mtgox might just kill Bitcoin's chances of success

[hazek]

Drawing charts is one thing, providing the full depth table with all the orders no matter the volume is another. Right now mtgox does not give out the full depth table, even via the API.

People can't be expected to make good decisions with incomplete information, all they can do is make educated guesses at best which eventually lead to mistakes and when mistakes clump up we get a crash which then hurts Bitcoin's credibility.

Transparency is the only way to success, so please, find a different exchange that has full transparency.

[Astro]

mtgox going down with mysql errors and saying nothing about it except to 7 people on IRC is reason enough to pull all your money out. 

[charliesheen]

heres my website with depth of recent trades

usd depth
http://bitklein.com/usdtrade.php
btc depth
http://bitklein.com/bctrade.php

[dayfall]

As for me, I put in orders, watch the market, cancel, make new orders, repeat...   If you were to watch my orders you likely wouldn't learn my future trading price, that is to say when I finally decide to make a trade.  I bet data beyond .75/1.75 range means very little.

But, whatever caused the fiasco this weekend had made me not want to buy nor sell using bitcoins.  I am right now putting away all my coins.  I plan to only keep half of what I mine for spending.  (which isn't much)  The rest goes into my secure wallet. 

I am glad to have gotten the chance to buy at $12 but this is just crazy.

[phillipsjk]

dayfall, (everybody) spending a portion is the only way to guarantee the remaining ones have value.

I will seriously consider using Tradehill instead of MtGox. I have never understood the point of "Dark pools." (I have no BTC yet). I don't like the referral system Tradehill uses. I am considering using a random referral number.

[hazek]

Which sane merchant would want to receive such a volatile commodity in return for his goods and services? Are people around here forgetting that merchants aren't being merchants just for fun, it's their fking bread and butter and we better have stable prices if we want them to trust Bitcoin not to fk them over out of their bread and butter.

I strongly believe that what happened this weekend had everything to do with lack of transparency and information required to make good decisions on what to charge and what to pay for Bitcoins. We are big enough, it's time we end these shenanigans and switch to an exchange more transparent. I know I have.

[fergalish]

In principle I agree with OP, but most likely the fundamental problem is that MtGox has such a huge market share of public exchanges, maybe 90-95% or so.  The dark pools on MtGox can only be damaging as long as MtGox has this large market share.  All holders of bitcoins who do not want to see a repeat of the bust of last weekend, would do well to trade elsewhere.

Let me try to explain better: the dark pools on MtGox only offer an advantage to wealthy bitcoiners *AS LONG AS* there is a large list of public asks and bids on MtGox to draw from.

1. If you don't like the advantages dark pools offer to large traders, then take your BTCs elsewhere.
2. If you want price stability, then don't trade on any exchange that has an excessively large market share.

[stakhanov]

Information is always imperfect in the real world. Even if Mt Gox was absolutely perfect, people can always trade outside of it, in other exchanges, over the counter, etc. That's why true free markets never exist. It's just a fact of life, you have to accept it.

[hazek]

You are wrong stakhanov.

Mtgox can either be completely transparent or not. It can either give out all the available information or they can withhold information. This might not be of crucial importance in a particular moment but a market that doesn't get to see the full supply/demand picture is bound to swing in the wrong direction to far which then causes massive corrections and price volatility which is something we absolutely do not want.

I'm not saying that if mtgox was completely transparent we wouldn't have had the correction from the $31 top all the way down to almost $10, but what I am saying is that if mtgox was completely transparent we wouldn't have even reached so high and needed a correction in the first place.

And if enough people understand this and there is an exchange that offers complete transparency, and there is, people will switch and mtgox will have to adopt or lose it's customers. And that, sir, is a fact of life.


EDIT: Oh and I find you are being hilariously ironic with your false statements in your post about there being no perfect information in the real world and your signature under it offer a gadget with perfect information for your desktop. Good job.

[timmo11]

I mostly just wanted to talk about the guy screwing up the chart at TradeHill with his $999.99 ask price!

Tradehill needs to sort that kind of rubbish out quickly. I would argue that any ask or bid price simply not be accepted if it is too far off the current price. This is what happens on online share trading. Try putting in a bid price for google at $1 or an ask at $100,000... aint gonna happen.

Speaking someone who is trying to get a business owner to take BTC I find it totally bizarre that an exchange trading in USD will not settle to a USD checking account. Once my friend saw Liberty Reserve listed he said "what the F*** is that ? Why dont that just use a normal bank - is this stuff legal?" and I have to admit I was at a bit of a loss to explain it myself.

I am pleased that Tradehill simply has a US bank account and Dwolla. I would say that something like that looks a lot more legit.

Tim

[davout]

And if enough people understand this and there is an exchange that offers complete transparency, and there is, people will switch and mtgox will have to adopt or lose it's customers. And that, sir, is a fact of life.

Stop being a control freak, and put your two little hands at work where your mouth is.

[hazek]

I already did so. I withdrew everything from mtgox before I wrote the OP and deposited in tradehill.

Oh and ty for proving my logic is correct seeing as you have to attack my character ("a control freak") instead of my arguments.

