Bitcoin Forum

Folks,

I would like your input on which bitcoin exchange you deal with and why

I want to stick with one exchange to trade 10, 50, and maybe up to 100 btc per trade.

My take on the 3 aforementioned:

- MT Gox seems to have the volume and the trading actron, but it light of recent problems, like pausing for 10 minutes in the middle of a rally, I am very leery of using them. Am I over-reacting? will I get Goxed when there is another rally?

Tradehill seems to execute orders competently, but their volume is low; they do seem to follow MT Gox closely price-wise. Should I follow MT Gox action, but use Tradehill to trade the BTC?

CampBX is brand new and not sure what peoples experience is with trading with them. They seem to provide more options for selling/buying.

Your input would be most appreciated. And big thanks to all my Bit Peeps.

SJ

You should use Dark Exchange: https://github.com/macourtney/Dark-Exchange

 ;D

Duly noted, thanks.

I would stay away from Mt. Gox due to the simply horrible security procedures we've seen in the past few weeks. The platform was basically full of holes, an entire period was rolled back, there were lies about what happened, and so on and so on.

I would personally stay away from Tradehill due to their aggressive referral marketing (which has caused its fair share of spam on here already), and the fact that they still do not seem very responsive to the community (plus, they have a closed platform).

While CampBX is new, I would (if they also supported European customers) go for CampBX, because they have been extremely responsive so far (basically fixing and/or seriously looking at everything that was posted by community members in a matter of hours), they have had an independent security audit (even if it's from a questionable-quality party such as McAfee), did not hesitate to share a lot of information about it, and so far seem very professionally set up and are very responsive. Time will tell if this keeps up, and the lack of support for European customers is definitely an issue (also in terms of trading volume).

The above is just my personal opinion, and just counts for when I *had* to choose between the three you mentioned.

Right now I am personally looking into http://www.intersango.com/ as it is run by Bitcoin Consultancy (genjix etc.) on an open-source platform, and has support for SEPA transfers from what I have read. I definitely think that is the most reliable exchange at this point in time (together with Britcoin), even though their volume is very low.

Thanks Joepie,

I am torn over MT Gox, lots of action, but frustrating security issues like you mentioned. Thanks for the heads up on intersango.

Best,
S.

IMHO only one exchange has a "face".

I have found that Tradehill responds to email and they post here in their own name.

MT Gox never responds to email.

Any other new exchange must first proof themselfs.

What are people's opinions of ExchangeBitcoins.com, seems to have the most appealing website to me.

So do Britcoin (thus also Intersango).

I haven't traded outside #bitcoin-otc at all for a long time now, but let me tell you I've never had *any* issues with the responsiveness of mtgox, both from Jed initially and Mark now. They always replied to my emails promptly, and the IRC channel during the crisis was also a good place to ask stuff, though obviously the repeated "are we there yet?" remarks were completely ignored.

I'm not saying they have the man power needed to resolve the crisis or that they are not over their heads with requests and tickets, I don't know, but my experience is that they are very serious and honest. Just my 2 bit cents

We have posted some information abour our current tickets status and are doing our best to reply to everyone, which means more than 5000 tickets in the past 3 weeks.

If you want to see our face you can just cole to irc://irc.freenode.net/mtgox - it works too.

No offense to the other guys, but MtGox is the only place that really matters.  TH has some volume and CampBX has a lot of nice features, but neither have the numbers that Gox does. 

What I'd like to see on Gox is more advanced trading features like auto stop loss, and possibly a pay-for 0 commission service. 

I'd go with Mt. Gox mainly because of the better liquidlity it provides. The other two would be nice to trade but the spreads just aren't as attractive Mt. Gox.

Out of the 4 I've used, here's my ranking:

1. CampBX. I trust it, the fees are low, and it's finally getting some liquidity. 'Nuf said
2. Tie with Mt Gox and Tradehill. Mt Gox has a better interface, but I trust TH's security a little bit more.
3. Bitcoin7. I did not trust this website at all. At least one of the guys running it seems like a sleazeball.

I kind of like the smaller exchanges better. Even a small-time user like me can start a run or a rally. So that's fun.

Gox IMO.

TH has a clunky trading interface.

I find Bitcoin7 to be good for quick profits too.

CampBx is the trader's platform hands down for me.  Plus the margin account, advanced order abilities and shorting is very useful.

