Is Bitcoin feeling the regulatory pressure building up? Certainly feels like it, judging by today’s announcement.

Less than 24 hours after the DOJ outlined its case against Liberty Reserve, Bitcoin’s largest exchange site Mt. Gox has stated that from now on, it’ll require ID verification from anyone who wants to deposit money with it in order to buy bitcoins. We’re not totally sure if this is a knee-jerk reaction to Liberty Reserve’s take down or not, but certainly one of the DOJ’s major gripes with that payment processor was that it let just about every man and his dog sign up without questions.

Here’s Mt. Gox’s full statement:

Statement Regarding Account Verifications

The Bitcoin market continues to evolve, as do regulations and conditions of compliance for Mt. Gox to continue bringing secure services to our customers. It our responsibility to provide a trusted and legal exchange, and that includes making sure that we are operating within strict anti-money laundering rules and preventing other malicious activity.

As a result, beginning May 30th, 2013 all Mt. Gox user accounts are required to be verified in order to perform any currency deposits and withdrawals. Bitcoin deposits do not need verification, and at this time we are not requiring verification for Bitcoin withdrawals.

In the past two months Mt. Gox has invested in more than doubling our verification support staff, and we are currently able to process most verifications within 24~48 hours.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Please visit the Security Center in your Mt. Gox account if you are not already verified, and keep in mind that being careful to submit the proper documents will result in a much faster processing time.
Regards
Mt.Gox Co. Ltd Team.

We’ll have more analysis on the situation later.