Bitcoin Forum

I would like to hear what you think is wrong with Mt. Gox.

Like actually. Obviously there is the "it lags" problems, but what do you think is the root(s) of these problems? I think its time this gets its own thread.

Better question would be, what is right with Mt. Gox?

Well, I mean, they are exchange. I'm pretty sure that this service is needed. The question is how the problems can be fixed best.

In a few cases, when the lag got really pronounced, I experienced API problems where I'd cancel a trade, and the trade would disappear from my list of open trades significantly before it actually became inactive. The trades would execute or partially execute minutes later.

Lag is okay. If lag is going on, not being able to cancel in time is okay. Inconsistent reads are not okay. If it's going to take time to cancel my trade, it should stay listed in my list of active trades until the matching engine catches up to the point at which the cancel was issued and actually cancels it.

(Of course, there's also the issues of "Gox is centralized" and "Gox calls counterproductive market stoppages", but those are pragmatic and management issues rather than technical ones.)

Running an exchange that deals with as many trades as it dealt with is not easy!

They probably weren't prepared for how quickly bitcoin became popular and their software is not scalable.

In other words, throwing more hardware at it only postpones the problem.

They need to write a new trading system from the ground up and that takes a lot of time.

So, there is nothing wrong with MtGox exactly, they just aren't equipped to deal with the demand.

Imagine a small restaurant and suddenly a new office building opens next door and 100s of people start going there for lunch.

At first you can hire more cooks and waiters to deal with the demand, but eventually you gotta renovate the place and expand the kitchen and dining area.

That's whats going on with MtGox.

Kind of, only Gox has had multiple years and many millions of dollars to deal with the problem and has been a continual source of frustration for the bitcoin community. Unfortunately, there just hasn't been any strong competition. Bitcoin is too new and too risky to attract major money for trading platform developers, has all sorts of complicated legal entanglements.

MT Gox has been extremely trustworthy (I do not think there is a chance in hell they are trading the spreads etc as some conspiracy theorists here claim, and scaling a trading platform and securing sites against all sorts of people who would LOVE to make money taking the site down (or cracking it open) is hard. No one claims that. But it is clear that because of lack of connections, poor hiring, lack of capital, or stinginess, they just have not made the necessary investments in people (not just coders, also PR people, support people) or in infrastructure proactively. They have been behind the curve since the beginning it seems, always run ito scaling and DDoS problems, getting them fixed and then being slammed by the next popularity wave and crashing again.

They have been good enough to get the job done or they wouldn't have such a large market share, but for whatever reason it seems they lack the skill to take it to the next level. I'm surprised they haven't been bought out yet actually. But again, so many complicated legal issues.

They also act as a convenient scapegoat sometimes, and to their credit, for all the abuse hurled their way, they have historically stayed pretty professional (except for one time I remember)

But I think they are where they are throug happenstance. right place right time. And they've just not matured into a real trading platform. Much of the innovative stuff that has happened has been implemented by others using their API...