FTR: my BTC were released.  Took twice as long as advertised, but I got 'em.

I don't feel to bad about being whiny here given that TH squealed like a stuck pig when Dwolla didn't live up to their stated procedures (and rightly so.)

I would still be interested in follow-up on my idea of lending my BTC to an exchange...hopefully with a little bit more control on my side than in my recent experience.  I see an issue with it in that everyone would always pull their BTC from the exchange simply to collect the 'interest' under the scheme I've described.

Seems like most commodities markets gain some benefit by virtue of the property that most players have no interest in taking control of the commodity and would not know what to do with 20 truckloads of pork bellies if they did take possession.  Bitcoin is different.  I fully expect that Tradehill, CampBX, Ruxum, etc have taken this into account in their business plans.  Hope so at least.

I am attracted to Bitcoin because I have enough control of my liquidity to direct it toward where it will do *me* the most good.  Or if I am in a good mood, some other entity of my choosing (e.g., the community at large or Wikilieaks or whatever.)

My cousin wouldn't use it...the fun of the manic phase outweighed the misery of the depressive phase to him.  He died in the street a few years ago.

I happen to disagree on principle.

I believe that the best way to understand a complex system is to come up with as many hypothesis as possible be they outlandish or not.

Then, as observations come in, start kicking out the hypotheses which are failing.

This is a lot more work and requires a lot more neural activity, so it is not for everyone.  But it's pretty much standard fair in the scientific world.  It's more tedious than rocket science, but the method has a proven track record.

+1

Disbursing BTC is not supposed to be terribly difficult.  Trivial vs. other forms of currency in fact.  That's one of the reasons why I like Bitcoin.

When the market is in flux it is especially nice to be able to move rapidly.  So getting things bogged down in process is a genuine harm to some people.

In my case, the delay is not hurting me other than the risk of Tradehill's solvency I am absorbing.  I would like it if Tradehill would offer to pay interest (or whatever you want to call it) on BTC which are not dispersed according to published policy.

For my part, I would weigh the risk against the reward and make a decision about what I wanted to do.  I highly value honesty and transparency.  The more confidence in Tradehill I could gain in this way, the less risk I would feel that I am carrying, and the lower the 'interest' I would accept to lend Tradhill my liquidity.

This seems eminently fair to me.  Thoughts?

One more question Tradehill:  How's that BTC withdraw coming along?

I am sure it's been a busy day, but you guys publish the policies and it's been over 12 hours now.  I'm now forced put my own ass to bed before tucking in today's haul and reading it a bedtime story about OpenSSL and the aes-256 little piggies.

I'm just going to sit on the loot so I don't mind if you want to hold them, but I want a cut.  1BTC per 100BTC per day sounds about right to me.

I think it may be the Polish stash and fear of the MBC loot that has brought the volatility today.  I keep hearing that the MBC coin has not been spent.  Is there anywhere that anyone knows of where anyone is publishing analysis of this detail?

Anyway, if we assume that the MBC guy is a crook, and still among the living, then he would be laying low and waiting for a correction, or better yet, a likely upcoming bull hysteria to make his move.  I would have thought that he would be laundering in preparation, but that would be as detectable as if he would have liquidated I think (unless somehow he had been doing it all along...and he does seem like a pretty sharp player from what I can see.)

I'm not looking for any proof.  I certainly never claimed that it was true that Mr. MBC and Mr. UABB guy are the same person...just that it would be amusing if so...particularly if he got some chumps to offer financial assistance for his 'spearhead'.

I very much doubt the hypothesis that I stated...or actually, that I didn't state.  Mr. MBC was clearly a pretty capable guy.  Mr UABB seems to me like the clown of the earth.

My bad.  I should have been more clear.

If I go to 'deposit funds', then select USD, then select 'bank transfer, US domestic', I see the following text in green font:

===
NOTE: the minimum amount to transfer is USD$5000.00
If you would like to deposit a smaller amount, please use our Paxum deposit option.
===

I made a printout last time I deposited funds mostly to keep track of the numbers I needed to use for the wire.  There exists similar text there, but it says:

===
NOTE: the minimum amount to transfer is USD$100.00
===

Hi Tradehill.

Your communications on this forum have been educational for me and since you-all seem(ed) to welcome and encourage transparency, I'll ask here vs. via e-mail.  The answer does not appear to be on your blog, and your forum has no general questions type thing that spotted.

