Bitcoin Forum

We should get some clarity on MtGox:

Are any fiat withdrawals possible or not? A while ago they suspended USD withdrawals, but mentioned that EUR and other currencies would not be affected.
However, EUR withdrawals seem not to work over the past week.

Who in the forum has the same problem or managed to withdraw fiat currencies?

If anyone from MtGox staff reads this, please be so kind and provide clarity and respond.

thank you

they lie when they open their mouth.

even when they answer to this post, you cant believe.

they stopped withdraws since end may/start june (!).


read this, for example.

http://mineforeman.com/2013/06/21/more-info-on-the-mtgox-temporary-hiatus-on-u-s-dollar-withdrawals/


i made the same experience ... so i can confirm this.

https://mtgox.com/press_release_20130620.html


I suspect this was why bitcoin was being sold off from 125 to 95 about a month ago. Now that more people are finding this out more are bailing.

This is the USA government/banking people and their new rules that everyone was talking about. Interesting and expected imho.

We have made three USD wire transfer withdrawals starting from June 12th (8 days before their USD wire transfer suspension announcement).  They told me that even though I requested the first of the wire transfers before the announcement it was still effected.

We have not yet received any of our wire transfers and have had no updates to our support tickets or emails.  5 weeks and counting.  It's very worrisome

Has anyone else received a wire transfer in the past month, whether USD, EUR, or JPY?

doesn't look like it.  Why not just sell your bitcoins in the market place for secure methods? supposed to be p2p any ways not exchange to financial institution to peer.  

If this is true, it is extremely worrisome and bad for the future of bitcoin.
It means the price on MtGox is completely artificial and that price is what is driving the price on all other exchanges.
Not good.

well it doesn't really matter if the price on mtgox is artificially high. if other liquid exchanges are coping with a higher price it means that the price is valid. Anyways I requested a CAD withdrawal about 4 days ago ill let you know how it goes.

I received a wire from mtgox for a large amount.  Took about 1.5 months, and a couple of support requests, but it finally came in.  They're fixing it, and within the next month or less, it should be back to normal. 

I don't think people realize how much volume gox does...  ANY exchange with similar volume will/have run into these issues.

-EP

I cashed out $130,000 from my brokerage account last month. wire transfer was 1 minute after I called. I guarantee you my brokerage exchange account does a million time the volume gox does.

Is your brokerage account with a startup in a different country?  Or is in a well established business that doesn't have to deal with international banking?

I'll bet your brokerage account was in the USA, and you withdrew to a USA institution, right?

International wires are a different story.
Bitcoin exchanges are a different story.

I'm not saying Gox is the best thing since sliced bread, I'm just saying they're the innovator, and the leader, and shouldn't be chastised for leading the way.
-EP

I can't.

Is there any method of withdraw available?

The methods are available, but there is a big queue for them to process before they get to your request.

If you need cash now, buy btc and sell it somewhere else.

If you guys want your bitcoin converted to cash in your US bank accounts you should read this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=237164.0

Why not just make a bitcoin withdrawal, then load the bitcoin for sale at Bitcoin-Brokers for free, who will then broker the sale of your bitcoins...get you higher rates than MtGox rates, and pay you cash immediately into your US bank account?

No wire transfer fees, no waiting, get paid more than MtGox.

Are you fully licensed to transmit money in all 50 states?  If you are not, you are putting your funds and your customer's funds at risk of seizure.

Everybody loves these phrases recently, eh?  @notme, perhaps you should do some more reading re: FinCen before you try to toss BitcoinBrokers under the proverbial bus? Just my 2c, cheers

I have read the guidance and surrounding regulations.  If I am wrong, please tell me where.  Because from my reading, if you but or sell bitcoins for another person (AKA acting as a broker), you need to be registered as a MSB and a money transmitter.  Seriously, I would love to know I am wrong so I can resume some of the activities I feel I can no longer do.

Just stick to your own nerding :)

 ???

