I hope they didn't mention their facebook page in the ad they took out in the G8 conference booklet.

You just need to look at MtGox's facebook page

This from a couple of days ago:

"Alexandra Sokolova   Not kidding, they are dicking me and many other around. I know someone who decided to cash out in 130k April, and wire transfer in seperate transactions thoughout late April and early May, they proccessed some of the smaller ones but all the larger ones are still pending 3 months later."
https://www.facebook.com/MtGox

Yuck. That facebook page is a public relations Amityville house of horror. All that is missing is blood spots.

How useful is predicting whale buys anyway?
Strange how the colossal 40,000+ coin "blue" whale buy on June 25th barely dented the downtrend, but two much smaller "fin" whale buys this week somehow manage to reverse the market.

Exactly. Iceland or Cyprus would use dollars or euros earned from exports or existing fx reserves to acquire BTC from the exchanges and OTC marketplace. However, probably not even one small country could do this without sending the BTC rate a lot higher than it is today.

Yes. When my brother died I thought of nothing else for a month. After a year the hurt was fading. After 10 years there is a just a shadow of sadness in the background, and life continues...

Yes. Agreed, another good candidate. Interestingly, Cypriots have long been used to having a strong fiat currency, whereas the Icelandic kronur has lurched from one disaster to another for decades. I remember going to Cyprus in 1990 and the UK pound was rubbish compared to the Cypriot pound.

A government moving to Bitcoin would need its CB to buy an amount of BTC comparable to their monetary base and set a conversion date. The public would need Bitcoin wallets and tutorials in advance and would then receive BTC in exchange for giving up the old currency.  Tax breaks should be given to encourage people to buy ASICs for mining. Financial systems would need to be re-denominated. A big logistical exercise.

The best candidate is Iceland. Their kronur is a sick dog of a currency and needs euthanasia. Its population of approx 300,000 is small enough to make the transition viable sooner.

The Icelandic monetary base in 2013 is about 100 billion kronur or 8 million BTC which is clearly too large. So they would need to acquire a more realistic number, such as 400,000 BTC and wait until BTC reached $2000 each in value, then do the switch-over. A delay is necessary anyway as Bitcoin needs the scalability problems resolved and the zero-confirm add-ons up and running, plus all the pull-payments, scheduled payments and other changes which Core Dev are working on to make it more merchant friendly.

Bitcoin is the perfect currency to put the Icelandic economy on a sound footing, and indirectly make them the richest country (per capita) in a few decades from now as the BTC value rises against all the fiat currencies.

Iceland CB data:
http://statistics.cb.is/en/data/set/28s8/#!display=line&ds=28s8!2s1q=5.h.1j

It's not like the bears could use their fiat for food, clothes, cars, utility bills or anything like that. Mt Gox has ensured that bears can only use their fiat to buy one thing: bitcoins!

Yes. If XYZcoin comes up with a significant improvement translating into real market-share then Bitcoin can incorporate that software change. Even if it is a hard-fork strong consensus will emerge because all major BTC holders and miners will want to protect their investment.

"Fiat Friction"

Bitcoin is the superman of currencies and can fly around the world at will.  Filthy festering flimsy fiat is a dead horse in comparison.

Check out the variance between BTC/LTC on btce and bter. Close to zero at present!

http://bter.com/trade/ltc_btc             0.031
https://btc-e.com/exchange/ltc_btc    0.031

The fact that problems are reported with currencies like AUD is a lot more worrying than USD withdrawals drying up. At least the reason for the USD problems are known. But why they can't send AUD is a total mystery.

The answer is to cancel the transfer, buy coins and shift them to a local site in Australia to sell for AUD.

Tom, you have got to let this go.
I mean, if the greatest anarcho-libertarian-anti-elite bankster-killer surveillance-government restraining crypto-genius invention of the 21st Century has been compromised by the "NWO"   then there really is no hope left for this planet. You will need to find another one to live on.

I think our happy-go-lucky moderator has a one-track mind

It works great. It is only 32bit windows which has given up the ghost.

Assuming that the recent rise is partly from people desperate for fiat and buying coins to dump on Bitstamp I thought I would check MtGox's facebook page for any clues that they are actually starting to clear the wire backlog.

This from yesterday shows no improvement:

"Alexandra Sokolova   Not kidding, they are dicking me and many other around. I know someone who decided to cash out in 130k April, and wire transfer in seperate transactions thoughout late April and early May, they proccessed some of the smaller ones but all the larger ones are still pending 3 months later."
https://www.facebook.com/MtGox

I was referring to the 3-point plan which you also dismissed. Yes, could have been clearer...

(my emphasis)

I am not defending MtGox but how can multiple withdrawals like this achieve anything but clog up their admin system, and cost you more?
Why not combine withdrawals, even if you are on-forwarding amounts to others then do that via internet banking afterwards.

I think Bitstamp is being hammered by sellers who want fiat. CampBx might have the most accurate price at present.

Why pay $93 on gox when you can pay $85 on Bitstamp?

That difference makes your mining hardware profitable sooner.