I've always used wire transfer.  It made a lot more sense to me in the transaction sizes I've been doing than jumping through a lot of hoops for yet another paypal-like service.

A few days ago, the minimum was $100.  Now, as someone on another thread points out to me, the minimum is $5000.

Can you explain the fairly large jump and the factors that went into making this decision?  If not, that is fine, but I would appreciate an answer of something like 'proprietary info'.

In a mild form of crisis that might work to some extent.  I thought about hedging along these lines, but eventually decided against it.

I think it would be naive to expect that in a bad case with a re-invented currency, creditors would take a haircut.  My bet is that outstanding debts would be re-interpreted by the courts and re-calibrated to keep the debtors in more or less in their current condition.

Looks like.  Must be a new-ish policy.  I'm sure it takes some manpower to process wires, but I would not think it would be that much.  OTOH, if they expect to get only a fraction of that as commissions from buy-once-n-run folks like Moi, I guess it might make sense.

I guess I'm done transferring funds in that way I guess cuz I'm not ready to trust them with that kind of money yet (and doubt that I will want _that_ much more BTC for a while, if ever, anyway.)  Maybe if I get into money moving I'll re-evaluate, but for now I'll keep my day job.

TH is in Chile (as I understand it) but have a US bank account.  I would think that MtGox could as well.

As for volume, I considered less to have an advantage in that if someone with big liquidity screws up, it has the possibility to push things sharply out of band (and in fact that seems to have happened today and I was able to capitalize.)  I'm not playing with enough funds to push the markets a long way on an extended basis, so they have plenty of volume for my needs and there seem to be enough arbitrage plays that the price levels are more or less the same.

My biggest concern with any of the exchanges is that they don't screw up and become insolvent of get frozen (and lock my funds) for some other reason.  So far TH has been able to move whatever funds I want moved on a reasonable schedule (though I had to wait all night go get some BTC out of them once or twice...and am waiting on a transfer right now.)

I (and American) have wired money to Tradehill three times on the way to work and used it to buy BTC by just after lunch on the same day.  My bank charges me a fee, but it's flat so if one plays with several $k it's not that big a deal.

Most of the time the BTC I have bought have been back in my wallet by the evening, and into a more secure wallet by the time I've hit the rack.

I dunno if the same thing would work that way with MtGox though.

Prolly doesn't matter much.  MtGox server(s?) seem to be to swamped to support feeds anyway.  Tradehill also from time to time, but less so.  Either that, or bitcoinity is not always getting them for some other reason.

  http://bitcoinity.org/markets?exchange=all

I went to MtGox.com recently out of frustration.  Took a loooong time, but I did get a plot in the end (and it was delightfully ugly (to my presently accumulating soul.))

Huh?  I just picked some up for less than that (unless the exchange unwinds their books.)  I'm holding out for $5-ish and it seems like a distinct possibility (but I'm still giving less than a 50% chance.)

I suspect that a lot of the liquidity originated in Poland or MBC.com.  I figure that the criminals needed to divvy things up amongst various operatives who have accounts on the exchanges.  I hoped that some of them may be none-to-shrewd and would blow the price down to much at times.  I wanted to capitalize if so...and kept some powder dry for this purpose.

Did I do the right thing and there will be a rally when this all blows over?  Or will BTC prove to have to much of a sting and everyone bails?  Or???  Time will tell.

Daaaamn!  Someone got my 8-n-change 'absurd' bid on Tradehill just now.  C-mon baby...down to $5 and I'm done.

I would find it deeply and darkly amusing if the UABB guy and the MyBitCoin guy were one in the same.

Surely Mr. MBC would be keeping a low profile, but if he really had balls of steel, 'spearheading an investigation' into the crime and collecting all of the available data about it could be all kinds of useful.

Speaking of Bruce...

I sure hope that he is OK in all of this.  He obviously had a lot of hope, energy, and passion for the project.  I hope he is not prone to suicidal tendencies or anything like that, is strong enough to look at the whole picture, and experienced enough to know that all things pass.   (It seems at this point that...) Ya, he fucked up.  Big time.  But he is not the only one and he has done a lot of very good work for a very important project and that has not gone away.  I personally appreciate his work a lot and hope not only that he recovers but continues to contribute.

My .fvwmrc is still relevant (well... .fvwm2rc) and Doom was the last game I played on a computer.  I'm hurt...but I'll survive I think.