IMO the reason for the 10% or so fall over the last couple hrs is no exchange really knows what the right price is. Everyone always counted on mtgox but they aren't paying out. Thus, people are looking at other exchanges and seeing $5-$10 differences in price increases fear of instability, which BTC has always and already has a lot of. I really hope mtgox gets things rolling again soon or this could be horrible for the bitcoin price and community.

Agree with you.
It would be great if MtGox could resume withdrawals

My SEPA withdrawal from the 4th of June arrived today (950€). SEPA seems to work again. I can not confirm if this is true for withdrawals over 1000 Euros. But I trust Gox.

The panic and the allegations go way too far for my taste. Gox has for various reasons lost in a short time many of his virtual withdrawal options (Dwolla, Liberty Reserve, OKPAY). All customers fall back to the normal banking transfers. But they were already at the limit before.

Based on this, are you still solely using MtGox for your TA or will you be looking at other exchanges charts now?

Since Gox can't be called an exchange, the price would be a volume weighted blended average of the top 5 exchanges by volume.  And honestly you could exclude Gox from that price since their rate is artificial. 

You carry it to excess. The prices do converge again. Gox is on the way to normal service.

Many people are selling now on Gox because of the better price. Not everyone lives from hand to mouth. My last withdrawal was on the 4th of June. It arrived today. Not pretty, but acceptable. Gox is usually so much faster. Each exchange office can have bottlenecks from time to time.

Gox is and remains the reference price.

A bottleneck of 2 months isn't a temporary bottleneck.  And your exchange isn't functioning as a true exchange if you can't exchange to USD/wire to the United States!

Yes, outside the Bitcoin world.


The USD withdrawals from Gox depended partially on Liberty Reserve, Dwolla, OKPAY and such services. That's all broken due to regulation. This is not (only) the fault of Gox. It is absurd that you have to register in the U.S. as a money service. Other countries seems to be much more liberal: http://www.coindesk.com/hmrc-uk-bitcoin-exchanges-dont-have-to-register-under-money-laundering-regulations/

There is no proper UK exchange as the banks always close down their bank accounts. Even Bitstamp don't have a GBP account, you have to SEPA wire funds in Euros.

It's all well and good for the tax man to say exchanges don't need to do AML, but if a company can't hold onto a bank account, unfortunately the AML statement is worthless.

Someone in the UK needs to get regulated as a payment institution, until then Brits are using LocalBitcoins or sending Euros.

He goes off Gox's chart for his TA newsletter, which is why I'm asking.

The answer is no.

/thread


Why would anybody still be using MtGox? Cut your losses, take your money out as bitcoin before they stop allowing bitcoin withdrawals as well.

I am in a similar situation. I am waiting on two pre "hiatus" USD wire withdrawals, the first made on 13 June. My support ticket just got a generic answer with specifics as to when the withdrawal would be processed.

I can confirm what OhShei8e says. I tested SEPA with 500 Euro.

Send 2013/07/17

https://i.imgur.com/nXSGr1N.gif

Incoming 2013/07/18

https://i.imgur.com/s3c9gnE.gif


Just to let you know/report.

Im not interested in the bounty and i think SEPA is different than international wire because as you can see, SEPA comes from mtgox Poland Account.

Why is the gap between Gox and the other exchanges getting smaller and smaller? Why the Gox exchange rate does not break up and away? Why SEPA withdrawals work again (not only on Bitstamp also on Gox)?

Yesterday the ASK side of the order book on Bitstamp was totally flat for hours.  ;)

Another reason: Gox sells its own coins. The price went down since weeks. Now it has stabilized somewhat. Maybe Gox is not sad about it. At the end they own the customer funds completely legal, because countless people have bought at exorbitant prices.