To paraphrase a reply posted on another forum yesterday regarding Bitcoin:

"So you walk up to a few construction workers working on the foundation of a building, and start shouting 'This is not going to work guys! You can't even live in that, it has no roof, this is useless! You're wasting your time!'"

Especially CampBX seems to have the features and security (from what I have seen), but it has only existed for what? 3 days? Of course it has a low trading volume. Is that a reason to not use it? No, that's a reason to start using it and increase that volume!

bitmarket.eu

I signed up with the first 3 you mentioned. Will be trying all of them out, with small action and see how they perform. I am leaning towards your assessment. I like the idea of having more control with Market / Limit price stuff.


By the way, anyone know, if the are charts anywhere for CampBX, I do not see anything on bitcoincharts.com yet for this new exchange.

Is there a feed for Campbx using SierraChart tool?


Thanks newMeat and all the Bit Peeps out there for your insightful input.

Stew

I think TH could attract a lot more of the market if they improved the user trading interface. As it is atm your flying blind when trading. As MtGox's user interface stands its ok but nothing special and still has its problems. This is something TH could capitalize on.

you should put a poll on this thread :)

Should of that about that, doh!  Thanks.

You know, for me it's not so much that I dislike one exchange or the other - it's that it's hard to try to play the game at all of the major sites due to the time it takes to move fiat money around between them. If there's a major movement at Gox, I don't have four hours to move stuff back, and it really isn't efficient at all to spread it around given the very low volume on the other exchanges. If someone could devise some scheme (or perhaps clear me of any ignorance I may have in this area), I would use the other exchanges just as I would Gox. As it stands at the moment this just isn't practical.

I hate Mtgox but I trade there because they have the volume.

How is CampBx in terms of volume? Are they growing? There isn't much info on what's going on there and the graphs on their page are still on "beta"... I have plans to move there when they start supporting EUR.

When Mtgox was down, TradeHill had the best opportunity ever to grow they did not even. I think people like Mtgox or are used to fro trading and I doubt about Campbx getting more marketshare quickly.

It wasn't in the original choices but I second the choice of bitmarket.eu.

While it doesn't have the volume of other exchanges (note too that transactions in Euros, naturally given the origin/market of exchange, get lots more action that transactions in USD) I've never had a problem with any of my transactions there and they respond quickly to email.

Also the use of the exchange is free with a donation option available to help support the site.

I like tradehill, but because of low volume, have to trade on mtgox too.

Currently I am trading on Trade Hill only because Mt Gox continues to have issues especially from what I read on the forums.  Trade Hill has not given me any issues thus far.

My last trade was on CampBX. I have not traded on mtgox since its unfortunate incident.

none of the above.

So far, the best exchange for me has been exchangebitcoins.com

Fast transfers, which is my number 1 concern.

Dear Forum Members,

At first, people loved the referral program. It was so popular that both Bitcoin7 and CampBX created their own referral programs. Unfortunately, the program was abused by the Mt.Gox hackers. As stated previously, these people did not get their referral money and were subsequently banned from our system.

Regarding our responsiveness to the community, you can see that Jered is a Hero member and has been into Bitcoins for quite some time. He knows many original Bitcoiners. We try our best to give people frequent updates on the forums and thus so far our feedback has been good but we recognize the room for improvement.

If anyone wants to know more about us, please see this link : http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=19537.0

Thanks again, and as always, please reach out if you need anything.

Adam - Tradehill

Traders go where the volume is.  Nuff said.

A good answer probably relates to what one is trying to achieve.

For my part, I just wanted to accumulate for now.  I went with Tradehill in part because MtGox was hosed at the time, in part because I would rather see a number of more equal sized exchanges, and in part because I hoped that Chile would be less prone than other places to bow to US pressure if/when Chuck Schumer figures out how to work the will of those on Wall Street who sponsor him.  No real complaints with Tradehill at the present, and the exchanges track one another well enough so it does not matter much to me.  In fact, Tradehill having less market depth allowed the price to come down and hit one of my buy points where I think it would not have on MtGox (but I am not certain of that.)

On a tangent, I am now wondering if some of Chuck Schumer's sponsors may not be eyeing bitcoin to solve some of the same issues I have (albeit on a much larger scale.)  These would involve opacity of assets and transportation of the same.  Indeed, I wonder if I will end up with the conclusion that bitcoin is being exploited by those who have run our current systems over the cliff to protect their loot.  Among the insightful thing that Satoshi did was to extend the period of bitcoin inflation past the time when most of our current monetary systems are likely to have imploded and thus make it more likely that at least a part of the currency circulates amongst us plebs.

