Bitcoin Forum

How can it take 8 business days to get to Dwolla when it took 12 hours at most to get USD into mtgox from Dwolla?

Seriously that makes no sense...

https://mtgox.com/press_release_20120808.html

Soon over.

Okay. 7 business days from yesterday....so 6 from today.

This has been gone over now many times. The reason is that due to Dwolla having a tendency to lock funds at will it's unsafe for MtGox to carry a substantial balance. So payments have to be queued up as funds rotate thru the account. At least that's the story I've managed to figure out based on cryptic between the lines reading of posts here.

It'll be a good day when MtGox has an alternative and it sounds like maybe soon.

Sounds like it's not an alternative as much as Gox has just resolved their issues with Dwolla, which is a good thing.

This is not what has been happening and is not what happened here.

Can you name one instance where Dwolla has locked funds?  [* If you are thinking of the "30-day probation" restriction as being a case of "locked funds", that's incorrect, and see below for that.]

There was one report of "locked funds" and it was that the user had to verify identity, but there have been no reports that Dwolla has ever locked customer funds once the customer has provided identity.

With Dwolla, all account-to-account (A2A) transfers are instant.  This means that the second I transfer funds from my Dwolla account to yours, I no longer have access to those funds and you have the ability to spend the funds immediately.  This is not hours, minutes, .. this is instant, like before the page showing the transaction status has completed.

In this specific instance, the problem is that Mt. Gox is not processing the withdrawal request in a timely manner.   They have acknowledged this long-running problem (a problem that started in April), and have said the problem will be gone within a matter of days thanks to recent developments.

[* New Dwolla accounts are placed on a "30-day probation" where they have the restriction that funds cannot be sent to four specific Dwolla accounts -- those of Bitcoin exchanges.   The probation period starts the first day that the funds have successfully been added to a Dwolla account from a linked bank account.  Once the 30-day probationary period has passed, these accounts can send to Bitcoin exchanges just like any other Dwolla account.  This is not "locked funds" though.  During this probationary period the Dwolla customer can return those funds back to their own bank account, trade with other Dwolla users, spend the funds at other Dwolla merchants, etc., .... so the funds are not locked or "frozen", they just can't be send to these four Bitcoin exchanges right away.]

Yes.  Locked would be a rather light term for what they did to Tradehill.  The danger (as percieved by MTGOX) is that Dwolla will do some kind of freezing/locking/taking of funds that mtgox holds on the Dwolla side.  As far as we know Dwolla never returned said funds to Tradehill.

http://betabeat.com/2012/03/dwolla-was-just-sued-by-bitcoiners-for-2-m/

I don't blame MtGox for their hesitance to keep large funds on hand at Dwolla. If they were doing $2.5 million/month in transfers how much would they need to keep on account to ensure they could do "instant transfers" instantly? Versus how much would they need to deposit each day to clear pending withdrawls in their system? Their deposits take time to clear. Since customers are fully verified to even use this method what other explanation is there for "instant transfers" taking 7 days except a backlog due to not keeping high account balances.

That's a great article. 

First comment nails it:

Ben Milne of Dwolla is jealous, and mad that Bitcoin made his cheap Paypal clone obsolete.  If he died in a fire, it wouldn't bother me at all.  One less bankster monopolist douchebag selling outdated buggy whips.  And if that wasn't bad enough, he's a hipster (pic at link)!

fastchas4bitcoins is who you should have gone with

Ya, that's a little different from the type of locking I was referring to (which is delaying of account-to-account transfers).  I hadn't thought to exclude Dwolla reversals in cases where fraud had been reported.