Bitcoin Forum

I couldn't help but notice that BTC price varies significantly depending on which exchange websites you consider. In some cases the difference can be up to $100 (see Bitstamp and MtGox). What's the most reliable source?

MtGox is distorted because its virtually impossible to withdraw fiat from it.

The "real" price is bitstamp / btc-e

Arbitrage

You can't really arbitrage when it takes nearly 3 months to get any fiat out of mtgox.

Well I think, Mt.Gox has large user base distributed in various countries. They're more account than any other exchanges and most of them are buyer. And where ever buyer are more than seller, one can expect price to be high.

If MtGox price is distorted, why is it often taken as a reference in transactions? Or is it just sellers that intentionally take it as a reference to profit from its higher price?

It's our first exchange, the defacto standard but we're slowly switching to bitstamp

I think MTGox should go back to trading Magic the Gathering cards and drop bitcoins  :D

They'll close soon. It's a burden now and the owner is done making millions and can go on permavacation. That fucker was at the right place at the right time. Insanely lucky.

So can we safely say the community now assumes Bitstamp as the 'official' BTC value?

Almost

For transactions in USD: yes.
For transactions in Euro and other currencies, Mtgox still works fine. (Sending and receiving money works although you need 6 weeks to withdraw)

6 weeks is still a "distorted" market.

I always get my prices from bit tamp and btce. The problem with sites like preev that take an overall average is that they're often skewed by mtgox

What is "bit tamp"?

Am I the only one who still doesn't get it? Why don't billionaires buy a crapload of BTC elsewhere for 800$ elsewhere and sell them for 900$ on mtgox?? To me it sounds like an almost instant 12.5% profit with a 6 week payout time?
Do we expect mtgox to take the money and run?

Pretty much

Sell them for $900 and then do what with the cash? The problem is you can't withdraw fiat from gox. People have been queuing for 6 months to get money out of gox.

Do you see why people don't do it? Gox is likely to go out of business before people get their fiat out.

Fly to japan, get a free vacation. 0 risk.

I've got a Japanese mate in Tokyo. He says the Gox staff is "tiny" (not by height, by volume). He's going to test for us how quickly a Japanese national can get his fiat out to a Japanese bank account. Our current best guess is "very slow", because its taking weeks for him to even get verified. Typical gox

It's not "arbitrage," it's that the arbitrage costs are too high. You can wait months to get your money because the price will have changed so much. If it was really easy to get money out of all the exchanges then the price difference would be basically non existent.

It takes 2 weeks to transfer to a Japanese bank.

Wow, big risk  :o

Let's do a group sell, arbitrage this mother fuckrr and standardize the price. The only thing that keeps exchanges the same is arbitrage and us brave souls will do it.

Would be fun to close that abomination down - though we will probably never see our BTCBTCBTC again *SIGH*

Are you willing to die for Bitcoin?

There's another thread for that: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421463.0

...but nah, freedom in general - maybe.

And the risk that gox goes out of business whilst you are in the middle of attempting a big arb. And there is a risk, because gox doesn't know the f*** what it is doing. If it did, it would let people take fiat out.

Idk but somebody needs to arbitrage them to standardize that mother fucker

My man in Toyko is working on it now :)

People like you have been saying this since last summer  ::)

But effectively they have taken the money. They are holding onto peoples $$$$ illegally. Gox can't say "processing withdrawal" on the website and then refuse to answer support questions about why after six months no money ever gets sent out. That's theft in itself. How many millions of dollars do you think they have now of peoples' money waiting for fiat withdrawals? Are you saying these will ever happen?