Bitcoin Forum

Did not see that coming. The last time I look at the mtGox volume as a percentage of other exchanges and it was about 80%

makes sense

So we all collectively hate mtgox now?

If we don't, we should.

That was ancient history.

well, this was also pretty short lived... i guess due to the ddos attack.
mtgox @ 12,052
bitstamp @ 10,796 (how did it shrink?!)

I believe this is a rolling 24 hour volume.  As bad as mtgox is and potentially non-representative their prices is of actual supply / demand, their order book depth is at least 5 times of bitstamp.

Bitstamp is USD only - Mt.Gox has some other currencies too so it's actually ~14661.47 BTC traded on Mt.Gox for fiat money during the last 24 hours.

MTGox needs to address the USD withdrawal issue back to where it was earlier this year where one would request a USD wire transfer and receive it within two days, sometimes even the next day. The press release contains a lot of positive information, but its silence on the specifics of this one issue speaks volumes.

I am talking about withdrawals not deposits so there is no risk to the bank here since the funds are already on deposit with the bank. The problem mentioned was with deposits been credited to the customer account before the bank credited MTGox and wire being returned by the bank leaving MTGox to absorb the loss, if the BTC were immediately withdrawn from MTGox. Even in this latter scenario this could have been mitigated by placing a hold on the BTC in the customers account until the underlying USD wire had cleared.

Assuming Mt. Gox isn't broke, that's true.

It looks more and more like Mt. Gox doesn't have the money entrusted to them. They don't seem to have made significant USD payouts for seven weeks now.

You know what would be hilarious? That they are broke because the went "all in" during the bubble on their own platform.

I guess there's a typo in the press release  ;D

I think that's called "dogfooding" :)

It sure does. ;D

I do not understand why they are transfering money from USA(Europe, ..) to Japan  and back. (maybe they even transfer cache using ships) :-)

Well to make the theory consistent, they might have done that only with their USD, which ironically they might need to pay for their expenses.

Banks and stock brokerage firms do this kind of thing all the time. The point is that you do not release the BTC until you know the USD used to pay for them are good. Otherwise there can be a strong incentive for fraud. What I do not understand is why this will take weeks with wire transfers.  


While I actually do not believe that insolvency is the case here, to the end user it looks very much the same so the trust is eroded.

Hardly surprising if you have been watching the daily exchanges levels, they have just collapsed on Gox and have been setting record lows not seen in years.  Obviously with daily fluctuations their isn't one day when bitstamp permanently goes into the lead but the trend has been obvious for some time now.

The thing to look for now is do BTCs on Gox begin moving over to Bitstamp, the coins should still be movable even if dollars are trapped and people may be starting to realize that the bitstamp price is the REAL sale price for a BTC and the Gox price is irrelevant to a real seller who needs USD now.  The only reason to stay on Gox is if your some kind of whale who wants to buy a thousand coins at the drop of a hat, and from the looks of the trading activity on Gox that is mostly what remains.

It is possible, but insider trading (gox knows how many $$$/BTC are at accounts .. invisible order book) is usually very profitable. Gox can anytime shutdown or publish information with lag ... Only very very stupid person can lose money with such a big power and access to information.

This is actually very important. This is equivalent to doog knowing the server seeds for Just-Dice and he could bet at his own site knowing the results beforehand.

Well you said it, not me. ;) Pirate anyone?  :D

so the trading is just done between BTCs not being hoarded? Is this what you mean?  ???

Yeah, personally I wired money there just to buy some cheap coins around 75. I don't plan on letting go of them there (yet).

and which peak, 101?

There's a cool 1k+ and 500+ askwall on bitstamp & btc-e respectively. Not nearly at the levels we were used to on gox but there is a trend... The rats are leaving.

It would appear if not publicly stated elsewhere that coinbase is now using bitstamp as it's underlying trade engine/pricing service instead of gox.....

This will be interesting when the new American exchanges open their doors. kraken, coinsetter, tradehill, where you at??

Agreed.  At least, as it pertains to normal market participants. I believe a whale can break us out of this equilibrium (more at end of post).

Current, relatively-stable prices are:

Mt Gox - 106.25
Other BTC-E/Bitstamp - 97.50

Price difference of 8.75.