So, why would anybody still be using MtGox?  Ask questions about it. ;)

I have had multiple 1k€ SEPA withdrawals waiting for over 2 months now, and the first one changed from confirmed to pending just today, so apparently the money is coming (no money in my bank yet). My status is:

2013/05/14 confirmed
2013/05/10 confirmed
2013/05/08 confirmed
2013/05/07 confirmed
2013/05/06 confirmed
2013/05/03 pending

Good timing too, I was just about to ask them to cancel my withdrawals.

I dont even think of withdrawing fiat money from MTGox.
When I read about it here or elswhere I can imagine it is a big pain.
when I want to withdraw on MTGox I buy BTC and send BTC away - and exchange it elswhere for other coins - I didnot withdraw anything yet
I spent every little coin for other coins - but it doesnot solve the question
 but I think I could withdraw on Bitstamp or BTC-e.com (which is unfortunately right now unavailable which make me nervous)

Depends on when you try it. Gox has time-consuming processes for withdraws. For whatever reason. But if not so many people withdraw it goes very quickly with them too.


All markets except Gox have someday leave the market. This is the price for high automation, rapid growth and the laws of the country of residence.

Gox is much safer but you pay for it elsewhere. A good alternative might be Bitcoin.de in the future, if it becomes a real time market. I expect this for 2015. At the moment they are out of the question. Only one customer to another. This is bad and an invitation to fraudsters of all kinds. But as Gox Bitcoin.de operates in a normal country (Japan/Germany) with an serious judiciary that respect the rights of everyone.

I'm very skeptical because of BTCe in the long term. They are in Russia. This is an authoritarian state like the U.S. or China. While you're very "free" they beat the crap out of you if you get the wrong people in the way. Only to my mind but I do not trade in countries where I would not even go on vacation. I can not expect a reliable trading platform in such a country. Thus actually only remains Bitstamp. Which are at least in the European Union.

The best thing would be an exchange in Switzerland. That would be really cool.  :D

+1 in regards to your opinion of the countries. Fully agree.

Re: Switzerland... a couple of months ago I was in Zurich at a bitcoin meetup. One of the attendees said he had tried to start an exchange by setting up a company account with a local bank - but decided to stop operations after being questioned by local police in regards to receiving 4 flagged transactions from stolen funds.

here are a couple of thoughts based on what I am observing. And thanks so much for all the great insights. Keep it coming since this clarity provides transparency to the bitcoin community.

1. Gox must have a big liquidity problem: they only process small withdrawals. While they don't process larger ones. I know from my own experience and from friends that since more than 5 weeks no withdrawal larger than 3000-5000 USD went through. Let me know if you got a larger withdrawal processed.

2. Based on the above, I believe that the leadership days of MtGox are counted. As I looked today , bitstamp is on track to overtake MtGox as market leader soon. They already are 50% of MtGox today. Providing transparency on my side, I have just cancelled all my USD withdrawals , converted into BTC and transferred to bitstamp, bitfinex or cold wallet. By the way, so far I found bitfinex trustworthy as I had smooth experiences both for trading and USD withdrawals. It seems that others have done the same recently and that may be the reason why the bitstamp /  MtGox spread is narrowing. MtGox is drained....

3. As a consequence, Digital Currency Research will now look into starting to display bitstamp charts. That said, we can reassure subscribers that we are already monitoring bitstamp and the forecast is the same.

It would help if bitstamp prices would be available soon as live charts on Sierra chart and trading view . Perhaps someone could help on this front.

Mt.Gox has made it abundantly apparent that it has poor leadership, and poor work ethic. 

this is really true... Unfortunately for bitcoin.
But looking forward , other exchanges will take over the lead. but they will need to show much better customer service and transparency

It has been reliable thus far, I had never a serious issue and they had lowest fees. But now, things change and this is why I move away.

As incompetent as they are they are still better than bitomat, bitcoinica, TradeHill, that german exchange that had funds frozen a few months ago or BitMarket.  I also suspect that Bitstam or btc-e were just lucky so far.  So yeah MtGox is incompetent - but so are its competitors - choose your poison.  At least you can trade in volumes on MtGox.

