Bitcoin Forum

I suppose that some people are happy to see Cyprus sinking in the financial abyss as BTC price skyrockets and causes megaprofits.
But, did you ever think what would happen to MTGOX if Japan goes the Cyprus way and grab bank deposits to repay its debt?

Some of alarming articles in press.
Forget Cyprus, Japan Is The Real Crisis - Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesgruber/2013/03/23/japan-is-the-real-crisis/)
Financial Ticking Time Bomb 2013, Japan the Greece of Asia (http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article38416.html)
Looming financial crisis in Japan deserves our attention (http://thechronicleherald.ca/business/519624-dicker-looming-financial-crisis-in-japan-deserves-our-attention)

I thought MT.Gox is migrating to the US now?

All USD wires are still go to their Japanese account. Just imagine their losses in case of Cyprus scenario.
It's time to think about alternatives. I believe decentralization is the key factor in bitcoin's stability.

The EU forced Cyprus' hand.  Why would Japan force Japan to seize bank funds so that Japan will bailout Japan?

Exactly, the Japanese government can print more yen to bailout their banks

Just two weeks ago I couldn't imagine that EU can go robbing bank savings. Now I have lost most of my assets. I got a hard lesson.

so true !

Foreign capital becomes an easy target for troubled governments.

Exactly, Japan has a printing press (Not saying that is a good thing) and cannot be forced by the EU.

They are welcome to my zero fiat balance I have with them, and if they take the several BTC in my account, well, 'my bad.'

Japan can't print up US dollars and EUR, isn't that what MtGox holds?

Japan is a disaster. Check out youtube for Kyle Bass, here is an example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY6IEpKRA7Y

lets face it:

if china hits the sell button on their U$ t-bills,  :o

it's all  being flushed down the tubes anyway   :'( :'( :'(

MTGOX would be only partially effected.  They have, at least by fees, half of money in BTC.  If BTC rises and yen drop it is a near wash.  In addition even with hyper-inflation, as long as it less then 10% a month they can even mitigate that with clever financial planning.

Japan has a printing press, Cyprus does not.  They are in very different situations.

There really needs to be another exchange site. Bitcoin is not very decentralized if nearly all trading happens at a "centralized" place.

Y'all make some good points that Japan (unlike Cyprus) has the power to print more of its own currency. It can't easily be forced by an external entity (Asian Union lol) to rob from its citizens' bank accounts. This means it has a smaller chance of becoming the "next Cyprus."

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But "smaller chance" doesn't mean "no chance." Correct me if I'm wrong, but several other countries (I'm thinking Argentina? Brazil perhaps?) have seized funds from depositors in times of financial crisis. And there ain't no "South American Union" refusing to print more SoAmericos - they just went and done it.

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there are plenty of other exchange sites. sometimes I wish people would use them rather than hanging around bitcointalk complaining about how slow & evil gox is ;-)

Really.  And the volume is now there at these other sites for most people. I have not used gox in a year now since somehow my account became unverified and they did not respond to my email. 

zeroday, I have a lot of sympathy for you, especially as I have relatives in Pentakomo, Cyprus, and they are suffering too. Two years ago (before I ever heard of Bitcoin) I advised them to put savings into gold and collect euro banknotes with German, Luxembourg and Finland prefixes. The writing was on the wall then for a banking crisis in Cyprus, but it doesn't seem that they listened.

However, Japan is different, they want to print yen and damn the torpedoes. They will stealth tax their savers through inflation, which could get nasty and damage that country, but businesses will still tick over. I can't see Mt Gox being affected more than any other company in Japan. In fact less, as pointed out already, they must be stacking up the BTC from commissions!

This makes no sense. All banknotes are equally valid across the whole eurozone. The initial letter in the serial number only indicates which central bank issued the note, nothing else. Plus, there are no banknotes with Luxembourg's prefix (letter R).

as far as we where aware there has been many financial confiscations in the eurozone

like pension fund write downs public servant paycuts and holiday amendments, retirement date changes etc etc etc

in Australia the same changes have been implemented, many newer workers will never have the same benefits public or private as the

exact same workers still employed in similar positions because they are slightly older and financial law changes are not retrospective they only

affect new contracts and or people born after a certain date, Australia has some mineral wealth and even greater oil wealth not to mention

a relatively low population so you can imagine they would not dream of taking bank savings

the government would be overthrown in a matter of days NOT WEEKS and then all the old benefits would be reinstalled because Australia is infact a wealthy country

not to mention the massive oil deposits that are hidden from the mainstream Australian public and exploited by foreign countries

Even in France when the government tried to extend the public servant retirement age to something stupid like 70 years of age while also moving the pension benefit date to the same age, also the later was not retrospective as far as i understand, the result was a massive public outrage and protests grinding to halt all the oil ports and trucking facilities.

Now can Mtgox collapse? i seriously doubt it maybe if the bitcoin price got high enough say in the $100,000 US Dollar range and Mtgox had sold more coin than what they actually owned, then users wanted to withdraw these coins then yes they would have a big problem on their hands!

The central bank of Japan can print JPY. so please don't worry.

they have been doing that for ages

Not such a big problem unless you are crazy enough to store your btc with them. If the losses cause them to collapse it will just make it more difficult to purchase btc but bitcoin will live on.

