[PURELY SPECULATIVE] Is somebody manipulating the Verification Queue?

[Kazu]

I have noticed something that seems to me so outlandish that it is starting to get me a bit worried.

In the last two days, by my count, the Mt. Gox Verification queue has increased by OVER 9000! Okay, no it hasn't. But it has increased by 8000.

That means ~half the amount of people that tried to become verified over the previous 10 days came in the last day. Are you serious??

This seems just outlandish. And it seems quite easy to manipulate. I'm thinking somebody has a bot, that makes a TON of accounts at MtGox with Mailop or the like, then uploads a bunch of random images and sticks themselves in the queue. Thats the only way it could be increasing at this rate, IMO. That, or Mt. Gox is trolling us all.

[Elwar]

My theory is that they add a '0' at the end of the queue.

Have you ever seen a number without a zero at the end?

[Crypt_Current]

That means ~half the amount of people that tried to become verified over the previous 10 days came in the last day. Are you serious??

This seems just outlandish.

Not really -- high price of a commodity, especially a revolutionary one such as Bitcoin (and especially ESPECIALLY once that concept irrevocably sinks into the minds of those that were up to this point still "on the fence"), tends to drive up interest in the commodity.  Multiply this by the network effect and the essence of the commodity itself (most important part, IMHO [e-mailable cash]) ... to the moon.

[Kazu]

That means ~half the amount of people that tried to become verified over the previous 10 days came in the last day. Are you serious??

This seems just outlandish.

Not really -- high price of a commodity, especially a revolutionary one such as Bitcoin (and especially ESPECIALLY once that concept irrevocably sinks into the minds of those that were up to this point still "on the fence"), tends to drive up interest in the commodity.  Multiply this by the network effect and the essence of the commodity itself (most important part, IMHO [e-mailable cash]) ... to the moon.

I don't care about the price. The fact of the matter is that something that is far easier to manipulate, and shows far more evidence of being manipulated, is the verification queue. I'm not sure whats going on, but its nuts. I don't care how far up the price is going, 8000 people not only choosing to sign up, but also choosing to verify, their Mt. Gox accounts (indicating they have an interest in using it) in a single day? Thats nuts. I'm sorry. Huge price increase can be explained by "OMG BUBBLE" as well as a simply fast-growing commodity. But 8000 people choosing to sign up in one day is absolute shit. Gmail didn't get that type of sign ups, and that was free & didn't require verification, and was run by a huge company like Google.

[str4wm4n]

Kim Dotcom said mega recieved 500,000 signups within the first 14 hours of being live.

8,000 people signing up for gox in a day doesn't seem too implausible