Bitcoin Forum

Mt Gox says the volume is about 2000 bitcoins.  But bitcoinwatch says 115000 was sent the past 24 hrs.  I wonder if this is a result of dark pools.

It could simply be that people are sending bitcoins from one account to another.

Beside, MtGox exchanges are done internally, not reported to the bitcoin network.

Yep, mtgox volume does not appear in bitcoin volume. Though, I  made some trades during the last days and I'm pretty sure there are some dark pools close to the bid/ask prices. I traded and orderbook volume didn't change, I could even trade a lot more than orderbook volume would have allowed.

Note that "bitcoins sent" includes change transactions.  I would love to exclude those, but there is no feasible way to do so.

I think you misunderstand something. Mtgox trades show up in mtgox volume and not on the block chain. Bitcoinwatch tells us how many coins have been sent on the chain (and change as mentioned). Either can be bigger than the other with no contradiction.

Looking at the volumes on mtgox I very much doubt there are any dark pool trades at all. Daily volume is about BTC3000. Minimum darkpool order is USD1000. I don't know for sure but I think there'll have to be a lot more activity before people start dumping a thousand dollars on the exchange and expect to get filled.

Ok, I misunderstood. You are right.  Mt.Gox volume seems has been low since they started dark pools.  Who knows what is going on behind the scenes.

I'm not sure it's the dark pools or the transaction fee instead. Before, transactions were free...

You're kidding me. The transaction fee is sub 1%. That's pretty low.

There's a big psychological difference between "free" and "non-free"... there are some interesting experiments there.
That might have decrease the number of orders somehow... but you may be right too, it's a very tiny fee.... anyway, I was just speculating...

I think it doesn't really matter whether the transaction fee is .1%, .65% or 10%, there is a psychological effect to having a fee no matter how much.
If people really want to buy/sell it doesn't really matter that much, but for people merely playing with their bitcoins like me it made a huge binary difference :)

I hope once the scams where covered the fee gets taken away

Yeah, if it doesn't I'm just going to start a similar site, pay for the server, coding, improving the look and usability, attracting traders, handling complaints, and processing payments. Actually I'm a little busy, maybe someone else will do it.