8.75 / 106.25 = 8.25%

At equilibrium, people seem willing to take an 8.25% loss on their funds to have them represented somewhere other than Gox.

I take that to mean that, absent conclusive data, the market speculates there is an 8.25% chance that Gox defaults, or that they will fail to be able to receive their fiat.
(Or viewed from the other perspective, people are willing to assume the additional risk of getting nothing, in exchange for an 8.25% premium when they sell.)

I am expecting this stasis to be broken when a whale decides to leverage the power of his money by driving the price on a non-Gox exchange above the Gox exchange.
A market buy alongside a new support wall, let's say driving the Bitstamp price up to 110 while Gox is at 106.25.

What happens next?
Suddenly, everyone sitting at Gox not wanting to take a hit by re-buying, now has a motivation to buy their coins, as they can now move them over to Bitstamp.
Except this in turn moves the price on Gox back to equilibrium (or more likely, a premium over that, as we are now.)

Which suggests we are no better off than when we began.
Except we're not.

The market as a whole would now be xx users/volume closer to being done with Mt. Gox.
The whale will have won, as he bought coins from 95 to 110, and the resultant price jumps on Gox establish a new floor of 110 for all of those coins.

After the necessary several days of consolidation, he or another will try the same thing again. Each will move price upwards.
At some point, the trick stops working, for one of two different reasons:

1. Not enough volume and users remain on Gox - the well is completely dry, the market just needs to realize it. (This will happen relatively quickly, as volume is easily discoverable data.)

2. The repeated price moves that were profitable for one in fact begins a true rally, one which is not focused on Mt. Gox, but rather, any other exchange.

Seriously, where?

Chainsaw if that would happen (large market order 95-110) on bitstamp i bet in few hours we would be around 100 nothing more - and gox wouldn't even move because of that.

That's why it would have to be a market buy (to move the price to the desired target) accompanied by a new support wall.
Done in one step if you, say, put in a buy order for 10,000 Bitcoins at 110 when the price was at 95.

The volume on the other exchanges, relatively speaking, is still pretty low. Now if they tried running the price to 200, of course everyone would come out of the woodwork and sell into the wall, eating it.
But a modest move that put the price only slightly above Gox, alongside a massive wall. If you were holding coins on Bitstamp, would you sell? How much?

I try to imagine a) my emotional, then logical reaction to theoretical events, which then leads to b) my planned actions, using those reactions as a proxy for market sentiment as a whole.

I've racked my brain for a long time to try to think of a way this logjam could be broken, prior to Mt. Gox either failing or resolving their issues.  This is the only idea I've been able to come up with that seems like it would have a chance.  But it's really just an informed guess.  Or as some might call it...speculation  ;D

The wicked witch is dead!

What do you mean ?

hehe bitcoinity switched places in their list, bitstamp is now the first one.

LOL

bitstampUSD   95.4000   8,440.29
mtgoxUSD   104.0400   8,100.38


I don't get it - why can't Gox perform? It should be a coin printing machine and they mess it up.

I didn't know they were even close.  Well deserved by bitstamp, and a long time coming for the unreliable Mt. Gox.

As always, as soon as things start moving, MtGox gains a lot more volume than Bitstamp, easily twice as much.

HAHA I noticed that too.

Thats because it has more depth and whales still go there.

Bistamp is more representative of small/medium players.

I hate to see Gox go because of how their stupidity causes market action, but.. its well deserved. 24hr volume, Gox only leading by 70%

You will know that BitStamp has definitely taken over MTGOX when a dump on BitStamp will induce a dump on MtGox, not vice versa.

Indeed, that will be the real turning point, it still looks like Gox leads the market, probably because all the whales live their.

MtGox sucks. Kidnapping my money for two months and have no desire to payback. They are scammers, robbers.

Great for me, because I verified both :)

They are not robbers because you deposited your money there and they have no legal obligation to give you back that money.

lol, they have the obligation to exchange and then send money/bitcoin back. (nobody send them resources for charity)

Mt. Gox still has higher volume according to bitcoincharts.  Think we need to kick it a few more times till it dies. 
30d volume Mt. Gox : 551,600  Bitstamp: 268,400
24h volume Mt. Gox:   42.438   Bitstamp: 10,700

EU and my place may have little space due to not too hot.

When people keepanic, they will be happy.