Mt. Gox aren't some guys in a basement.
They have a massive office in Cerulean Tower which is one of the most expensive areas in Tokyo. They are a registered company that pays taxes in Japan.
You can even visit them or check the place on google maps.
I think you are discounting the fact that their turnover is often nearly a million dollars per day.
Is Sony just a mickey mouse operation because all their data was stolen?
No, it's one of the oldest technology companies in the world.
p.s. People, companies and stock market officials have been sued after real life flash crashes.
There are countless cases where a computer error executed a sell order in a wrong sequence (i.e. 60,000 stocks at $1 instead if 1 stock at $60,000).
"Kids" can afford an expensive office when they do a million dollars a day in trades. The fact that they have money has no bearing on their professionalism or competence. BTW, the fact that a bunch of kids are running an exchange that does $1 million per day is EXACTLY MY POINT. They are too big for their britches. They are in way over their heads. They haven't a clue. |
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If it actually happened in the professional stock markets before, I stand corrected. I'm man enough to admit when I'm wrong about something.
STILL, the fact that they had circuit breakers in place puts them far above Mt. Gox.
And I bet you didn't have people on forums, "You can't rollback my Proctor & Gamble BUY orders @ .01! I'm gonna sue you!"
In other words, the above-mentioned DOW market shutdown & fix was much more timely than the one at Mt. Gox. The guys at Mt. Gox were probably playing video games or something when the crash happened. Or they were sleeping. Either way, they simply don't have enough manpower OR know-how to run a professional, secure currency exchange. That's the point I'm trying to make.
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10:00 AM EST on 6/20, no Tradehill.
Another delay? Where they hacked now? What's the deal?
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When was the last time the DOW dropped to single digits? Could you imagine the DOW Jones Industrial Average dropping from the current 12,000 all the way to less than 1 -- in an hour or two? You'd never see it.
Guess you missed my point. The DOW *cannot* drop from from 12,000 to less than 1 in an hour or two. They have controls that would freeze trading before that happened. We've seen it before. That is precisely my point. The DOW is a professional marketplace, run by mature businessmen who wear suits. Mt. Gox is a mickey-mouse operation run by geeky computer programmers in shorts and jeans. There's a big difference. |
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Do you know what yesterday's incident taught me?
That Mt. Gox is too big for their britches -- that they are a bunch of computer nerds who might be skilled at writing code, but they have NO CLUE about things like running a business, currency exchanges, security, etc. They are very unprofessional. It's a bit unnerving.
They literally can't deal with the exponential growth they've experienced of late, and they can't handle all the issues they're having to deal with -- issues that are beyond them, for the most part (security, exchange regulations, etc.)
Their comfort zone is writing code. Period. Now they're being expected to run the NASDAQ. Not exactly in their field of competence.
Didn't Mt. Gox used to be a site for trading Magic: The Gathering cards?
They're "a bunch of kids".
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We had a major hack of Mt. Gox., closing of ALL Bitcoin exchanges for days (Mt. Gox, Tradehill, Virwox), a demonstration of the apparent instability of Bitcoins (watching their value go from 17.50 to .01 in minutes), etc.
The fact that you say "a demonstration of the apparent instability of Bitcoins" tells me that you have absolutely no knowledge of what actually transpired. The artificial collapse of a trading market has no impact on the stability of the medium. It was artificial. The only thing it proves is that the Exchanges, going forward, will have to safeguard against this exact issue. It could just as easily been due to a human error, typing and offer price when their cat stepped on the return key at 2, instead of 20. The "real world" exchanges have these types of "volatility airbrakes". You don't think if someone sold 1 million shares of Apple for $0.05 each that the NYSE would just allow that transaction and move on? Absolutely not, they'd freeze trading of AAPL until they could figure out what went wrong. The only failure is that Mt. Gox didn't have those type of controls present. That's it. Everyone thinks the market is going to crash when it opens this evening. It won't. It'll dip as panicked people sell off briefly, but guess what will happen, those of us that still believe will get a deal on BTC. I for one will have my buy order sitting there at $10 waiting. I kicked myself for not having bought two weeks ago when it dipped to $10, now I'll have my chance again. All you're doing is explaining WHY Bitcoins are so unstable. The main exchange (let's face it, Mt. Gox is connected to Bitcoin for most people, even more so than "Bitcoin.org") had no controls in place, and ALLOWED the value of BTC to crash all the way down to .01 -- and the only solution was to REVERSE MANY TRADES which many people don't like. They also have to close the exchange for a couple days. (BTW, I wasn't even there when the price crashed. I didn't buy any cheap BTC, so I'm not personally invested in them NOT reversing trades. But I can understand, objectively, how reversing a bunch of trades -- trying to cop a "do over" -- tends to make the whole thing look "mickey-mouse" to outsiders...) When was the last time the DOW dropped to single digits? Could you imagine the DOW Jones Industrial Average dropping from the current 12,000 all the way to less than 1 -- in an hour or two? You'd never see it. I'm not saying Bitcoins are flawed -- I'm saying that to many people, their "objective value" just took a big hit, since people WATCHED THEM DROP TO A PENNY WITHIN MINUTES. That's not a confidence-building exercise. And while it's true that Mt. Gox is "just one business in the Bitcoin economy", it's also true that they're the MAIN exchange as far as activity, and it's a big deal when they go down or have problems. They might as well BE bitcoin for the majority of users. |
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2 TERAHASHES of capacity have been added to the network just in the last 5 days. That was after Bitcoin went down in value to $17 (so much for "difficulty follows price"!)