Not really. You can have the illusion that you're trading. If you don't get paid, you didn't really trade.

My point exactly.  Its not an exchange. 

trading itself works reasonably well, but even the trading process is outdated.
on almost all brokers worldwide you have stop loss, stop buy, OCO, etc. trading options and on gox there is still only buy and sell possible.
I think it is (1) lack of innovation and (2) terrible customer service and management that let them down

It used to work - just like Bitstam happens to work now.  It is all very risky business .

Gox has told us they can not cope with the current volume. IMHO they simply do not have the infrastructure for large payouts at the moment. So people have to use other exchanges for bigger payout until Gox has solved the problem.


Are you serious? Bitstamps order book seems to have less than 10% of the Gox volume. See for example:

http://mtgoxlive.com/orders
https://www.bitstamp.net/market/order_book/


Sorry, but this is illogical. If Gox would be "drained" the price on Gox would be at multiples of the price on Bitstamp and the Gox order book should be thinned. I do not see such a development. Price narrowing means that the market is still intact, not that Gox has dried. There are obviously enough people who sell Bitcoins on Gox. Nothing has happened yet.


Just to be sure: From now on you will cover Bitstamp, which is currently mainly used for prompt payouts and which has a market depth which is only a fraction of the total market?

I see no good reason for this shift. As long as the market trusts in Gox and trading operates normally, Gox is the market leader because there is the most volume even if it is not traded. Not to trade is also a decision of market participants. Currently the trading volume on Bitstamp is quite high, but there stays no money on the platform. No one left money on Bitstamp. People cash out immediately.


Gox is a multi-currency trading platform with a very powerful and secure API which allows many third-party services. All functions are available through this API. I do not have to use a cumbersome web interface or I can write my own. I'm very, very skeptical with Bitstamp. Bitstamp is technically light years behind Gox. They have only a very rudimentary (and unsafe) API. This would throw us back at least two years. When I see this API I feel like 2011. I can not imagine that many people will use Bitstamp for trading. Bitstamp is only for people who need money fast. People throw their coins in and cash out. This is their only business. The order book is as good as empty all the time on Bitstamp. At the moment they have an important function, because there are no major payouts on Gox. But without Gox Bitstamp (and the Bitcoin) becomes worthless.

They have a well-developed and reliable API and you can do anything with it. There are countless powerful tradebots. Free and commercial in each taste.

They have rewritten their (multi currency) trade engine to eliminate the lags and many more. Technically, they are right at the front.
Gox is not a web developer.

Thanks for your comments: To clarify:

1) We keep using MtGox for the technical analysis as long as they remain number 1
2) We monitor the next largest exchange in parallel to be prepared for a change and also to increase the depth of our research. Currently, the number 2 exchange in trading volume is bitstamp. If others get better and overtake bitstamp, fine. We do not have relationships with any exchange and hence we can make unbiased decisions.

And.. I agree that Gox has improve the trading engine, but as long as they dont improve the versatility (stop orders, O.C.O. orders, etc) and customer service & transparency, there is a risk that they will be overtaken by other exchanges.

I agree, we are trying to push an update soon that will have multiple exchanges because of the going concern with Gox.

In the past 24 hours, MTGOX only had 24 BTC's traded in JPY.  WOW!!!!

and bitstamp has already almost 50% of (low) weekend volume

Market            Last       Volume (24h)   Bid   Ask   High   Low
mtgoxUSD           90.0000   9,592.67   90.48   90.50   93.10   89.00
bitstampUSD   86.0400   4,073.64   85.89   85.95   87.07   84.27

You should look more at the trade volume and less at the order book. As long as you spread out the orders over time and don't try to buy or sell 1000 BTC in one go you can trade large volumes without moving the price very much. Be aware that even though they don't tell in advance, they will require you to submit verification of your identity if you deposit or withdraw fiat frequently.

