a try - you an connect any U.S. bank account to buy/sell
bitcoin. (A YC company).

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d4vlx
I'm curious what people on HN believe the future holds for Bitcoins.

I expect the US government will step in in the not to far future and severely
restrict the ability to legitimately exchange Bitcoins for dollars. I'm not
passing any judgement on Bitcoins themselves, it just seems unlikely to me
that people in places of power will be ok with an independent currency.

~~~
jlgreco
As long as you can exchange bitcoins for drugs delivered to your front door in
first-class packages, it will be fairly trivial to exchange bitcoins for cash
if you really need to. Legalization of all narcotics would hurt bitcoin far
more than anything else the government could manage.

As far as I see it, it is not really a currency but rather a tool. A tool that
remains operational so long as it has any "value" at all.

~~~
Nursie
_"As long as you can exchange bitcoins for drugs delivered to your front door
in first-class packages, it will be fairly trivial to exchange bitcoins for
cash if you really need to."_

Sure, but having it declared illegal would definitely restrict the growth
potential of the currency. At the moment its proponents envision/fantasize
about it becoming huge and general-purpose, with a presence in the physical
world (see bitpay etc). If a large nation like the US were to declare it
illegal would certainly put a dent in that.

I disagree with a lot about BTC, in terms of the economic choices made in its
model rather than the technical ones, but I find it continually fascinating to
watch it as a phenomenon.

~~~
jevinskie
Qddqee

~~~
jevinskie
Apologies, I butt-commented!

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jebeng
All these years we've been reading on HN how Dwolla was supposed to be
different than PayPal. As a passive observer I've taken their marketing
message/value proposal to be specifically that they were not the type of
company who would ever execute these PayPal style seemingly thoughtless
account suspensions.

At this point unless the facts turn out to be different than presented here, I
will never be a Dwolla customer.

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finnw
Describing this as "for bitcoiners" is misleading.

The suspicious activity that this user's account was suspended for was a
payment (in USD) from one individual to another, that Dwolla suspected was an
"unlicensed BTC exchange" (not necessarily on a commercial scale.)

Using a network like bitcoin-otc is a solution only if the USD side is paid in
cash.

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plumeria
<https://mtgox.com/press_release_20120808.html> ????

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drivebyacct2
Dwolla was shitty to Bitcoin users earlier on. That's why I still have a bad
taste in my mouth when hearing about them. Fortunate for them, I still hate
Paypal more.

~~~
halviti
No, you misunderstand. The vast majority of Dwolla's success is due to
bitcoin.

Throughout 2011 it was the primary method of converting USD to bitcoin. It was
practically their whole business.

During the hype that brought bitcoin to it's highest price so far, Dwolla's
profits exploded.

Looking at their promo e-mails, the amount of time between them going from
1M/week in transactions to 1M/day in transactions was only one month.

Once they got big enough, they've not only turned on the people that built
their empire, but are now actively targeting them.

It's hard for me to decide if I hate Paypal or Dwolla more.

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loceng
You're not their target market then, the masses. You're the evangelists, their
first users to prove the need.

~~~
halviti
That's not what evangelist means.

Further, the reason people used Dwolla in the first place was because of their
"no chargebacks" policy, which doesn't even exist anymore.

Actually, even when they had their "no chargebacks" policy, they started
secretly processing chargebacks, and not even telling the people they were
taking money from.

Google for the story about how Dwolla bankrupted the TradeHill exchange by
stealing money from them, not showing any affadavits for the money they took
from them, and then blocked them from even withdrawing their own funds.

~~~
loceng
Evangelist? Someone who tries to / ends up converting others to using the
service?

These people may no longer be the evangelists because they're pissed, however
they were to begin with.

Interesting re: TradeHill - I will look at it.

