[Supp] Bitcoin.de - Marketplace for Europe

[jkminkov]

why are you so retrograde - using a notary istead of digital signatures for verification? http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/sigg_2001/__23.html

Thank you for the idea. Do you have a digital signature?

yes, I''m using it for e-banking.

[Christoph Bergmann]

How do you get this digital signatures?

I asked, but the answer was: we have very strict regulations.

Maybe if you tell me more I can forward it. How is it made secure the signature matches your person?

[vmuser]

Digital signatures are given by certified authorities ONLY. Here is one of the CAs in Bulgaria which issues such digital signatures:

http://www.infonotary.com/site/en/?p=doc_g1_1
The following link is visible only in the Bulgarian version of the web page in the About Us section (1st Menu/1st SubMenu) - this CA has been internationally certified: http://www.certipedia.com/quality_marks ... ?locale=en

Other than that everything for digital signatures is the same just like in the rest of the world. As far as I know it's the most secure identification method used these days on the Internet, but this is not something new.

[cnerd]

So you mean the international ID-verification process is unsolid?

Yes, thats pretty much what I am saying.

Maybe if you tell me more I can forward it. How is it made secure the signature matches your person?

Maybe this is the reason German money-laundering laws force us to use notarys. This is what our chief of support told me.

This looks a bit strange to me, so Im going to dwell a bit in the subject, concerning the German verification procedures.

Here is the Money Laundering Act, after that we have the Deutchebank Anti Money Laundering Policy and then there is the associated Act On Identity Cards and Electronic Identification

Section 4
Identification


(1) Institutions and persons covered by the Act shall identify contracting parties and,
if applicable, beneficial owners, before establishing a business relationship or
carrying out a transaction. The identification process may be completed while the
business relationship is being established if this is necessary in order to avoid
interrupting the normal course of business and there is a low risk of money
laundering or terrorist financing involved.

(2) Institutions and persons covered by the Act may dispense with identification if
they have already identified the relevant contracting parties and beneficial owners
and made a record of the information obtained, unless external circumstances lead
them to doubt the veracity of the information obtained during the earlier identification
process.

(3) Institutions and persons covered by the Act shall collect the following information
in order to establish the identity of the contracting party:

1. in the case of natural persons, their name, place and date of birth, nationality
and address;

2. in the case of legal persons or partnerships, the company, partnership or
trading name, legal form, commercial register number if available, the address
of its registered office or head office, and the names of the members of its
representative body or of its legal representative; if a member of its
representative body or the legal representative is a legal person, information
shall be collected on that legal person's company, partnership or trading
name, legal form, commercial register number if available, and the address of
its registered office or head office.

(4) For the purposes of verifying the contracting party's identity, institutions and
persons covered by the Act shall satisfy themselves of the veracity of the information
collected in accordance with subsection (3) above based on the following documents,
to the extent that the relevant information is contained in such documents:

1. in the case of natural persons, except as provided in section 6 (2) no. 2, a valid
official identification card which includes a photograph of the holder and
satisfies German requirements for identification cards and passports,
including, in particular, German passports, personal identification cards or their
substitutes, or passports, personal identification cards or their substitutes
recognised or accepted under foreign law;

2. in the case of legal persons or partnerships, an extract from the commercial
register or register of cooperative societies, or an extract from a similar official
register, the documents of incorporation or documents of equivalent probative
value, or by inspection of the entries in the register;
The Federal Ministry of the Interior may, with the agreement of the Federal Ministry
of Finance, designate further documents as appropriate for verifying identity by
means of a Regulation not requiring the consent of the Bundesrat

(5) Institutions and persons covered by the Act shall establish the identity of
beneficial owners by at least establishing their name and, where appropriate given
the existing risk of money laundering or terrorist financing in the individual case, by
collecting further identifying information. For the purposes of verifying the beneficial
owner's identity, institutions and persons covered by the Act shall always satisfy
themselves of the veracity of the information collected in accordance with sentence 1
above by taking risk-adequate measures.

(6) Contracting parties shall provide institutions and persons covered by the Act with
the information and documents necessary for fulfilling the requirements under the
preceding subsections and shall advise them without undue delay of any changes
arising during the course of the business relations hip.
Contracting parties shall disclose to institutions and persons covered by the
Act whether they intend to establish, continue or carry out the business relationship or transaction on
behalf of a beneficial owner. Such disclosure to in stitutions and persons
covered by the Act shall also include information that verifies the identity of
the beneficial owner.

I would suppose, that we fall under the Enhanced Due Diligence section, so:
(note: section 6, (1) and (2), paragraph 1, describes in full the reasons for Enhanced Due Deligence classification, if you would want to check it out you might even find that such verification for a member of the EU might not be even necessary)

Where the contracting party is a natural person and is not physically
present for identification purposes, institutions and persons covered by
the Act shall verify the contracting party's identity by means of:

a) a document as defined in section 4 (4) sentence 1 no. 1

b) a certified copy of a document as defined in section 4 (4)
sentence 1 no. 1;

c) the electronic identification process referred to in section 18 of the
Personal Identification Act (Personalausweisgesetz – PauswG); or

d) a qualified digital signature as defined in section 2 no. 3 of the
Signature Act (Signaturgesetz – SigG).

