Bitcoin Forum

Is Mt Gox starting to die?

It seems like it, many people are reporting more and more issues with Mt Gox..

It also appears Mt Gox is purchasing other bitcoin related sites in a strange takeover.

Is it time Mt Gox died? Or is some thing new coming?

What site are they buying?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=272088.msg2915037#msg2915037

Happy to see they die, even if I lose money in the process.

Any particular reason why?

Do you think they have a hold on the bitcoin economy?

I don't want to see MtGox die - I just want to have more options and MtGox maybe only retaining 10-30% of the traffic with 4-10 other major exchanges...

Because they are withholding a large sum of fiat from Bitcoiners.
In case they would finally shutdown, all the bitcoins held by them will be migrated quickly to all the other exchanges, however the fiat cannot.
The low supply of fiat and a sudden increase in bitcoin supply will cause the price to drop drastically in the other exchanges.
This will lead to a short-term panic bear market for sure.

Interesting :)

It is all based on faith.  If everyone lost faith in Gox tomorrow, the price would skyrocket on Gox, while depress prices on other exchanges.

    ..

I doubt it, if anything they get more idiots everyday singing up to use the service. I'm guessing they have fast fiat transfers for their big customers like bitpay and other 6 figure daily traders, then just screw all the little people looking to get out small change because it's too much work for them to push some buttons and send a xfer.

If they allowed the deep pockets to withdraw USD or EUR, CAD, AUD etc in a timely manner we would not have the spread because of arbitrage. Furthermore this would actually help the little guy who has fiat trapped in MTGox since they could purchase BTC, withdraw and sell somewhere else without having to pay a 10-20% penalty. If volume is really the issue then expediting the "deep pockets" will go a long way to solving this problem.

Hmm, indeed it appears bitstamp US volume has skyrocketed eating Gox share (I haven't been paying attention)
However that press release says they won't use gox to "determine the exchange rate" doesn't say they aren't using them at all. They may have gigantic darktrades with Karpeles still.

Anyways this can only be good news if Gox is actually dying

Good to hear, sounds like a lot of people are moving away from Mt Gox, seems they are holding the market far too much.

I actually developed a lot more confidence in Mt. Gox when they were notably hassled, and would be happy to see them remain a strong player if they can pull it off.

Just recently I decided to cash out a small fraction of my BTC and decided to bite the bullet and trust them with my identity documentation.  Unfortunately since my drivers license contains a P.O. box in addition to my physical address (common in my rural area where people use the local post office due to mail theft and vandalism) Mt. Gox rejected my verification.

I'm not sure if Mt. Gox overlooked my that my physical address existed accidentally or purposely wish to have excuses for rejecting verification.  In any event if they cannot help me I will have little choice but to take my business elsewhere.

I feel for Mt. Gox and the heaps of trouble foisted upon them by the powers that be, but whatever their actual disposition, the fact that they are under pressure makes it dangerous to keep either fiat or BTC on account with them.  Nothing personal, but one must watch their own asses in this business.

I only submitted documentation last night and got a rejection response in a timely manner which I appreciated.  I've asked them to look again and it is not realistic to bitch about a delay and poor communications yet.  I've seen a lot of complaints about delays from Mt. Gox (and others) and there are only some many weeks in a year so it does not make much sense to defer taking action on looking around for alternatives.  If indeed Mt. Gox is not anxious to verify people and thus allow them to proceed with actual fiat withdraws it is not a good sign.

---

BTW, anyone who wants to buy BTC in the 100-200 range (for now), see my post in currency-exchange section.  I planned to do it person-2-person if I can find a counter-party, but with appropriate escrow it could work to go with a remote transaction of some sort.  I'm in no giant hurry and can accept transaction latency as long as it is theoretically impossible for there to be theft or fraud.

I felt like they had their chance, and their fate is a result of their performance.  I think they could've handled the business much better.

You can bet on it. The cumulated bids from the order books:

Mt.Gox: 14,433,186 USD
Bitstamp: 1,324,419 USD

GoxUSD/BitstampUSD Ratio: 1:11

You're a few months late, but welcome to Bitcoin nevertheless.

I still can't believe you are talking about order books.... look at VOLUME or better said, ACTUAL TRANSACTIONS!

I am aware of both. But the volume changes rapidly while the USD ratio in contrast remains constant. And as long as this is so, nothing changes. Gox had from January to April more volume than Bitstamp throughout its whole lifetime. As long as the ratio does not change and (much) more FIAT is flowing to Bitstamp you'll never see large volumes on Bitstamp. It's amazing how little you and others know about very basic economic effects. The trading volume is just almost irrelevant, except for the fact that it is very low.

What we see at the moment in economics it's called the "network effect". Everyone is waiting for Gox. And as long as that is the case there will be no increase in trading volume.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

And yes, "everyone" is now working with Bitstamp. Bitpay and all the others. The strange thing is that the volume still remains puny. Could it be that there is no real businesses with Bitpay and all the others? How much volume do they have in a month? It must be a subset of the volume of Bitstamp ... oh my god ...

Could it be that Bitcoin is used 90% for speculation?

For sure: 90% of speculative fiat employed is lying on Gox.

 ::)


That's exactly what I've written.

They all no longer use Gox, but they do not produce obvious volume on their new places of activity. => quod erat demonstrandum  :)

Coinbase, Bips and Bitpay simply have no appreciable volume. All what they have are loud-mouthed press releases which make clear how important they are.  :D

If they use Gox, they either have exclusive contracts for getting their fiat out, or they have deep investor pockets and are trying to cash in on the spread.

What are the other possible explanations for these services continuing to use Gox?

