Bitcoin Forum

Three facts:
- Deposit of USD and EUR to a MtGox account works without any problems.
- Withdrawal of Bitcoins works without any problems.
- Withdrawal of USD or EUR is problematic (it takes several weeks). So all you can do is buy back your Bitcoins, transfer them to another exchange and sell them there.

So in essence all you can do at MtGox is the transformation of USD to Bitcoin. Which means MtGox is not really a free market (because they are backing up Bitcoin).

One way to keep prices high is to "artificially" slow down the outflow of USD/EUR/etc.

Is this the reason why Bitcoin on MtGox is always between 5 and 10 percent higher compared to all the other exchanges (like btc-e, bitcoin.de, ...)?

MtGox has a vested interest to keep Bitcoin prices up (higher price means more fees for them). Of course all the other exchanges have that interest too - but maybe they are not abusing their market power as shameless as MtGox does.

MtGox has 80 percent? 90 percent? of the Bitcoin cake. They can't generate more income with growth. But they can generate more income in making the price go up and up and up ...

So you are saying that if i have $1000 to buy bitcoins and bitcoin price is $1 (1000btc bought fee is 50btc=$50) then mtgox will get less fee than if price would be $100 per btc (10btc bought fee 0,5btc=$50)? You missed math lessons or what?

For a fixed volume he is correct.

Fact is, MtGox's fee schedule means you have to actively trade less and less volume in order to incur the same fees as the price rises.

Aren't you a smartass?

Let me explain it very simple, so that even you have a chance to understand it.

This is the Bitcoin cake (aka market capitalization):

http://www.bilder-hochladen.net/files/big/k9l5-28-35f4.png

MtGox has a big, big piece of this cake (fees).

Now the task for you:
(1) How big do you think was this piece in June 2012 (when Bitcoin was at 5$)?
(2) How big do you think was this piece in April 2013 (when Bitcoin was at 250$)?

And now go tell me again: MtGox does not care about the Bitcoin price ...

They care about bitcoin price as long as they are getting they fees in bitcoins. But they are worried more about trade volume than price. If the price would be $100000000 and one person would buy 1 satoshi then they wont get the same profit than thousands of people trading constantly for $100.

Aren't you a smartass (again)?

Volume ... that goes without saying.

It's hard for MtGox to get the volume up (they can't lower their fees much more, already sub 1%). But they can keep the price high.

Can we now please go back OT? Which is, in essence: ... Is this the reason why Bitcoin on MtGox is always between 5 and 10 percent higher compared to all the other exchanges (like btc-e, bitcoin.de, ...)?

You only woke up today? Mtgox is overpricing bitcoins for weeks, communicating positive news to mislead investors...

Good Morning  ;)

Yes, I know that.

But I want to know the reason why.

To make more profit

 ::)

Wow Frizz, you're not having an easy time in this thread are you :) ?

Personally I don't see how a USD to OKPAY withdrawal confirmation can take more than 4 or 5 days.....it's like didn't we invent computers to handle this sort of thing ?

Why is anybody still using MtGox? They are embroiled in all sorts of legal troubles, I would not consider any money left with them safe because they might disappear at any moment.

ya I always tell myself I'll never use it again and then somehow it always manages to work its way back into my transactions and trading.

I'm going to really KRAKEN it up soon though. I agree, I should not be using gox...

For somebody trying to teach a math lesson, you should really check yours first. A $1000 USD purchase of bitcoins with a fee of 0.5% would yield a total fee of $5, not $50. Your intended point is valid, the fee in USD is the same if the amount traded in USD is the same.

What alternative is there?

To see what markets people are using, http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/ (http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/)

You could also trade with localbitcoins or over #bitcoin-otc on IRC

If you previously used [USD--Dwolla--MtGox], you could switch to [USD--CoinBase] or [USD--Dwolla--CampBX].

btce = no way to get your money in or out + russia
bitstamp = slovenia
btcchina = see btce
dwolla = really???

otoh doing business in those countries sounds better than in the us atm

Is there something wrong with Slovenia?

To pick an exchange, you really have to chose from the ones which are set up to interface with your local banking system. For us to help you find such, you will have to tell us in which country you are located?

Could you be a bit more wordy, I have no idea what concept or reaction you are trying to convey with "dwolla = really???", is it surprise that such an amazing thing exists or sarcastic dismissal of the whole idea?

Actually, you were not very explicit when you asked if there were any alternatives to MtGox, which features of MtGox did you use?

A little surprised you didnt mention the other countries, but how about Slovanian economy crashing at any moment?


Euro based and i guess im a little nostalgic about bitcoin24.

Lemme think, what was it that Dwolla made news with recently? Right, frozen accounts...
But thats irrelevant for the search for the perfect exchange, because im Euro based.
Anyway what i was trying to convey in my initial post is that unfortunately Gox is the lesser evil out of all those services.

I am a bit confused lately, is Europe a country now?

It doesnt really matter if its Austria, Germany or the Netherlands, they all belong to the same economic community with the same currency, laws and regulations.
Seems like you need to read up a little on the old continent across the pond. ;)

It just seems like people are not sure whether it is a country or not. If somebody asks what country I live in, I say "the United States", not "Michigan". I asked which country you live in, you said "Euro", is the EU on the same level as the US? In a list of countries by population should we put the EU (500M) above the US (300M), or should we list each state separate (Germany, France, Italy, etc)? Each of the EU countries still has their own seats at the UN, are they going to be combined at some point to just have on UN seat and one team at the olympics?

You are right and BTC-E is making fiat deposit difficult on purpose to keep bitcoin price low so they can buy cheap bitcoins for themselves and their Russian friends.  ::)

@bitcoinbear
Sorry, i dont see how that is relevant for the discussion.
There are basically 2 notworthy exchanges in Europe.
One is not really an exchange and the other one is dealing in $.

Nope, they are trying to stay away from fiat processing, but you already know that.
Anyway im not prepared to trust my assets to an exchange where te secret service can waltz in at any moment.

I've been doing daily $10,000 wire transfers out of MtGox and the money has been appearing in my account within 24 hours (shockingly).

I started an OKPAY withdrawal from GOX.

I'll really happy if it takes less than 4 days... last time I did it, it was ridiculous...

1. Keeping the price up by delaying wire transfers will result in a big and fast decrease of customer's number. A smaller number of customers will result in smaller transaction fees which equals smaller profits. Much smaller profits than keeping the price down and customers happy.

2. Delaying payments will also result in a higher number of withdraw requests because of the panic created. A big number of withdraws will further increase the payment delays. The more increased payment delays will result in more withdraw requests  and so on until the payments COMPLETELY STOPS.

MtGox has over $100 millions in deposits and if they fall a lot of bitcointalk users will loose a lot of fiat. Some of them will loose money because the btc value will decrease fast, others will loose their fiat mtgox deposits.

So they prefer to invent thousands of reasons for MtGox delays. "They want the price high", "keep calm, they have bank limits", "no way, they have tons of money but very few employees".....

THE ONLY REASON A COMPANY IS DELAYING PAYMENTS TO CUSTOMERS IS THAT THE COMPANY IS RUNNING OUT OF CASH !!!!

Simple as that.

All I know is that I requested a withdrawal on the 23rd of May and about one month later my payment is not even processed yet. This is artificial, the only other option is that they don't have the money to pay.