Where the contracting party's identity is verified in accordance with
sentence 1 a), b) or d), institutions and persons covered by the Act shall
ensure that the first transaction is carried out directly from an account
opened in the name of the contracting party with a credit institution
covered by Directive 2005/60/EC or with a credit in stitution domiciled in
an equivalent third country. Where the contracting party's identity is
verified by means of a qualified digital signature, institutions and
persons covered by the Act shall check the validity of the certificate, the
notification filed by the provider of the certification service in
accordance with section 4 (3) of the Signature Act, the integrity of the
certificate and its connection with the digitally signed data

I understand that as a cooperative entity you would more than desire to follow laws, set by your country, which is as you might imagine trying to establish an industry around crypto-currencies, but I think that you are going in a lot more headache with your verification procedures.

I might be direly wrong, but in your Money Laundering Act I can not find anything regarding a Document Verification from a third party with governmental background (notaries).

Crypto currencies are based on decentralization and even though fiat currencies are not, verification should not need a third party until the time for paying taxes is upon us (I would hope that this is not going to happen soon) and the governments of our countries start accepting the new industry as such.

Additonal information can be found in the document I have given in the beginning:

Act On Identity Cards and Electronic Identification

I turn your attention to the following section:

Section 18
Electronic identification

as suggested in the Money Laundering Act.

You might also want to check the Digital Signature Act, more precisely section 2, Definition regarding your previous request.

[filchef]

Някой може ли с 5 думи да разясни за какво си пишете тука , аз също имам акаунт в тая борса и искам да се верифицирам

С две думи убеждаваме го да си променят тежката процедура за верификация чез писмо от нотариус тъй като по нашите закони нотариусът не може да изпраща лични данни и само някой нотариуси верифицират тяхната форма и им я изпращат чрез писмо.Аз никога не съм я харесвал тая борса защото има големи амлитуди на цената можеш да се договаряш с отсрешната страна но това не е истинска борса за мен.

[jkminkov]

How do you get this digital signatures?

I asked, but the answer was: we have very strict regulations.

Maybe if you tell me more I can forward it. How is it made secure the signature matches your person?

short answer, my qualified digital signature is verified by - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Publi ... ucture.svg

[trink]

Additionally, since nobody (very strange) mentioned this:
- The German Embassy in Sofia has a role of German Notary and can verify signature over documents

Well - for one signature I gave the Austrians 80 BGN/41 €, so it is far away from a cheap option - I suppose AT and DE will have similar prices for those services. Then I personally sent the documents via post to Vienna (no need to force any notary to do something strange as sending documents over the post).

And another strange thing - same verification of identity plus international courier can be done in a bank in Bulgaria - CCBank for example have verified and sent my documents to Deutsche Kreditbank (afterwards I understood that DKB are idiots, but the reason was not that I wasn't verified with them - verification via CCBank went fine).

[Christoph Bergmann]

Hi to everyone,

I see, the digital signature looks quiet solid and you are very sophisticated about the identification law (obviously more than I am

But I can't decide how we handle this issue. Even our boss can't. bitcoin.de is at the moment dependend to our regulatory partner, the fidor bank, which is in direct contact to regulation authorities, and this (the notary issue) is the way they demand us to handle it. We are working on many things at the moment and cooperate with authorities and develop both our platform and our legal status. The way bitcoin gets regulated in germany has not played out yet, but its actually on its way. Bitcoin.de is the most important industrial entity to be adressed by authorities, e. G. our ceo takes part of a public discussion with the bitcoin-specialist of the bafin (german financial regulation authority) and we try to influence the way regulation will shape.

But as I see (I don't have insights in the discussions between our directors and fidor banks directors and no insight in the discussion between fidor and bafin etc.), as I see we, bitcoin.de and fidor, try to self-regulate, to be "popeier than the pope", to show authorities they can work with us - maybe better than with some banks or some brokers ... So actually we can't implement digital signatures and have to be stricter than the law says. But I hope when we have more legal clarity this will change.

Sorry for this.

best

Christoph

[danbi]

Christoph,

As someone who has implemented digital signatures for the purpose of identification of contracting parties, I can tell you this:

The Bulgarian Digital Signature Law stipulates that digital signatures are equivalent to hand made signature (supposedly, in presence of notary). Qualified Digital Signature Certificates in Bulgaria are issued under this law and strictly with in-person ID/photo identification by state-approved CAs. Such digital signatures are always stored on an smart card, which provides the crypto functionality.

In fact, implementing Qualified Digital Signatures is stricter than any other identification method.

I am unfortunately aware, that despite claims to the contrary, most other European countries have much weaker Digital Signature laws than Bulgaria.

[Christoph Bergmann]

Hi,

this is interesting. I hope we will be able to accept digital signatures in some time.

In Germany I have to confess we just don't use them.