Mt. Gox approval queue - (updated with current numbers)

[Joost]

I wasn't around during the Bitcoinica fiasco so don't really know the details of how they operated their liquidity. I only know that they were hacked and lost a great deal of Bitcoin.

Just curious as to why liquidity needs to come from Mt.Gox and not from the market?

Isn't it the act of buying/selling from users the source of liquidity?

Mt.Gox isn't a market maker is it?

It does come from the market, but there is often quite some time between depositing and withdrawing. It would be unsafe if Mtgox kept all that money (both fiat and BTC) within reaching distance. In case of a hack, it is important that only a fraction of their money is 'hot', while the main volume is in cold storage, preferably entirely offline.

There is a security/user experience balance in deciding how much they want to keep in hot storage to account for daily withdrawals.

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[MPOE-PR]

I wasn't around during the Bitcoinica fiasco so don't really know the details of how they operated their liquidity. I only know that they were hacked and lost a great deal of Bitcoin.

Not quite accurate. Among the other fraudulent/scammy things Bitcoinica was doing and for which they were famous, consider this email:

From: Zhou Tong <>
Date: Thu, May 3, 2012 at 5:54 AM
Subject: Re: I want to deposit money on Bitcoinica
To: Tihan Seale <>
Cc: Donald Norman <>, "
<>, "
<was send to wrong email of mine, so donald is cc'ing me back in>
 
 
 Hi,
 
I'll look into the problem too. To my surprise (and maybe yours), it seems
that we bought some Bitcoins at too high prices. This might be an
explanation for the drop in equity for recent week.
 
I'll take these actions to try to rectify the problems:
 
- Increase the confidence level to 2500. Since the increase in guaranteed
liquidity, our percentage hedge has increased a lot. It makes sense to
"play big" since the market is more mature and much less volatile. We can
always revise this decision if anything changes.
 
- I don't really want to increase the spread, but I can keep adjusting it
based on my observations. If you permit, I will adjust between the range of
1.003 to 1.008. If our Mt. Gox fee is 0.25%, we can at least "break even"
with such settings.
 
We actually made a lot of money from position liquidations (except for the
huge and forced ones), because they often take place at relatively
unfavourable prices for the trading range. We have a huge open interest
right now (about 180K BTC for both sides) so our potential profit is high.
The biggest problem right now is that the market doesn't move. We did make
some profits when the price rose to $5.5 last time, but we lost them again
due to the bad investment decision.
 
Also, I propose a new feature to increase our revenue:
 
- Secured loans. We don't have to "settle" for our customers. We can allow
them to settle themselves at the prices they like. However, we are going to
charge the Sell interest when they have negative balances. A
forced-settlement system will be implemented instead.
 
They can borrow USD against their BTC balance, and vice versa. We may
require 200% mortgage (borrow up to $1 against $2 worth of BTC), and a
default reserve of 10% (if I borrowed $100 against 40 BTC at BTC/USD=5, the
default rate will be BTC/USD = 100 * 1.1 / 40 = 2.75).
 
The benefit of this system is to make the money flow faster within the
Bitcoin economy and we can rely on Mt. Gox less. It's like the bank's
overdraft facility that charges insane interests. But Bitcoin needs this.
 
Lastly, I have lowered the spread for the Exchange feature in a previous
git commit. The next thing I'm going to do is to limit the number of
exchange transactions each minute to prevent abuse, and then make the
spread more reflective of actual market liquidity. Then, we can offer the
Exchange feature to the mass audience because they can pay less to exchange
money on Bitcoinica. Exchange transactions will move the "surplus". They
are always some nice small market orders that generate profits for us.
 
Summary: strategies to make more profits:
 
- Less hedge.
- Faster money flow.
- More volume.
- More trades within the boundary (surplus is between -confidence_level to
+confidence_level).
- More open interest and more deposits (the interest differentials can
generate $1000+ revenue every month currently).
 