It's not the others; it's you. The volume of the past is irrelevant. More and more market share is travelling from Gox to Bitstamp - the last 30 days Bitstamp had already nearly half the volume of Gox - if you still didn't realize it.

Think what you want, but you only concerned with relative values. The market volume is very small at the moment.   

In some situations a bicycle is faster than a car in city traffic. But no one would argue that a bicycle is generally faster than a car.

As soon as we are back on the highway, you will understand what I mean. Once Gox has solved its problems, we will have again trading volumes as seen earlier this year. Bitstamp missing the money and the trading engine for that. Bitstamp's just a bike.

For Gox it is crucial that they can work with their old business partners together again. Especially with Dwolla. This can happen very quickly. I think later this year. They are now registered and once all the formalities are cleared it continues.

Gox is neither a car nor a bicycle; it is an Undead, a Zombie. It is an analphabetic construct that is not able to give support and informations to their customers for weeks and months.
If I would serve my customers this way with robotic copy/paste 'answers', I would be forced into bankruptcy long before.
Companies with such service have a high probability to go bankrupt.



Pure guessing. You should write: If Gox will be able to solve its problems ....

When I read these threads about Gox, then I guess that the smart money left this place already. The remaining money is the dumb money.

When people start filing complaints with the US SEC and the Japan Financial Services Agency, that will happen.

Yes, first you throw them sticks between the legs and then you close it because they hobble.  :P

Wait so Mt. Gox's customers did this to them?

Some try.

Anyone?

So simple question

If i want to cash out 30btc to Australia

Should I use Gox or are transfers to Australia cactus as well ??

You don't seem to get the point.

ONLY Japanese transfers are working in a reasonable time frame.

Everything else is BS.

They are sending 10 Swift a day, and have something like a "50k euro" daily limit on their SEPA transfers.

That's what makes me think the customers' money isn't there. It's a classic red flag for a fraud scheme when you can't get your money out.

Exactly.  Cough MF Global cough.

As soon as they clear up whatever the trouble is, you will see a large amount of fiat withdrawn from gox, and there might be a slight bump in volume as people take advantage of the prices and get their money out, but once all that fiat is gone from Gox there will be nothing left to trade and they will dwindle into a forgotten footnote in the history of bitcoins.

I'll present a hypothesis which, like most of my hypothesis, I don't necessarily believe.

What if Mt. Gox is making a boat-load of money (which I've always suspected to be true) but their biggest source of grief is AML (which I also expect true) and it is complicated by a lot of legacy customers who are a bit shady and not vetted in the same manner as newly verified persons.

The way to make money in this business is to take the low hanging fruit.  In this case, that would be the obviously clean people who are speculators and what-not.  As a corollary, one could gain an extra competitive advantage over one's adversaries by foisting the problem children off on them.  This would not be unlike the calculus which appears to network providers who are probably not exactly broken-hearted when a bandwidth hog gets pissed and switches service providers.

Anyway, a good way to lose some undesired baggage would be to go through a protracted period of 'problems' in getting people their money.  Or at least certain groups of people.  That is what I would do if I were running things, and also why I have no desire to be running things.

A more likely hypothesis is that Mt. Gox is simply struggling mightily with mainstream financial institutions, regulators, and law enforcement.

The least likely hypothesis in my mind is that Mark is running out of capital unless he has kind of a world-record appetite for hookers and blow.

Bitcoin itself would be forgotten.

To say it with the Borg: These are irrelevant.

The US Govt seized $2.9 million from Mt. Gox's Dwolla account:

http://finextra.com/News/FullStory.aspx?newsitemid=25134

That explains why they're having a hard time making withdrawals... because they are out $2.9 million. They can only handle x amount of withdrawals a day to keep up with revenues and expenses.

CAMPBX

they were/are making 100k per day, 2.9 mil is 29 days, its no problem.

You think exchange volume is from a few thousand speculators circle jerking nickels off each other? Gox makes their nugget off those shady legacy customers. They couldn't afford to lose them, and they have as a result of this fincen/AML bullshit. Now we're just watching the inevitable resulting implosion. They staved it off with a shitload of insider trading on LTC, but that was a prop and is going up in smoke after being played too hard. They have nowhere else to turn.

I don't know if Karpeles is up to the task or not, but I'll bet that he at least had something of an NSA-lite (and particularly rich) trove of data on a lot of people.  Most are likely garden variety crooks, but not all.  I think a lot of people have played in the Bitcoin market over the years, and some of them are likely in the 'protected class'.  If Mark can and does play that card he can likely end up situated wherever he likes as the Bitcoin ecosystem moves forward.

Oh ya, from what I can glean (and/or invent in my paranoid fantasy world) the real Bitcoin activity happens in dark pools and generally opaque systems.  So you are right to characterize Mt. Gox activity as 'a few thousand speculators circle jerking nickels of each other.'  But partaking in these circle-jerk sessions from time to time is probably a useful (if messy) means to achieve certain objectives for a lot of the real players.  Or at least has been at an earlier time in the formation of the ecosystem.

What do you guys think of this? http://buttercoin.com/ (http://buttercoin.com/) Just received investment from Kevin Rose and other big names.  Looks like if you are capable, you will easily be able to start your own marketplace.

So somebody claims to offer a hosted package for running a Bitcoin exchange. That doesn't solve any of the problems on the money side.

You can buy software packages (http://www.inntron.com/core_banking.html) for running a bank. It doesn't make you a bank.

I'd have to assume they have something figured out.  I doubt Google would be investing in them if they didn't.

They do have something figured out. They want to dump the white-box Bitcoin software product and get into the remittance business, like Western Union.

At the moment their site displays a blank page. It's loading lots of CSS, but there's nothing displayed.