MTGOX: total lack of transparency

[behindtext]

in the past 5 days, the price of BTC has fluctuated wildly, mostly as a result of panic induced by erratic service at MTGOX. there have been a variety of explanations, none of which are particularly reasonable. i think MTGOX and the BTC market in general could benefit from more transparency.

(A) "MTGOX is victim of its own success" - the claim being that so many account registrations have swamped their system. this is the public position from MTGOX. unless the website is coded like total crap, i do not believe that 75,000 account registrations occurring in approximately 10 days will substantially affect the load on a database. sure, it means more action on the web interface but a simple option is to temporarily put a freeze on creating new accounts or rate limit it.

(B) "the volume of trades has seized their trading engine" - this is pretty unbelievable when you consider the volume shown for trading over the past several days. it could be the case that the trading engine is really hacked together, e.g. using perl scripts or some web 2.0 turd infrastructure, in which case i could understand why this is not what MTGOX wants to publicly discuss. in the case that many "small" trades are killing their engine, it would make sense to limit trades to a minimum size.

(C) "the site is under a persistent and sophisticated DDoS" - i consider this the most likely problem despite MTGOX having been dismissive of it recently. the extent and nature of the current issues does not fit either explanation (A) or (B).

i have many years of experience with people bullshitting me or otherwise trying to scam me, and the official explanations (A and B from above) do not pass my smell test. i think it's about time MTGOX finally started telling people what the hell is actually going on.

[DeathAndTaxes]

MtGox has proven they intend to be very opaque about the internal problems.  So if you want transparency and they are dedicated to secrecy why do you still use them?

I mean it would be like there is a booth at the carnival which gives punches in the face for $5.  You don't like punches to the face and despite getting a half dozen punches to the face you still plunk down $5 hoping for something better this time.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results

[behindtext]

the only reason i chose them is that i worried that the other exchanges would not be able to accept the size of my transfers or waste my time with verifications. at this point, it definitely makes sense to look elsewhere.

i have only recently gotten on the "being-punched-in-the-face ride" at the carnival, i think i'm ready to get off.