Circle closed my account

All BTC were sent to an external wallet first before anywhere else. They claim "unusual activity" and that it violated "restricted activity." They must be actively monitoring BTC to see where they end up, and even if it doesn't go directly from their service they are still blocking accounts. I don't know how else it would have violated since the BTC always went to an external Electrum wallet first.


Comments


[32 Points] 180K:

Just curious, what was average monthly volume of bitcoin purchased?


[9 Points] None:

[removed]


[8 Points] honestlyimeanreally:

Looks like it's coinbase v 2.0


[9 Points] Ghost_421:

What kind of volume in coins were you purchasing?


[5 Points] 1percentof1:

This comment has been overwritten.


[5 Points] Nachtbeest23:

They just use a ratio of taint-%.

If you send 80% of your btc to a btc-address and btc-address the send 100% to the dnms you got 80% taint. Too much. RESTRICTED


[4 Points] bigassnug:

fucking bullshit. why do they give a fuck. so a tumbler would prevent this? I just bought half a coin.


[2 Points] None:

So you went circle > electrum > tumbler? What tumbler did you use? And how long did it take them to close your account?


[1 Points] -lobali:

It's more likely that all they are looking at is your buying patterns, or sending to known addresses, like I think it was coinbase that closed accounts who donated to gwern. Arguing about tracing aside, your buying pattern or where it goes first is 99.9% (yes I pulled that statistic out of my ass) the reason that an account gets closed.

The two most innocent reasons to use circle is buying/selling because you invested in them, or because you buy and sell on LBC. Both my LBC and Circle acccounts I've gone through KYC (I don't remember if I had to with CB but I closed my account as I rarely used it after Circle opened but after they apparently decided that gwern compiling public information was somehow illegal and closed accounts of people who donated to him directly, (but not erowid or others?) I wrote them a very polite fuck you very much letter and closed my account.

The patterns of people who do the two things they want to avoid most - selling coin to ppeople to make illegal purchases, and money laundering - have patterns. DNM users buy odd amounts where investors buy round numbers. They buy sporadically but semi-regularly, investors buy and sell during fluctuation patterns or like, I used to be paid on the 10th and 25th of each month and when I was investing; I would buy a certain amount on the 11th and 26th and it went to one of two wallet addresses 99% of the time.

KYC laws allow for the sharing of information. I do everything wrong when I make DNM purchases; I buy slightly more than I need and don't tumble nor use an intermediary; I'm versed enough in if my wanting a dozen Norco and they catch it in the mail, the chances of them devoting a billion manhours to chasing the coins around and them how tie them to a transaction to prove I used a market to add a RICO charge when they already have be dead to rights for me convincing someone to mail me a scheduled substance.

Look at any report about SR or large vendors busted. Google the phrase "analysis of blockchain proved fruitless".

They are, as many posters said, required by federal law to act as any finanical institution including not participating in any banking transaction that they have reasonable cause to believe may be used for illegal activity. But before everyone runs off of wild theories about how closely they''re watching "a bitcoin" move (please keep in mind that a bitcoin in now a thing, it is simply the proof that an event occurred, unlike those stamps people are supposed to write the city and state they got a dollar bill.)

I would eat my hat if someone proved to me that a single of these account closure was because of an event that happened that wasn't the purchase pattern or the first coin movement (circle to personal wallet to ?, including the amount of time that passes between hitting personal wallet and leaving) That is plenty far enough for them to make an assumption it's possibly tied to illegal activity, and with ANY USA-based financial institution, they have to err on the side of caution.

I have been absent so I'm unsure if there's been a thread yet about the recent change about how all buy/sell transactions MUST be cauculated in bitcoin until you electronically sign an agreement that you understanding trading via fiat is a taxable event. Money laundering is a far bigger issue for Circle et all, but all illegal activity, including anonymous purchases of illegal items have to be included and once markets became mainstream knowledge, there was no way for LBC or Circle or Coinbase to look the other way despite their very existance and potential successs means supporting furthering anonymizing financial transactions... and they can't say with a straight face they're doing it because it's superior to SEPA taking a few days.


[2 Points] Calypso420:

I dont know how great this is (opsec wise), but I like to have my coin on me at all times so I store all my coins on a Decentralized Iphone wallet.. Its called bread wallet. IMO its a great way to store coin being its not attached to any company. :)


[1 Points] LRADoperator:

So, where is the best place to store btc? Is there a way to safely store my coins on something like an external HDD? I usually only have coins for a short period of time, floating between coinbase/circle, tumblers, and then finally market. With Agora on pause, I am looking to put my btc into something that I won't have to worry about it going down, having my account banned, etc.


[1 Points] TripAddict:

Seems like we gotta start tumbling everything then. Coinbase and now circle?


[1 Points] end_pun_violence:

I don't know how accurate this is, because I really don't have much technical knowledge on the blockchain diddly-dads and whutzee-doos, but I remember reading that it was easier to see that coin is going to a tumbler than directly to a DNM wallet like Agora, because of the way that markets like Agora set up the wallets.

Now, they may not be able to prove that from the tumbler, your money went to a DNM, but if 90% of the money in that tumbler does, they probably have decent enough evidence to close you're account. Remember, this is a private company, not the law, they don't need solid proof.

From what I've read, using a tumbler is more to protect you from the law then your coin-provider (coinbase, circle, etc). If you have LE agencies checking in on your activity it provides some smoke, because while it seems pretty obvious what you're doing, there isn't any actual proof because of your coin being tossed about with everyone else's.


[1 Points] throwaway1882072:

Shit. Thats going to suck if they drop all their users. Has anyone gotten theirs canceled for depositing directly to markets? What I take away from this event is that Circle is cutting off people who use tumbling services. Not sure if they can easily tell that a wallet address is associated with a DNM, but I have no technical knowledge of how that might work.


[1 Points] VedadoAnonimato:

Apparently from what you said you didn't use a tumbler. You just went Circle -> personal wallet -> DNM. That basically means they know the addresses you transferred to was likely a DNM address.

How can they possibly have that information, without using the DNM themselves? They could only possibly guess that an address belongs to the DNM if they themselves have transferred many small amounts of coins to different address of the DNM and then watched these coins getting mixed with other coins from the DNM.

There you have, another reason to implement merge avoidance, or even preferably, just use Monero instead of Bitcoin. Another possible way of fighting this would be for the DNM to operate either as a multi-sig wallet, or at least as blockchain.info does, by never mixing different clients coins together. This way they could only watch mixing happening if they watch the vendor's addresses, but for that they'd have to commit the illegal act of ordering drugs online - or at least paying for them. I don't know if LE would allow them to do it.


[0 Points] None:

chainblock FTW


[-5 Points] None:

Circle is fucking retarded. Use coinbase.