Personally I use britcoin when I do occasional trading, simply because it's the easiest to exchange between GBP<->BTC

If I'm interested in the current price, I take a glance at mtgox and tradehill and take an average.

I will *not* use mtgox again for any actual transactions, they've had terrible security since the start and evidently have no idea what they're doing when it comes to security.

pffft...lol...spoken like someone who isn't a trader.

Tradehill has been great. Volume isn't a big problem unless you are a huge trader that likes to trade in big blocks.

I think it depends on the type of trading you do. I use MtG, TH and ExchBC.  Here are my non techish views after a few months of trading.

I am a part timer I guess, so I don't "need" the MtG trade volume very often, but I use it for bigger trades (40 BTC +) altho TH is getting better all the time on volume and speed.  TH and ExchBC both have excellent responsiveness to me as a client, and obviously TH works hard to get in front of questions here on the forum.  They (TH) are always available and have excellent answers to all issues.  They get an A+ from me for that, and also for the way they handled the traffic deluge that fell on them when MtG became one with the clusterfuck.  ExchBC has also responded very well to my queries. 

Security seems to be very good on TH and ExchBC, but I am not very technecalish.  At least I have a pretty good impression that they are ON it.  As far as MtG goes, I've read everything I could find about the Great GOXification, but because of their (MtG's) clipped, slow, Hans Solo-ish "Everything's fine here" style I am still not entirely sure WTF happened or will happen and fully expect to be confused again in the future. They REALLY need to get a PR person in there.  That said, it works for me and I still use it.  (Rant over.  Yes, I do feel better now, thanks.  ;)

Interface:  short version - Gox sucks, and apparently will continue to into the foreseeable future (see rant above).  TH is "gooder" but the charts are kind of lame, as they already know, and I need to have two or three tabs open to trade (dash, market, and trade).  Transfers are fine.   ExchBC is very good, simple, fast, not fancy but all my info is on one page.  Kudos for that, folks.  Transfers are fine.  Needs some charts, imho.

Commisions:  moving target... milage may vary.

Hope this helps.

I'm actually a legitimate stock trader who trades BTC for cheap entertainment.  You on the other hand...

+1 For people who are not professional traders or speculators, Bitmarket.eu is the best in my experience.  8)

On MagictheGatheringOnlineXchange,  ::) i think that team Pump&Dump doesn't even try to disguise their activities anymore...  ;)

No entity has done more to damage Bitcoin's public image than MtG and its kindergarten security, which was obvious way back when the St. Petersburg guys attacked it months ago...

What seems most lame to me is that after all the damage so much of the "community" is still willing to pay its owners to trade there, and the traders at other exchanges just mirror MtG rates, rather than discover based on their exchanges' conditions...

Of the 3 in the subject, i would only use TH now, and only until the trading teams get established there. CampBX is out for me because it has a dark pool. We've already beaten that subject to death in other threads...  I am sure the pump&dumpers, and dark-pool free-market hypocrites will have a great time there, once it gets more volume... :D

Fortunately, with Bitmarket.eu, OTC, and plenty of honest people in the forum, there is no shortage of places for the mainstream to trade now outside of the shark pools...  :D

Hmmm...seems like that might be an advantage to be able to move the market if one is a huge trader.  For instance...

I dunno if MtGox tracks Tradehill at all, but I would expect that it would to at least a small extent if there are people doing arbitrage (which I think is likely by now.)  If so, one could realistically depress Tradehill for a while to try to get a cascade of bots going, then make a killing on MtGox....in my (likely defective) theory.

Imanikin,
       Don't let Dark Pools put you off, because we have also provided a tool to probe dark pools: the Fill-Or-Kill option.

If you suspect a dark pool at a price level, execute a tiny FOK order at that price and you will have your answer!  

     We have chosen to provide more building-blocks that you can use when building a strategy or a bot.  The better strategy will always win in the medium-to-long term, dark pool or not.

Hope this helps,
      Keyur

Exactly.

When the time comes I will be using TradeHill, TradeHill/Jared seems to be very active in bitcoin boards, which is a big +. Recent threads I have been reading about mtgox, I'll never use them.