1. The actual volume of trade does mean nothing. It is much too low. It is perhaps a sign of stability.
2. Is crucial how much money is on a platform. You can not even sell 20,000 bitcoins on Bitstamp. It is ridiculous.
3. If people would really move from Gox to other exchanges, the other exchanges would suffer a collapse.
4. The other exchanges are technically underdeveloped. Their trading systems can not handle large volumes. They can not deal with multiple currencies. They are not prepared for permanent DDOS attacks. There is no API for merchants. Anyway they have poor APIs which makes it very difficult to port sophisticated trading systems. They are not secure. Automatic trading is difficult and uncertain on these systems.

I'm also a member of the Bitcoin Foundation. I see that the subject is no issue there. People do not worry about MtGox, because there is no reason for concern. There is no exodus. Everything is connected to MtGox. No way to change this on the fly. If MtGox would really go bankrupt, someone would buy it and continue to operate. Remember: There are enough Bitcoins to pay off all FIAT client funds on Gox. Especially if the price would rise sharply and people exchange there FIAT in Coins.

I'm only look at the volume. I do not care if the volume is in the order book or in the trades. That can change at any time. But Bitstamp and others have poor volume.

bitstamp has 4.3 k BTC volume and mtgox 8.3k.
if you say bitstamp has poor volume, then mtgox also has poor volume

https://data.mtgox.com/api/1/BTCUSD/depth/full
https://www.bitstamp.net/api/order_book/

The main force is still with Gox. Most people currently do nothing. I assume that many people also have reserves on Gox which not appear somewhere. Particular to avoid tax payments. Do you mean all the people now permanently deposited Millions of dollars in Bitstamp? In Slovenia, with people we do not know? In this case we will see a price explosion on Gox and a demise of the price on all other platforms.

We all do not know exactly what's happening in Gox. Therefore I just do not know whether it wise to work with the most extreme assumptions. Gox has always stressed that all deposits are kept safe (maybe a little bit to safe at the moment). I really do not think Mark is working on a prison stay. I'm quite sure that in the course of the year Gox will solve this problems. In the meantime people can still use Bitstamp for bigger withdrawals.

If you don't think the order book can change at any time you haven't been paying attention. The order book on MtGox is mainly there to manipulate the price. When there are large price movements a lot of those orders will disappear before being filled.

Again: The money still remains on the platform. It is simply a lot of money on Gox. Look at the BID side. How will people get their Dollars from Gox, if you can not make large withdrawals? Not so easy huh?

One thing is certain: If there is a majority against Gox, then the price on Gox will shoot up and people have to sell cheap on other palttforms. Or Coinlab has enough money to absorb all that.

Liquidity is the key factor when it comes to the crunch. And how can you please estimate the liquidity of an exchange? Only the order book gives you an idea ​​how well the platform is filled with money.

Liquidity goes both ways. Mtgox is filled with money that nobody wants very much. Do you think that the people who offer to pay 5-10% more than they would have to on other exchanges and still don't get their orders filled agree that the liquidity on MtGox is good? The trade volume clearly shows that the liquidity is there on Bitstamp if you put up an order in the right price range.

If you know anything about trading, the order book would not be the place to look at for overall liquidity of an exchange.  It would be better to look at the total volume that the exchange has on a daily basis.  The orders in the order book can be cancelled anytime.

I'm talking about (fiat) Market liquidity not about some panic buyers who move the price a few percentage points up.

Market liquidity: "In business, economics or investment, market liquidity is an asset's ability to be sold without causing a significant movement in the price and with minimum loss of value."

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_liquidity

What happens if 50k BTC would be purchased on MtGox to sell them on Bitstamp?
Answer: It's not possible because their is not enough fiat liquidity (money) on Bitstamp.  

Although there is little trading volume at the moment on Gox so this can change every minute.  

Do you seriously think that everyone can sell his fiat in the case of a buy-panic on Gox and sell the bitcoins then on other platforms without fall back to single digits?