I can make a living without the salary, so skipping a few months before
resolving the problem completely isn't really the problem. Anyway, I'll try
to squeeze some time to implement these changes as soon as possible.
 
PS. I've traded almost A$20,000 with BitPiggy now. (And if it's
unprofitable for them, they shouldn't continue dealing with me.) They're
legit and what they are doing is viable. BitPiggy has much more starfish
than us, but this makes them look legit.
 
 
Best Regards,
Zhou Tong

Boldage mine. Obviously they were running it as a bucket shop, bar all their protestations to the contrary at the time.

MPOE-PR appears to be doing something known as "unfounded accusations and trolling". I advise you disregard them, their Ignore button is gold for a reason.

People have a year+ history of claiming this about what I say, only to be humiliated a few months later. But it's okay, because by then their mistaken assumptions and hardheadedness has already cost them all their BTC, and so they can disappear into the void, leaving room for a new generation of idiots to repeat the same mistakes.

Read my old posts, it will make you much smarter.

[Tronlet]

MPOE-PR appears to be doing something known as "unfounded accusations and trolling". I advise you disregard them, their Ignore button is gold for a reason.

People have a year+ history of claiming this about what I say, only to be humiliated a few months later. But it's okay, because by then their mistaken assumptions and hardheadedness has already cost them all their BTC, and so they can disappear into the void, leaving room for a new generation of idiots to repeat the same mistakes.

Read my old posts, it will make you much smarter.

Sorry, don't have the time, been around for a bit longer than you have anyway, and never been scammed, nor have I messed up. I'm guessing you were calling out pirate@40 as a scammer, but that's not exactly notable. Who wasn't, aside from the delusional investors?

I invite you to back up your claims against Mt. Gox. Certainly what you say is possible, but anything's possible.

[Inedible]

MPOE-PR appears to be doing something known as "unfounded accusations and trolling". I advise you disregard them, their Ignore button is gold for a reason.

I'd never noticed some people have gold Ignore buttons.

What's the criteria for your link to be 'golden'ed?

[Tronlet]

MPOE-PR appears to be doing something known as "unfounded accusations and trolling". I advise you disregard them, their Ignore button is gold for a reason.

I'd never noticed some people have gold Ignore buttons.

What's the criteria for your link to be 'golden'ed?

Basically, the more people that ignore you, the golder your Ignore button becomes. It's a nifty way of showing who tends to be ignored by people a lot, for whatever reason that might be.

Here's theymos' post when he actually implemented it, that has some more detail on how it's exactly implemented. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68329.msg796962#msg796962

Edit: And for completion, one more quirk of the ignore system: every 500 posts you have makes one of your ignores not count. So someone with 1000 posts who's had 8 established members ignore them would only have an ignore count of 6. Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68329.msg1584088#msg1584088

[MPOE-PR]

I invite you to back up your claims against Mt. Gox. Certainly what you say is possible, but anything's possible.

So far Tux does the lie-and-run thing, so you're setting an impossible goalpost. With a (provenly) dishonest operator, the only thing left is circumstantial evidence, unless someone hacks it again.

What's the criteria for your link to be 'golden'ed?

Pissing off a coupla dozen idiots.

[Inedible]

Anyone have an update on the current validation count?

[PuertoLibre]

I guess this means it's likely that the price is going to continue to rise although some will be:

1) signing up and abandoning the account
2) opening an account to sell their bitcoins
3) waiting for the price to drop before buying

so don't expect every new account to be buying.

DDos'ing the account verification by adding super long lines?

[Inedible]

Can one of you guys give us an update on where you are in the queue?

[hobbes]

@Inedible: this thread is a very good idea.

If you could post every time there is an update so everybody is notified it would be nice.

[Minor Miner]

I invite you to back up your claims against Mt. Gox. Certainly what you say is possible, but anything's possible.

So far Tux does the lie-and-run thing, so you're setting an impossible goalpost. With a (provenly) dishonest operator, the only thing left is circumstantial evidence, unless someone hacks it again.