If Japan collapses, the bigger companies will be affected first, like Toyota, Honda, all those other Japanese cars and motorcycle manufacturers. The samurai will take over and ninjas will be recruited by organized crime Yakuza... Did you see what happened after some disasters like floods and earthquakes recently? The Japanese people are very patient waiting for relief goods and weren't about to kamikaze each other.

But I remember what happened to bitcoin when MtGox got into troubles in 2011.

http://coinlab.com/transition (http://coinlab.com/transition)

"If you're already a Gox customer and domiciled in the US / Canada, you don't have to do anything. We'll notify you when your funds have moved over to the US, and from then on, sending and receiving money in and out of the exchange will get a lot easier."

"Your dollars are deposited with Silicon Valley Bank"

Am I missing something?

It's more than just the exchange. A lot (perhaps the majority?) of apps and services rely on the mtgox api for pricing and such. It is still a precarious situation to be in. Bitstamp is growing for EU users, i'm not sure about US alternatives, but we need a few more exchange hubs in different jurisdictions before my mind will be set at ease.

CAvirtex is a great alternative for BTC/CAD. It's very solid now.

Yes, there might be a temporary sell off, but that's more of an opportunity to get btc cheap rather than anything close to an existential threat.

I don't think that Mt. Gox's hack had much to do with things.  I remember it distinctly because, by happenstance, they were down when I got serious enough to start doing wire transfers and Tradehill had just come online.  The peak had defiantly rolled over by the first whiff of Mt. Gox problems and the decline remained steady for months through a whole string of hacks and other accidents.  The most interesting thing to me was how Bitcoinica's implosion seemed to have had a negligible effect on almost anything.  I didn't expect that.

I never expected the price to get to $2/BTC and treated it as an unexplained gift from the unknown.  And bought with both hands since I had extra fiat needing a home.  Nothing in the fundamentals which attracted me at $16/BTC had changed and thus nothing about my theory of the potential value of the proposition had changed either.  And it was amazing to be able to acquire blocks of Bitcoin which had been undreamed of only months before.

I always expected a high likelihood of losing 100% of my outlay but it was a magical moment when a significant $$$ loss would not kill me and there was enough of a chance of a long-shot win to induce me to make what currently appears to have been a good bet.  I'm not in buying mode now at $80-ish, but if I had no BTC I probably would either be buying or transferring a percentage of my other wealth into BTC as a speculative bet.  And, as always, considering the strong possibility of a full loss.

What are you trying to achieve by talking down the fx rate by reinterpreting the past in a FUD manner?
BTC has saved your finances while the euro has a heart attack, so now you want BTC to fall as well??

My primary interest is to keep BTC strong as from now it's the last safe harbor for my assets.
But I'm really worried about possible crash if something happen to its centralized exchanger.

Is there a list of other sites and maybe recommendations or reviews about them? Thanks

Really? What I know is, that the EU will only help Cypres with another billions if the Cypres don't just sit there and spend the money of the Germans, Dutch, Fins and so on. Cypres can leave the EURO everytime they want then they can inflate their money to the moon. I always argued, that even the money in a bank deposit is not to 100% without risk. Not it is that way, but only for high numbers.

And Mt-Gox? Is Mt-Gox bankrupt? Do they have a fractional reserve? If not, why are you worrying? The "robbery" in Cypres has nothing to do with solvent banks.

And: Mt-Gox is to Bitcoin what Facebook is too friendship. It is a tool. Without Facebook friendships will not be destroyed. A new social network would arise. And I bought my bitcoins in a firm located in Germany...

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Category:Exchanges

And now AEP writes this:

"Capital controls have shattered the monetary unity of EMU. A Cypriot euro is no longer a core euro. We wait to hear the first stories of shops across Europe refusing to accept euro notes issued by Cyprus, with a G in the serial number."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/debt-crisis-live/9958402/Cyprus-bailout-live.html

I'd be more concerned if North Korea try and nuke Japan, given the way the DPRK and Kim Jong-Un seem to be upping the threats lately.

Last year I heard about a dumbass who recommended to hoard german notes (X letter). I'd love someone tried to reject my G notes… :D.

Yes, about the MtGox part. I believe we all need decentralized bitcoin markets to not have to worry about any country or any particular market having too much influence on us.

If Japan collapse like Cyprus, bitcoin will skyrocket. Japan economy is huge, imagine them all buying bitcoins  :D MT Gox will be in the right place at the right moment to cater to that need  :D

Not sure what factor will outweigh in this scenario - emerging needs of the Japanese in bitcoins, or, panic generated by the collapse of centralized exchange.

yes but the Japanese are smart
they have good infrastructure
they work hard

they will find a way

its infrastructure and workforce that counts

however I admin the declining population may be the issue....

though they can maybe figure that out to.

I'd be glad to take part in the experiments for that! WINK WINK! ;) :D

But seriously :P I bet they'll just adopt Bitcoin, it's not like a penniless government will be able to stop them.

Even at a one billion dollar market cap bitcoin is still in its infancy. People flock to Mt.gox because many other exchanges have folded or been victims of theft (Tradehill, Bitcoinica, Bitfloor). Decentralization will eventually come to bitcoin.

You are right... to the markets.

Boom tish...

but you probably get something you never bargained for