I'm glad that normal people not give up so easily as some people do here. I can not believe that some one charge off Gox and believe all would just continue. At least 60% of the fiat money that has been invested in the last years in Bitcoin is on Gox. If this would be gone, then good night. The last one turns off the light. A massiv loss of confidence, the Bitcoin would not recover for years if ever.

You're trying to tell me, that there are many millions of dollars on Bitstamp although the order book is nearly empty all the time?

Most People store their money only on Bitstamp without ever having to bid? Bitstamp is like a savings bank?

We can finish the discussion here. You are right. Bitstamps fiat money has no end. I'm sure now. Their money it's just hidden.  

what is the reason you are so biased and protective about MtGox?

Unless you're using a trading bot that can adjust the orders automatically it is not very smart to put up orders on any of the smaller exchanges that will not be filled while you are watching. It will just give other people an easy opportunity for arbitraging when there are large price movements. MtGox on the other hand is still the largest exchange, so a permanent order there is much less likely to be exploited this way.

If I should decide to withdraw from Gox, then I withdraw entirely from bitcoin trading. On Bitstamp or other platforms I do not store permanently bigger sums in fiat. I have no Yubikey, the API is unsafe and so on. I'm a computer scientist and can not trade on platforms which sends me HTML emails and have the plaintext password in the API calls. Such things causes me physical pain.

So maybe I just buy bitcoins for my money on Gox and store them in my local and well encrypted wallet. Maybe in a few years or so they are worth something. Or I take the fiat money by selling them on Bitstamp but then I have to pay tax and must answer questions of the local tax office. So I think I take the Coins but trading is off for me without Gox.

Perhaps many people do so, and perhaps this explains the low trading volume.

Bitstamp is a funny joke. The trade engine is weak and there is nearly no trading software for Bitstamp while I have dozens ingenious projects for Gox. With what it is supposed to trade on Bitstamp? It takes a simple man in the middle attack to read the cleartext credentials from the API calls. It's impossible for me to use something like that. It's the stone age. And that should be the future? Just because they have fast withdrawals? What happens to the community?

How do you want to do a MitM attack with a plaintext password send over HTTPS?!? As a computer scientist you should know that it is impossible. The advantage of using HMAC over https is very minimal and depends on the details of the client and server implementation (mainly the password storage).

On the other hand, that they don't support API keys restricted to specific functions (trade/withdrawal/..) is indeed a severe limitation.

HTTPS protects in theory against MitM attacks not in practice.

Many programs (especially hastily codet bots) do not care about the
validity of a certificate. They also do not care if they are redirected
to HTTP. ARP spoofing and fake DNS responses in most cases are
sufficient to overcome HTTPS.

Also there is always junk in the trust chains, see eg:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=724929

Therefore I treat HTTPS from a certain level of security just as plain
text. Particularly to protect myself from my own stupidity. How quickly
HTTPS becomes HTTP. A typo or an insufficiently configured proxy can do
that in a second. Seen it all. See it every day.

Security has mainly to do with robustness. Although transport layer
security is basically safe, it is fragile in real life and it depends on many
factors, whether HTTPS is really safe.



Yes, this is really bad.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179586.msg2781660#msg2781660

Looks like bitstamp is about to take the number one exchange spot away from MtGox!

From bitcoincharts:

Symbol	Exchange	24 hr volume(BTC)	24 hr volume(USD)
mtgoxUSD	Mt. Gox	8,196.54	748,447.04 USD
bitstampUSD	BitStamp	8,002.70	689,184.58 USD

HMAC is also only secure against replay attack if the nonce is checked correctly. And for that you need to trust that MtGox did it correctly. I prefer trusting myself that I know how to implement a cert check then having to trust others.


You don't need to trust anything but bitstamp. You can check directly their cert against a saved key. Or their CA cert if you trust them and don't want to update the check if bitstamp updates their cert.

