The Department of Homeland Security is investigating Mt. Gox, the largest Bitcoin exchange, for violating laws on US money exchange and money transfers—and it's grabbing the exchange's money in the process.

DHS officials refused to comment on the ongoing investigation, but they did provide a copy of the warrant that was used yesterday to seize funds that Mt. Gox had in Dwolla, a money transfer service. Dwolla is a Des Moines, Iowa company that provides one of the most popular ways to move US dollars to Mt. Gox, where they can be used to buy bitcoins.

In the warrant, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), states that there's probable cause to believe Mt. Gox is engaging in "money transmitting" without a license, a crime punishable by a fine or up to five years in prison. The warrant goes on to demand that Dwolla hand over the keys to account number 812-649-1010, which is owned by Mt. Gox subsidiary Mutum Sigillum LLC, and held in the custody of Veridian Credit Union.

Over the past weeks Mt. Gox has experienced rising volumes of deposits and withdrawals from established and upcoming markets interested in Bitcoin. This increased volume has made it difficult for our bank to process the transactions smoothly and within a timely manner, which has created unnecessary delays for our global customers. This is especially so for those in the United States who are requesting wire transfer withdrawals from their accounts.

We are currently making improvements to process withdrawals of United States Dollar (USD) denominations, and as a result are temporarily suspending cash withdrawals of USD for the next two weeks.

Please be reassured that USD deposits and transfers to Mt. Gox will remain unaffected, as will deposits and withdrawals in other currencies, and we will be resuming USD withdrawals once the process is completed.

We apologize for any inconvenience this causes our U.S. customers in the meantime, and look forward to resuming withdrawal service as well as debuting a dramatically improved trading engine which will be launching very soon.


Regards
Mt.Gox Co. Ltd Team.

Bitcoin mining machines bring up one of the most challenging business ethical questions of all time:

If you can make more money by keeping (or at least withholding for a time) your product from your costumers, would you ship them or keep making money with them and screw your costumers???

Why do you call this an ethical concern? Unless you are selling a life saving product, I see this as simple supply and demand - if people demand it enough, the price will rise and I will supply it. Otherwise, I may just keep it for a while.

well, it is an ethical problem, you might be not familiar with the issue:

1. The costumer prepaid for the miners, this prepayment made it actually possible to do the research and make the machines in the first place, so there is this huge ethical issue.

2. The miner is ready to ship, it is paid for, so the only reason not to ship it is greed, to keep it "for a while" and make money while the costumer is actually losing money by not being able to use it.

3. Once the miner actually is shipped the bitcoin mining difficulty could increase so there is a chance that the costumer can't even make the money back on it. So the costumer loses money 2 ways:
a/ By not being able to mine now.
b/ When he can start to mine the difficulty is so high that the machine is actually worths much less.

So, do you see the ethical problems now? Would you still keep the machines and for how long, after all at this point in time, if you are BFL, you could just give back the money and keep the miner for yourself, or mine until the difficulty rises and ship then, either way you screw your costumers who helped you to develop the product...

So what do you do, do you ship or keep mining?

and the projected delivery dates.