Interesting...  It does seem like looking at one 24 hour period isn't sufficient data, though.  A full week or more at 56% would be more telling, especially if it was a week with higher volume overall.

It's harder to get money in BTC-e than out.
If case of Mtgox it's quite opposite. Easy to deposit, harder to withdraw.

It's actually more complicated than that; even pure ECN brokers have an internal order-book which they match purely in-house as a market-maker. Of course they also have the ability to place your orders with a real liquidity provider, but whether they do that or not is a decision they take and not one you can control.

A good rule of thumb here is that any system for trading on a market which uses a read-only price-feed (as all forex brokers do AKAIK) is more akin to betting than trading, because you are playing against a closed system which cannot be altered by your own trades.

A real exchange is a totally different beast, you can affect the price and they don't care whether you win your trades or lose.

At the end of the day there are good forex brokers and bad ones, but the scope for them to be bad is very large due to the nature of brokers and the price feed.

So with retail forex "trading" you don't get to own the currency, plus I've read you automatically get leverage up to 200:1, there are no brokerage fees, the brokers/banks make their money through the large spreads.

Which doesn't sound much like bitcoin trading at all. Sounds more like you are just betting on which way currency pairs will go, and the "bookmaker" makes money directly off all the retail traders through the spread. (And the leverage is there to get the money back quicker from the punters?!?)

OK, now I understand why trading btc looked more like stock trading than (retail) forex trading. And I don't think I'll get into forex  

The only thing that bothers me, as a non-US citizen, is how US-centric all this discussion is.

Are you sure? Apparently he actually does know c++...

The problem is that buying them is a hassle.

+Jerry Brito and +Declan McCullagh Yes, the exchanges are a vulnerable point, almost a "systempunkt"...

As +Nick Weaver alludes to, Bitcoin really is fundamentally incompatible with the pharaonic pyramids of the legacy banking system...

The [financial and litigation] conflicts of interest among directors...

Who's with me?

The whole point is that the people and institutions which derive their power from Fiat see Bitcoin as a threat to their order. The recent Homeland Security action is a testament to this. To think that Bitcoin can be a "legitimate" currency alongside the US Dollar is ignoring the reality of the situation. Bitcoin is an upfront assault on the legitimacy of the international Fiat system. Services like Ripple are destined to go the way of any service which proposes to establish Bitcoin functionally within the existing Fiat frameworks. Bitcoin is not meant to live alongside Fiat. It is meant to kill it. With extreme prejudice.

Price has only gone down 5% because bitcoin users are realizing that Gox dying a slow, painful death would be possibly the best thing that could happen to bitcoin.

Many people don't quit drugs until they stop hanging out with their drug addict friends.

So, Gox dies, bitcoin gets stronger. The end.

Proper MSB licensing doesn't seem prohibitively expensive, other bitcoin exchanges have obtained it. The seizure has not provided any basis to conclude that the gov would shut down an exchange, other than failure to have the proper MSB license. Therefore this is very good news because more exchanges will be properly licensed in the future, and so far the focus of gov regulations and enforcement is narrow and does not appear to threaten bitcoin infrastructure or liquidity.

Some VC-backed exchange with fancy lawyers will inevitably emerge with the proper MSB licenses.

Got an answer to my e-mail.  They said the transaction from yesterday will go through but no more will from now on.  They did say no other customers were affected which sounds like campbx would still work.

Nevertheless, it also should be taken seriously as a dry run because, if someday a coordinated attack on Bitcoin does come, it will likely have similar characteristics, except executed simultaneously at all key chokepoints worldwide including, guaranteed, a joint operation with Japanese authorities in Tokyo to shut down Gox itself.

Alt-coins don't necessarily compete with Bitcoin, but rather strengthen cryptocurrency in general. I doubt Bitcoin will ever completely be replaced (where it disappears), not without some fundamental flaw discovered an alternative can solve or some superior feature Bitcoin can't emulate.

People step back from the keyboard and take a deep breath.


1) Dwolla is not shutdown

2) MTGOX is not shut down

3) DHS didn't seize anything, they simply stopped Dwolla from doing business with GOX


The bottom line is that you cannot convert BTC into USD via Dwolla, that's all.

If converting BTC to USD is your goal there are still quite a few better alternatives than Dwolla in the first place.


~BCX~

Anyone else noticed bter.com is off line now?

I'm about to give up, as bitfloor still owes me money.

-v

So you don't think MAbtc's argument (a few posts up) carries some weight?  Bitcoin threatens the very core of governments -- collecting taxes & issuing currency.  Of course governments will  react if Bitcoin makes any noticeable mark on fiat economy.  Forgot who said "Give me control over a nation's money, and I care not who makes its laws," but he summed things up pretty well.  There was pretty sound reasoning behind not wanting Bitcoin to hit the limelights so early in the game.