Bitcoin Forum

Can someone explain to me why anyone would be selling their bitcoins for $100 on Gox?
I don't understand how there can be so many people doing that to cause the price drop on Gox.
Considering that is not much real evidence to say that they are going bust or something - is this really caused just by people panic selling? Or is something else going on.

Serious answers only please.

Lemmings.

Their standard answer is "We sell as everybody sell".

The most ridiculous thing is that there are equal chances to lose both cash and BTC :)

the ones who should not be there on MTgox....

With all the shit going on, would you feel more comfortable with BTC in Gox or fiat in Gox?

You can take legal action if they mishandle one of those two things  :P

I think people are selling off their coins while they can for fear that Gox goes under with whatever they have in their accounts. At least with dollars there's a chance for recovery. You have to remember that the vast majority of Bitcoin owners have a collection of coins in the single digits. A lot of people with a few coins each man... it adds up.

Perhaps Goxbot's are selling fake volume to drive down the price in order to squeeze real BTC out of its customers which Karpeles can then arbitrage on Bitstamp. This can't possibly be the case though as you personally came on here and assured us that everything was fine with Gox and that Karpeles was on the level!

This means that it simply must be the market telling us that Gox is insolvent, that nobody is going to get paid out, and the only chance anyone has of scraping anything from the whole sorry affair is via a lawsuit action or as debtors in bankcruptcy, and for that, only USD talks.....but this can't be the case either as you have been informing everyone for the past two weeks that everything would turn out great!

hmmm... will just have to remain one big fucking mystery then won't it.

It's a complete mystery to me as well. I presume they think it's better to hold MtGoxFiat rather than MtGoxBTC, but if MtGox goes bankrupt I don't think it would matter much.
I am steadily buying MtGoxBTC with my stuck MtGoxUSD (failure of MtGox to remit funds) and will continue to do so until I'm out of cash.
I've already written off the value completely in my accounts, so if (a big IF) MtGox ever recovers I will get a windfall.

That's true.  Exchanging a commodity you can't withdraw for a currency you can't withdraw seems like a foolish thing to do.  The only reason I can think of for dumping bitcoins and getting money, any money, for them is in a bankruptcy court a judge is likely to recognise value in dollars whilst the same may not be true in bitcoins.

One possibility is that the attackers weren't able to get the Bitcoins from their last round of theft off the exchange before MtGox shut down.  If MtGox hasn't yet removed those Bitcoins from their account they likely know they are going to lose the coins anyways so why not create a little chaos.  Plus if they can drive the exchange rate on other exchanges down (maybe not to $100 but down some amount) and buy Bitcoins cheaper on other exchanges.

Of course MtGox could have avoided all this by halting trading when they halted withdraws.

Thank god I set "MatTheCat" to ignore so I don't have to read any more of his whining garbage.

Thanks for the useful comments everyone else!

Lemmings are selling, and people who don't know about the Twinkiegloss fund   :D

Holy shart it's a dump and pump!

Haha this is absolutely WILD. I can guarantee you that absolutely nobody in the entire world correctly predicted this situation a couple months ago - $550 on Stamp and $100 on Gox. In a general sense they may have but come on this is novel and exciting. Bitcoin has this great way of fucking with what everybody expects it to do in a really cruel and bizarre way

And I love it!  ;D ;D ;D can't wait to see what happens next (and please, don't any of you fuckers say "be careful what you wish for" :-P )

I was just thinking this earlier. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction 8)

I've heard this, but are you really 5.5 times more comfortable with GoxUSD than GoxBTC? You have to think that the odds of Gox failing and eventually paying back USD deposits is over 5.5 times the odds of them allowing BTC withdrawals again. The numbers just don't make sense to me, as I explained here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=478014).

If I had stuck funds, I'd totally be long GoxBTC at these prices. Just a 5% chance they allow BTC withdrawals likely has a much better EV than any liquidation scenario at 100 GoxUSD/BTC.

To clarify, it doesn't take a lot of sellers to drop the price to $100, it only takes 1, and no buyer than is willing to buy >$100.

Pretty much this, which makes the gox price rather silly.

I have both fiat and coin in gox. I froze all my actions there. Don't know what to do. Will just sit this one out until I have clarity on things.
Not going to sell for 100$ ... but don't want to buy either. Truth is I want out of there both with coin and fiat.

Fear brings our irrationality in people.. its why as a race we are utter morons. Its in our dna.

Its better than nothing! :D

I agree completely. The only possible logical reason for not buying GoxBTC with GoxUSD right now is because you think the price is going to go even lower for GoxBTC (and plan on buying in later).

It's also possible that if Gox fails, they'll pay back a portion of both USD and BTC balances.

Or on the ground of gox's notorious amateurish behavior the market priced in that there is a high probability that they lost the private keys of their wallets. Therefore they are able to show the coins to the customers, but not to send them.

What is? Losing your cash or losing your BTC?  At least if they reopen withdrawls you will have BTC worth more.  It seems no win to sell on Gox now

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