The distribution of order sizes is very different between both exchanges:

https://i.imgur.com/0l893W9.png
https://i.imgur.com/THxIJNB.png

Shows the last 20k transactions (~4days) as amount histogram. Wonder why

May 3rd   Coinlab Suit
May 14th    Dwolla Seizure
June 20th   Temporary Hiatus on US dollar withdraws
July 4th    Resumption of withdraws
July 10th   Changes to Deposit procedures



https://i.imgur.com/H9UxADo.png


https://i.imgur.com/vVqPQra.png


source: bitcoincharts.com

I've started using Bitstamp very recently. So far no problems.

Pretty much instant verification as a customer providing appropriate documentation.

I've decided to stop using GOX. Until they can prove for a period of 6-12 months that they have indeed a professional exchange and team to run such a high volume Bitcoin exchange, I will stay far away from there.

Even the price on gox is "off" when compared to the rest of the exchanges that exist. Roughly $10 gap UP which isn't normal.

I have done exactly the same thing.

Doing the same thing

IF GOX can't give clear cut answers to their customers concerning withdrawals that is THE SIGN you should cut your losses and get your money off of their exchange in the form of bitcoins ASAP.

Gox has been pretty silent ever since the coinlab and dwolla incident. Not a good sign.

No, it's exactly what you'd expect (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=256843.msg2738146#msg2738146) in a situation like this.

That explanation doesn't hold water. Sure, in the short term prices on the fiat non-paying exchange will go up, but that only lasts until the fiat balances are exhausted. If people lack confidence in the exchange they wont be sending fiat there, so the process has an end point where there is no fiat on the exchange, volume drops to zero and price is undefined. The MtGox situation has been going on for months. Wouldn't all pre-crisis fiat balances have been exhausted by now?

Reread my post. This situation isn't normal.

The discrepancy in bitcoin price between mtGox and other exchanges is directly resultant from the inability to make fiat withdrawals from Gox. If this problem didn't exist, it would create an arbitrage opportunity and the free market would quickly bring prices between exchanges to an equilibrium.

The reason there is still so much activity on Gox is because people still use it to convert fiat to btc. Gox has no problem receiving wire transfers, they just seem to have a problem sending them out.

Also, Gox has a more advanced trading platform than the other exchanges. So, a large portion of the activity on Gox is just people trading on the fluctuations in btc with no interest in actually withdrawing their fiat balances. i.e. Today you could have sold 100 btc @ 97 USD and had a fiat balance of $9700 and later today you could have bought 105.4 btc @92 USD. The fact is nearly all of the activity on Gox is just trading like this with no actual withdrawal to USD.

What is unusual is that people are still loyal to gox and using it for this type of trading. Most likely because it still has higher volume and better tools for trading have been developed, so people continue to favor it.

The TRUE price of bitcoin is what you can immediately buy and sell for. What really doesn't make sense is why Gox is still the go to reference for bitcoin price and not bitstamp.

The explanation is of the short term behavior during the early stages of a bitcoin exchange crisis.  Nobody's saying this is a permanent condition.



Well, technically if they're not allowing fiat withdrawals there's no reason why the "balances" should ever be exhausted… or even be related to deposits!  But that's a whole other level of scamminess that I don't think we've reached (yet?).

I have stopped using MtGox, too.

Stopgoxxed :-)
Goxstopped :-)

It is quite normal the the MtGox market share does not go to 0 in one go.
But losing market share from 80% about 6-9 months ago down to about 40% is massive.
Think about if Coke or google lost half of its market share...

This could easily happen if people would stop drinking Coca Cola or searching the internet.  ;)
The trading volume has returned to the level of January. What are we talking about?  

At this moment Gox has $ 13 million in the order book. On the ask side are 115T BTC. This gives a ratio of $ 113 per coin.
Remember that almost all of the dollars will stay on Gox until Gox has solved the withdrawal problem.