The two difficulty decreases were long before most of us knew what a Bitcoin was.
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It really validates what I've been saying -- that difficulty is going to keep going up in the short-term, and that you can KEEP DREAMING if you think it's going to go down anytime soon. (It only went down once or twice, before most of us here heard about Bitcoin)
The fact that we're solving over 10 blocks/hour now is incredible: We had a major hack of Mt. Gox., closing of ALL Bitcoin exchanges for days (Mt. Gox, Tradehill, Virwox), a demonstration of the apparent instability of Bitcoins (watching their value go from 17.50 to .01 in minutes), etc.
If people are *still* going out and buying cards at a time like this, they'll always be buying cards! Whoever "they" is.
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To anyone who's considering buying these @160 -- don't!
They're not worth it *at that price*. They're a great card because they're only $109.99 -- as you raise the price, the card quickly loses its value/luster.
They don't make you emit Bitcoins from your body or something... they're not that special. Just a good price/performance when they cost $110.
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Let's get a ton more people on http://btcnearme.com/I need more sellers in my area guys! Also if anyone has any other bitcoin local exchange websites let us know. WOW this is actually good news for Bitcoin -- why? Because there are 26 buyers in my area, but only 2 sellers! And that's within 400 kilometers. If Bitcoin were worthless, you'd think everyone would want to sell and few would want to buy... A word of advice for the creator of the site -- you might include a miles <--> kilometers option for those of us in the United States  Isn't it a US-based site? Apparently not... |
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When's it going to start? It's 9:12 EST The guys setting it up seem rather...laid back. A bit disturbing considering these are basically the "bankers" of this generation  |
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Here's the question nobody's been asking:
What happens to the thousands of bitcoins the hacker withdrew from Mt. Gox? Mt. Gox can't print Bitcoins like the Fed prints dollars -- BTC are hard as heck to produce.
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HUH?
So the truth is that the ENTIRE MtGox database was compromised and made public -- and although the passwords are stored in hashed form, someone could use hash-cracking to crack the passwords?
Matthew
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Don't you suppose the IT departments of countless companies are about to find out what's happening on port #8332 of their machines?
I would think that large companies, followed by mid-size and even small companies, will start blocking access to "api.bitcoin.cz", "deepbit.net" just like they block access to "facebook.com" and "myspace.com" today.
Universities -- same thing. They will start dealing with the leeching of electricity, etc. and of course the students are paying a ton anyhow -- I'm sure electricity is covered. But using more than 1 PC's worth will draw attention, and might be clamped down on.
As for the kids in mom's basement -- the moms and dads of the world are about to get a wake-up call when the 1st "Post-bitcoin-mining" electricity bill comes due. I know, bitcoin has been around longer than that, but a LOT of people discovered it in late May.
Matthew
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Any update on the stats page? "Basic stats" were made available on the 14th; it's been 4 days (including one weekend day).
Any progress?
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Oh, and I think you must be pretty dense to not realize that EVERYONE KNOWS THAT IT'S IN MINERS' BEST INTEREST TO DISCOURAGE OTHERS. It's not like you're letting the cat out of the bag or anything.
"Oh no, the jig is up!" ...Not hardly.
Everyone knows that anything negative spouted on this forum about mining is partly to defend our own future profitability. You think some people don't know that?
A reader needs to take everything on its own merit -- either it's true or it isn't. And yes, a person should read the pros AND THE CONS of something like bitcoin mining before jumping in head-first. It's called getting a balanced view.
You think all the stuff I pointed out is just so much BS calculated to scare you away from mining? Go ahead and believe that at your own peril. I didn't post *anything* that isn't 100% true. Heck, half the time I post mathematical figures, which don't lie.
