Bitcoin Forum

Hey all,
I'm confused regarding the various markets of BTC. mtgox is always highest but I've heard they're having issues with USD withdrawals. Then the other two for USD seem to be btce and bitstamp.

How do I go about deciding what market I should use? Is it simply a matter of go with whichever is worth the most? Are some more reliable than others? Fill me in as best you can on how these markets work, if you can.

It's annoying because I want to track the BTC value in USD via apps on my Droid, but some apps use one market, others use an average of all markets, so it's a pain to figure out what numbers I should be using to predict how much money I'm making via mining.

Don't use gox. You don't have to use those markets either. There are others or you could buy from the forums here, just use a trusted escrow and you should be set. You might be able to find a better deal here than on those platforms too.

Preev is a average of a handful of the major exchanges if you want to get your price from there: http://preev.com/btc/usd

As of now I have no plans to invest in BTC, I prefer to mine since there's no risk (I certainly don't know enough about crytocurrencies in general to dare wagering money on it.)

But I just want to know how much I should expect to sell the BTC for at the current market. Do you not sell BTC directly to a market? Do you have to sell directly to other people (can you detect my level of cluelessness by now? :P)

If you generally only sell BTC to other people, then is the average market worth what you sell for?

mtgox for sure, btce and bitstamp will follow it eventually

If you mine you also invest in BTC. You have to buy your gear and you have to pay the utility bill.
If you want to sell to other people you can use localbitcoins.com

Do you already have mining gear? If not, you'll kinda be wagering money on it by investing in a mining rig. You can sell coins for whatever people will pay for them, but generally people use either preev or another exchange for the price.

Well, I only have the equipment because I built the computer a year ago as my first custom gaming build, I only just realized its potential to mine the past couple of days. So essentially I never invested a dime into mining, I just ran into it with equipment I already had.
Also, I don't pay my electric bill, low-income housing ftw ;D
The only thing I'm arguably investing is the lifespan of my 7950, which runs 73-75C when mining. Though I've heard it's potentially worse to go from idle to gaming consistently than to run at full-load all the time.


But I digress, I'm getting the feeling at this point that people typically buy BTC for the average market price among all markets?

Pretty much, but some may offer you a price of a specific exchange or you can state which one you want to use.

Makes sense, thanks!

Are there any trustworthy BTC to USD conversion methods that are more "automatic" (for lack of a better word). Meaning, not involving two people agreeing on a price and making the transaction. As in, are there any websites or anything that you can simply exchange your BTC for USD based on the current market?

People say good things about Bitstamp for sure and I've managed to get verified with them without major problems, I would always advise against though trading in Bitcoins to profit in the dollar for the simple reason that while it might seem pretty enticing right now I think the price is going to get so high people will be less and less willing to sell their Bitcoins for USD and then of course there's the very real threat of a total collapse so if you happen to have all your holdings in USD you're going to get fucked over big time.

Always always diversify, don't just stick with one thing, every trader out there will tell you that if they know their stuff.

I just started mining the past couple of days and only have .005 thus far, so nothing I want to cash in. I doubt I'll be cashing in anytime soon unless I really want a hardware upgrade that badly. I'd rather wait til the end of the year at the very least and have a nice ~$600 cashout (at the current market anyway).

I just want to know my options for when that day does come around that I want to cash out.

You can swap them for US dollar at several exchanges. You just set what price you want to sell them at and the exchange will auto sell them when it hits that price.

Give Coinbase a try because that's a good exchange market

I hope you are not directly mining bitcoin with your gpu, as it will not inefficient.
With gpu, you should be mining scrypt-based altcoins, and selling them for bitcoin. ;)