Bitcoin Forum

https://mtgox.com/press_release_20130704.html

Statement on Resumption of Withdrawals and Improved Banking

TOKYO - JAPAN - July 4th, 2013   

Dear Mt. Gox Merchants, 

Mt. Gox is happy to announce that global account withdrawals have now fully resumed as of today, after several days of testing our new system for processing transactions. We want to keep you informed about our progress in this arena, and especially assure our customers that their funds are accessible. 

Progress in the Previous Two Weeks
While we announced that there would be a temporary hiatus on withdrawals, during our testing over the past two weeks we managed to process over $1,000,000 USD to customers. As this required a great deal of manpower and was not a perfect solution, we are quite happy with the progress made despite the conditions. 

New Banking Partners
Mt. Gox has now formed relationships with several new banking partners both in Japan and around the world, and we are still in the process of finalizing even more. This means that we will have increased stability and ability to transmit withdrawals going forward. 

Current Back-log
The new system is just now getting under way, so there is still a back-log of withdrawals that we need to process. Our team is working hard to increase transaction speeds, but there is approximately a two-week back-log we need to overcome. It will take a few weeks to get back to normal, and we thank you for your patience during this time. 

Moving Forward
We at Mt. Gox are proud to be one of the first advocates and entrepreneurs in this growing ecosystem, but much still needs to be accomplished to bring trust and stability to a mass market. In addition to our improved withdrawal system and new trading engine, we are very excited about the innovation happening across our industry and around the world. Despite the hiccups, these are exciting times and we are eternally grateful for your confidence and support along this bumpy road.   

Regards

Mt.Gox Co. Ltd Team.

Assuming this is true, I suspect they might have deliberately withheld the announcement to cause panic and drive the price down, i.e. dump and pump

probably the best news regarding BTC today. If it's true.

That's good news, price started going up.

Anyone with Citibank can let us know if they are able to withdraw their money? and how long will the process take?


Is dwolla still out of question?

They obviously tried hard to increase the price by delaying withdrawal and offering bitcoins instead of EUR/USD withdrawals.

   
2013/06/13
15:16:48
   withdraw   Status: confirmed   $10,000.00000   $4,408.06989
Withdraw to account BENDIGO BANK LIMITED

Still not processed, so the $1M must have all been withdrawals requested before 13 June.

We have no way of verifying that they actually processed over $1,000. It's just their word.  I for one know for a fact that my withdrawal request just sat their with "CONFIRMED" for the 2 weeks. I finally cancelled it through their support and got my funds to another exchange by purchasing coins (took a minor loss due to Gox's higher BTC prices).

Also, they now state that they have a "BACKLOG". So if you put in a withdrawal request, you might end up waiting another month (if you even receive your funds at all) whilst they address their "BACKLOG".

Please report here when you receive the wire

My wire from 6/14 was just cancelled at my request.  They have a cash crunch for shizzle.

Still not processed. Will update if anything happens.

This is like waiting for Moby Dick to appear in the middle of your living room . . .

Patience is a virtue.

OK here's what I don't get:


But:


They have this new great system in place, but the 2 week backlog of withdrawals is going to take "a few weeks" to get through?

You'd think that if they had implemented a new, better system, they'd be able to get through the 2 week backlog (minus the million dollars in transactions they claim they have already processed while "testing") in less than 2 weeks, not more than 2 weeks.

Something still smells fishy here.

I know we've butted heads in other topics over this. But seriously man, I'd like to hear about exactly what kind of signs you need before you start worrying about gox. Rome is burning all around you and you're the town idiot standing in the middle saying, "oh, this is nothing! we'll be just fine!"

So do you care to provide a list of signs that you would need before you start to worry about gox? ??? ::)

I made a bitcoins withdrawal today from gox and was processed within a couple of minutes.

Yesterday they cancelled my wires that were supposedly processed 6/14 (at my request).  I still see no evidence they aren't just jawboning to try to get people to deposit fiat so they can wire it right back out.  Probably insolvent fractional reserve.

My guess is that Mt. Gox did what so many crooked brokers have done in the past - they speculated with customer funds. 

Here's a typical story:

Just think, all those millions of dollars in some bank account, where interest rates are zero.  It must have been so tempting to put them into something with more earning potential.  Nobody would every know, right?

Then the investment lost some money. And, like so many crooked brokers in the past, they tried to get out of the hole by a riskier investment. That didn't work either.

So they tried stalling on payouts while encouraging more people to send them funds. That worked for a while, but then the customers got suspicious. Then a few big customers demanded their money, and the whole scheme collapsed, taking the business into bankruptcy.

It's a story that's been repeated many times. MF Global, Madoff, Barings... And now, on a rather smaller scale, probably Mt. Gox.

Well...um...some people might assume it.  I mean that's kind of how banks work after all.

Wonder who is dumping all that BTC on gox now... Someone who needs cash maybe?

Probably the same group of people that buy gold and silver on margin. And people who are not lucky to hold either Euro, British pound or Aussy dollar.

USD went up by a lot in the last few weeks.

Wasn't it just last month that you were accusing me of spreading FUD (when I said my transfers were delayed) and that everything at Mt.Gox was great and you were receiving transfers in less than 5 minutes?

Now Mt. Gox are jawboning and insolvent?