[hugolp]

Information is always imperfect in the real world. Even if Mt Gox was absolutely perfect, people can always trade outside of it, in other exchanges, over the counter, etc. That's why true free markets never exist. It's just a fact of life, you have to accept it.

Perfect information does not exists, but there is better and worst information distribution. Talking about perfect information is just derailing the topic.

Also, free markets does not imply the existance of perfect information. That would be silly. Free market can exist and have existed.

[timmo11]

Which sane merchant would want to receive such a volatile commodity in return for his goods and services?

After what I saw this weekend I will be recommending that my friend offer the intraday low for staying in his hostel. If you as a customer think this is just a wobble in the price you can always wait a day for it to go up.

[hazek]

I mostly just wanted to talk about the guy screwing up the chart at TradeHill with his $999.99 ask price!

Tradehill needs to sort that kind of rubbish out quickly.

That is irrelevant. It doesn't matter what they draw on a graph, they can change that all they want. I don't care if mtgox shows only 10% under spot bids and 10% over spot asks if they at the same time have the entire depth table available. But that's not the case, not only they do not draw all the bids and asks they don't even provide the depth table.

Plus if you look at the depth of tradehill on bitcoincharts instead you can see a perfect picture of how the supply and demand looks like.

[davout]

I already did so. I withdrew everything from mtgox before I wrote the OP and deposited in tradehill.

I mean, go make your own exchange

Oh and ty for proving my logic is correct seeing as you have to attack my character (a control freak) instead of my arguments.

Control freaks are people who say "everyone needs to do this now because blah blah blah" instead of "i'm doing this because i think it's smarter", and I don't usually lose time with control freaks.

As for your logic, remove dark pools and people will use trading bots (and then you'll probably start complaining about how 'unfair' they are, and about how they leave you with 'incomplete' information, and how the world is going to collapse if people don't listen to your insightful rants).

[hazek]

Which sane merchant would want to receive such a volatile commodity in return for his goods and services?

After what I saw this weekend I will be recommending that my friend offer the intraday low for staying in his hostel. If you as a customer think this is just a wobble in the price you can always wait a day for it to go up.

I'm not sure if you are serious. If you are I suggest you ask 20 merchants if they'd want to use a currency that can have 40% daily swings and see how many you find. My bet is not one would.

[hazek]

I already did so. I withdrew everything from mtgox before I wrote the OP and deposited in tradehill.

I mean, go make your own exchange

Don't need to, there already is an exchange that offers perfect transparency.

Oh and ty for proving my logic is correct seeing as you have to attack my character (a control freak) instead of my arguments.

Control freaks are people who say "everyone needs to do this now because blah blah blah" instead of "i'm doing this because i think it's smarter", and I don't usually lose time with control freaks.

In conclusion: I wrote this post with the intention of raising this issue and making a plea to everyone who shares my hopes of success for Bitcoin. I don't care what mtgox does, they can do whatever the hell they want. But please listen to me and please strongly consider switching over to tradehill.com where there are none of these shenanigans and we can all see everything and make educated decisions about what our Bitcoins are worth and maybe just maybe maintain a more stable price, stable enough for merchants to see it as a viable option and adopt it.

Thank you.

Ah yes, I'm such a control freak, real nazi, right?  

As for your logic, remove dark pools and people will use trading bots (and then you'll probably start complaining about how 'unfair' they are, and about how they leave you with 'incomplete' information, and how the world is going to collapse if people don't listen to your insightful rants).

Wrong. Anyone can write a trade bot. No one can see dark pool orders except the owner. You continue to amaze me with your "sound" logic.

[davout]

Wrong. Anyone can write a trade bot. No one can see dark pool orders except the owner. You continue to amaze me with your "sound" logic.

If there is no possibility to place a dark order, then people will make their big orders look small by placing them using a bot, therefore you will never have the information detail level you want. Is it that hard that to understand ?

This has been discussed countless times on the forums, lurk a little more.

[timmo11]

Which sane merchant would want to receive such a volatile commodity in return for his goods and services?

After what I saw this weekend I will be recommending that my friend offer the intraday low for staying in his hostel. If you as a customer think this is just a wobble in the price you can always wait a day for it to go up.

I'm not sure if you are serious. If you are I suggest you ask 20 merchants if they'd want to use a currency that can have 40% daily swings and see how many you find. My bet is not one would.

I am serious. I think it would do his business good to accept BTC.  I am NOT suddenly suggesting to him that he takes BTC *because* it is swinging so wildly, rather I am suggesting he takes BTC in general and needs a way of not getting burnt in the short term until things settle down.

I agree with you totally something swinging so wildly is deeply unattractive to any merchant. That is why my suggestion is that he only takes the days minimum rate. The customers can take it or leave it. If they think the rate is unusually low they can wait till it rises.

He would need to move it to an exchange and transfer it to dollars pronto. He is unlikely to lose on a sustained basis by doing this (ie the rate may rise or fall on any given day from the time he quotes a price to the time he converts to dollars)

Forgive me if I am bit off topic. It is less about Mt Gox and more about how a volatile BTC is making it hard for me to make a case for a "real merchant" to accept them.
Tim