Your calculations are stupid for the same reason that the same calculations were stupid back in may, and in april before that, and in march before that. They're the same calculations. Profitability depends on one thing: price of bitcoins. Since you can't predict this, you can't predict profitability. Mining is betting that the bitcoin price will stay above a certain threshold. Buying coins is betting that the bitcoin price will go up. Each bet has different risk profiles and can be approached differently, but both of them are just bets on the price of bitcoins, same as they were back in may. There is nothing inherantly less profitable about the current moment than there was back in May - in fact it is easy to argue that bitcoins are a smarter and safer bet now than they were then. Since I'm a miner, telling the truth goes against my self-interest. But the reason I don't mind telling the truth is because I do this primarily as a hobby, for fun, and because I think bitcoins are cool and have a future. I also think the long-term health of bitcoins will be bolstered by more people invested in them, by more miners, more decentralization, more activity, more interest. So if a newbie reads my post and goes and buys mining hardware I will lose a bit of money in the short-term because of that, but in the long-term I don't mind. Also, I just generally am pissed off by all you douche bags with your fear mongering and discouragement. I don't like you lying assholes on a personal level - the way you say one thing and do something else. Again, I'm not going to lower myself to calling names. Where have I lied? No one has showed me a single "lie" that I have posted. I'm just telling them to use their heads and be rational. That is all. Nobody needs to "encourage" any newbie -- greed (which is part of human nature) does that role just fine. My "job" is to balance things, to help people think more clearly. |
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If a tycoon spent $1 mil on mining hardware? He would get it all running at his secret location, but not connect it to the network until it was ALL READY. Then he'd pull the switch and connect it to the network! And then I, in my best Lando impersonation would have to say... "That blast came from the Death Star....THAT THING'S FULLY OPERATIONAL!" |
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Oh, and I think you must be pretty dense to not realize that EVERYONE KNOWS THAT IT'S IN MINERS' BEST INTEREST TO DISCOURAGE OTHERS. It's not like you're letting the cat out of the bag or anything.
"Oh no, the jig is up!" ...Not hardly.
Everyone knows that anything negative spouted on this forum about mining is partly to defend our own future profitability. You think some people don't know that?
A reader needs to take everything on its own merit -- either it's true or it isn't. And yes, a person should read the pros AND THE CONS of something like bitcoin mining before jumping in head-first. It's called getting a balanced view.
You think all the stuff I pointed out is just so much BS calculated to scare you away from mining? Go ahead and believe that at your own peril. I didn't post *anything* that isn't 100% true. Heck, half the time I post mathematical figures, which don't lie.
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A bunch of harpies who are angry at reduced profits due to difficulty increases have taken it upon themselves to whine loudly on the forum about how mining is a bad investment.
These people invariably have their own mining rigs: they don't follow their own advice. They're trying to avoid further difficulty increases, which may make them lose money.
Mining is still very profitable, and if it wasn't, these assholes wouldn't be spending their free time trying to convince you not to do it.
In conclusion, if you think it would be fun to participate, go for it. Hopefully you know something about hardware, software, and trading. You'll probably make your money back no problem. It may take a few months. Bitcoins probably aren't going anywhere though.
Just remember: all of these people trying to convince you not to do it, are themselves not following their own advice. If they did follow their own advice, they would sell their bitcoin machines RIGHT NOW to other miners via craigslist.
I'm not selling my mining rigs, and they aren't either, because we all know that mining is profitable and fun and will most likely remain profitable.
"What is an ad-hominem attack?" Oh, wait. This isn't Jeopardy. (For those who don't know, an ad-hominem attack is an attack on the PERSON rather than his argument -- usually because his argument is impregnable and can't be refuted.) To put it more plainly: if you disagree with anything I posted (which is nothing more than FACTS and REALITY), please feel free to quote me, disagree with any/all points, etc. For example, I never said mining was unprofitable. But I am certainly one of the "realists" or "voices of reason" (you might call me a "wet blanket") on this forum. I could call you names as well, but I refuse to sink to that level. Matthew |
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Look, this guy really provided no proof he's even in this predicament and can't you all agree we've given him enough attention already?
Good point. I was wondering the same thing. We had some guy on here that was an obvious troll with a less sophisticated post -- but it was along the same lines. OP -- if you could send pics of your rigs, unopened packages, etc. it would take you miles in establishing the credibility of your story. Many wonder if you're a troll -- I hate to say it, but myself included. Doesn't have to be notarized, doesn't have to be taken by a professional photographer. You can't tell me you don't have a digital camera (if you did claim that, I wouldn't believe you!) 99.9% of people have cell phones these days. Most of those have a crude camera function. Anyone with $10,000 to invest in PC hardware has a smartphone and at least one digital camera. They're like $50 on sale these days! Sincerely, Matthew |
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