That's quite a U-Turn...lol

So is there any evidence that they really do transfers now?  Has anyone received USD from MtGox this week?

No doubt they sux and hold customer money. But I do not think they are insolvent.

Admittedly a U-Turn. My comments were and are based on my experiences, which includes multiple frozen wire from 6/14 onwards.  Prior to that it was all roses with many transactions. 

I just try to construct the most plausible scenario based on the evidence I know to be true, your perspective will lead you to a different one.  Then we all get on this forum, post our thoughts and apply a Bayesian inference filter to extract the most probable one and act on it.  Personally, I will not hold any coin or cash on Mt. Gox till its clear the issues are resolved from multiple forum reports and my own 'canary' wire that is still frozen from 6/18.

I would consider the following events as real indicators of "back to normal":

1. Bitpay uses MtGox to determine bitcoin value again: http://blog.bitpay.com/2013/06/important-update-on-bitpay-exchange.html?oid=1039_1

2. Bitinstant accepts MtGox as funding source again

I won't leave a satoshi on gox before at least one of these happens

Unless and until a few weeks go by with zero complaints about delayed withdrawals from Mt. Gox, don't put any money in.

Many readers here don't realize how abnormal Mt. Gox's behavior is. With real-world brokerage accounts, when you order a withdrawal by wire transfer, it's in your bank account within two working days. Usually one. Often the same day.  A brokerage house that fails to deliver on a withdrawal is in trouble. Big trouble. If a firm has major problems servicing withdrawal orders, it's big news in the Wall Street Journal. Other firms refuse to deal with them. In the US, FINRA regulators ask hard questions. Lawyers and auditors descend on the firm. The firm may go under within days. That happened to Lehman Brothers, Drexel Burnham Lambert, MF Global... In each case, within days of default, the firm was out of business.

Mt. Gox is trying to play in the big leagues now. They don't get to act like they're dealing in trading cards.

mtgox is waiting people to cancel withdrawals, and buy btc. We need the price up :)

For the record Gox worked consistently well for me, done 3 withdrawals of non-negligible amounts and I got the money in my bank in 2/3 days. SEPA transfers, Europe customer.

Dates on these withdrawals?

wrong verb tense to be relevant.

works?

There is 1 implausible scenario (Mt. Gox official explanation) : Mt. Gox sends so many wires it overwhelmed the 2nd largest bank in Japan's ability to send wires.

There are 2 plausible scenarios, one bad, one worse.

Scenario 1) There is major regulatory pressure that has come down and we are only seeing a bit of it from our vantage point. Dwolla seizure is just the tip. Many banks are refusing to accept wires from Mt.Gox account.  I heard from OneFixit on IRC that his wire from Gox to Citibank never showed up, he called Citibank and they said they refused the wire and will refuse all future wires from Gox.

Gox is frantically trying to open accounts in other banks or in other names to disguise the origin of the transfers so it can resume sending wires out.  How long before they get caught?   This is the bad scenario.

Scenario 2) Gox does not properly segment customer funds, and without regulatory oversight the recent secular shift in market sentiment to more bearish tone has caused a major imbalance in wires in vs. wires out.  They don't send wires out because they don't have a segregated pile of customer money.  They spent all the money on hiring new people, or expanding, or speculating, who knows.  All that matters is they don't wire out till people wire in.  Gox is not a bank that has many loans out, where fractional reserve banking works, it is an exchange or brokerage where customer accounts should be segmented.  Gox has been in seg fault for weeks and would be instantly shut down if there was any sort of regulatory oversight on their operations.  This is the worse scenario.

Take your pick, they both suck.  Or take plausible scenario 3, which is 1 + 2 simultaneously.

The three of them were done in June, while there was no "USD hiatus", but it was still a moment where people wrote in this forum about withdrawals taking MONTHS to clear, especially SEPA ones. As I said, not my experience at all: 3 separate and significant withdrawals cleared in 2/3 days (SEPA) in June, just as fast (or even faster I'd say) that pre-bubble.

I need to say this because I've been reading so much FUD about Gox since April that I really don't know if I'm "the lucky one", or is just that there are thousands of customers of Gox (let do not forget they have tens of k's of customers ATM) that have no problems so they just stay quite, while the few that have delays obviously complain bitterly on this board.

Then I read about people saying that "as soon as a big customer ask for a withdrawal Gox will be crumble", and this doesn't seem the case at all. Since April millions of $ have flown out of Gox without any problems, in fact all the reports for "delayed withdrawals" I see in here are for smallish amounts.

BTW: I'm fully verified, including notarized docs.

Bitpay and Bitinstant stop accepting mtgox means these big players have difficulty in withdrawal

Have you done any withdrawals since the USD block; or are you planning to?  This way we can follow their progress.

No, I didn't and I do not plan to do. Next thing coming out from Gox will be BTC ;)

If you want to exchange EUR to BTC would recommend https://eur.bitcurex.com/

I checked it works and is very fast.
SEPA transfer took just one hour!

Very easy and simple system

How is that even possible?
It takes 1-2 business days to process a SEPA transfer for a bank.

I suspected scenario 1 several weeks ago when the dwolla seizure happened.  The halting of US withdrawals fits well into that scenario.  It's possible they are scrambling to comply with KYC requirements, but this shouldn't be an issue for people who have already been validated.