It’s nearly impossible to buy BitCoins in the US True story. I’ve been trying for about a week to buy modest (U$10000-20000) amount. It’s been hell. First, mt.gox requires scary amount of ID to receive wires. What has this world come to – to put your money somewhere you have to prove who you are! I get it about withdrawing, but depositing? WTF? Then to sending wires. Scary. A branch manager of a local e-trade branch, without asking me for any ID pulls up my account, says there is plenty of money there, and proceeds for an hour to browser through the e-trade website looking for the right form, not finding it, making me hand write a ‘to whom it may concern’, finding the form, filling out a wrong one twice anyway, waiting for ‘his guy in Seattle’ to get off the other line, finally announcing that they can’t do it without additional signatures and notarizing more documents, which they can’t do as they have no notary on staff… Wells Fargo bank. At least they checked my ID. Worked through filling out the forms. After 30 minutes of doing that, the banker announces that federal regulations require me to declare my address in Japan. What? No address in Japan, no wire. Very surprised that anyone can have a bank account in another country without living there. And ‘ by the way, we couldn’t send it anyway without the Wells Fargo debit card. Also your incoming wire hasn’t cleared’. Thanks for wasting my time. Entire day shot. I have no reason to think my wire would clear at mtgox either, since I am #3277 on the verification queue, whatever that means (not promising). Is this the famous banking system that needed to be bailed out, or the world collapses immediately? I can’t imagine Chinese banks being less competent, or monkey banks for that matter. No wonder people are running to get bitcoin which allows you to move your money wherever the f*** you want, whenever you want, without anyone’s permission. Not to mention handling your own security, for god’s sake! Read the original: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ar4cq/its_nearly_impossible_to_buy_bc_in_us/]]>