At the moment we see on Bitstamp about half a million dollars and a few thousand Coins. What would happend if tens of thousands of coins would be transferred from Gox to Bitstamp? Even if only half of the coins, which are now on Gox would be sold on Bitstamp, we would go back to single digits. But that will not happen in my opinion. Bitstamp has simply taken the role of Dwolla, Liberty Reserve and OKPay for Gox traders. No more and no less. The arbitrage is nothing more than the fee that previously was paid to Dwolla, LR or OKPay. The market has already adjusted to the new conditions.

How should we transfer $ 13 million and more to Bitstamp and why? With all of what is in the accounts there are maybe at least 20 million on Gox. My programs are written for the Gox API. I have no desire to start from scratch on a half done platform like Bitstamp. This is somehow depressing. ;)

I'll take Bitstamp gradually and in addition. It's also interesting because of ripple. But we can not just write-off Gox and all the money. This would be plain crazy and would lead to a massive price drop from which bitcoin probably never will recover. Nobody want that. If Gox goes really broke it will be bought by someone. I'm 100% sure. Bitstamp is only the new Dwolla, Liberty Reserve and OKPay for Gox traders.  

https://www.facebook.com/MtGox?filter=2

I agree with you overall that MtGox is not dead.
All I am saying is that their market share has been plummeting and is likely to continue to fall until they provide more reassurance and better transparency.
In the meanwhile, other exchanges will continue to grow. As they grow, they will also have more profits to reinvest into better trading engines etc which again fuel their growth

MtGox still holds the vast majority of all fiat investments in bitcoin.

I do not see how Bitstamp and others take over. Only in the recent days half a million Dollar seems to have permanently disappeared from the MtGox orderbook. Where have they gone?

You define the market simply as the trading volume. But this is a misleading perspective. The trading volume is meaningless without capital.

On Bitstamp today I do not see more fiat money than half a year ago. They have a higher volume of trading because people use them for withdrawals. Or do People keep all the money on Bitstamp without ever place a bid? I don't think so. The people withdraw from Bitcoin. It was from the beginning just to make a fast buck. Now the party is over.

I hope that I am wrong. But as long as fiat money just disappears out of the system I will not deceive myself​​. The trading volume is not very interesting by now. Bitstamp can also have the highest trading when we go back to single digits.

If we would have the same volume of trade as in March and Bitstamp would take a higher market share that would be very interesting. But this is not the case. Not Bitstamp grows, Gox shrinks. And so the whole market melts away. That is the situation. I hope I'm wrong, but that's what I think.

There is never fiat "in the system". Either you use it to buy coins, in which case you no longer have the fiat, or you don't, in which case the fiat does not belong to the Bitcoin economy. It is also not possible to withdraw from the Bitcoin economy without anyone else entering it. This makes the amount of bitcoins being traded in a given time period (for fiat or goods) the only true measurement for how big the Bitcoin economy is.

The amount of bitcoins being traded is a little bit abstract if they are traded against a strong decreasingly fiat volume.

By this logic it's bad for the Bitcoin economy if MtGox fixes the problem of withdrawing fiat from the exchange. I hope you can see the flaw in that argument.

If people want to make their Bitcoins to dollars no one can stop this but maybe delay. Too many people simply want to get out. This is bad for the Bitcoin economy. Yes.

You would have loved Soviet Russia, where nobody was allowed to leave. For some strange reason their economy still sucked compared to the western countries, where anyone could leave any time they liked.

HaHaHa!  MtGox is the new Hotel California. You can check out any time you like - but you can never leave

Great analogy!

My next withdrawal just changed to pending today, so there were 3 days between withdrawals and 10 days between them being processed. So it's probably going to get worse before it gets better, if ever.

2013/05/14 confirmed
2013/05/10 confirmed
2013/05/08 confirmed
2013/05/07 confirmed
2013/05/06 pending
2013/05/03 processed

This is crazy....
Call the police maybe...

(Borrowed from the song "call me maybe"; it would be funny if it wasn't about serious money)