What's the criteria for your link to be 'golden'ed?

Pissing off a coupla dozen idiots.

Or saying something that a few people REALLY do not like and those people make MULTIPLE accounts.  MPOE-PR may not be the most sensitive of people, but what he writes is usually spot on (although I disagree with many of the opinions, I agree with some of the really important ones).    Just a question for everyone to think about:
You CANNOT sell bitcoin you do not have (because you have to settle with the unique number that is confirmed in the block chain IF people use FIAT to buy BTC and they remove the BTC from their trading account).    This is a fact.   
So, if tons of new people came to buy BTC and wanted to store it in their own ways (say kind of like the Winklevoss' already said that they did), and some exchange wanted to keep flow going and kept issuing BTC to people like the Winklevoss' that were withdrawing and the market kept going up at an incredible pace (and now the exchange is short BTC),  WHAT  IS THE BEST THING THAT COULD EVER HAPPEN TO AN EXCHANGE THAT IS SHORT A LIMITED FLOAT SECURITY THAT CANNOT BE SUBSTITUTED?

[Inedible]

@Inedible: this thread is a very good idea.

If you could post every time there is an update so everybody is notified it would be nice.

That was my intention but I've just remembered editing a post (the top post) doesn't actually mark the thread 'unread' for everyone.

I'll new-post into the thread with each update.

Unfortunately I've not heard back from anyone yet.

I was hoping to do a daily update to see how many accounts are made daily.

[Inedible]

...some exchange wanted to keep flow going and kept issuing BTC to people like the Winklevoss' that were withdrawing and the market kept going up at an incredible pace (and now the exchange is short BTC)...

I don't understand. How can you issue BTC you don't have?

[Minor Miner]

...some exchange wanted to keep flow going and kept issuing BTC to people like the Winklevoss' that were withdrawing and the market kept going up at an incredible pace (and now the exchange is short BTC)...

I don't understand. How can you issue BTC you don't have?

YOU CANNOT.    Unless, you use the numbers from the "deposits" (which ARE NOT yours to use)   When someone deposits, the money goes into the exchange (it should be segregated but in the failures of exchanges it does not seem to have been (even corzine was not doing seg properly).   If you were doing this, you are basically "borrowing" others money and using it to short to make the commission to keep the flow going).

[Inedible]

YOU CANNOT.    Unless, you use the numbers from the "deposits" (which ARE NOT yours to use)   When someone deposits, the money goes into the exchange (it should be segregated but in the failures of exchanges it does not seem to have been (even corzine was not doing seg properly).   If you were doing this, you are basically "borrowing" others money and using it to short to make the commission to keep the flow going).

That can't be legal.

[Minor Miner]

YOU CANNOT.    Unless, you use the numbers from the "deposits" (which ARE NOT yours to use)   When someone deposits, the money goes into the exchange (it should be segregated but in the failures of exchanges it does not seem to have been (even corzine was not doing seg properly).   If you were doing this, you are basically "borrowing" others money and using it to short to make the commission to keep the flow going).

That can't be legal.

Really?   how naive are you?   Mt Gox is following the money laundering laws but name the organization that is regulating how they conduct business?   You are complete fools if you leave deposits there.   The winklevoss' did not not (and they are spoiled idiots) and yet you do?

[MPOE-PR]

Well I'm glad to see at least some people have the sense to follow what has been going on here. Yeah, MtGox didn't "stop trade" back when BTC went up 150% in two days. They did however as the price was falling and they needed a little time to beg, borrow and steal enough to be able to settle their gaping short position. Hurr durr.

Yes, it's circumstantial evidence, and yes they are idiots. Nevertheless, never attribute to plain stupidity that which also could be explained by malice. You'll live longer that way.

PS: She.

[Furyan]

Well I'm glad to see at least some people have the sense to follow what has been going on here. Yeah, MtGox didn't "stop trade" back when BTC went up 150% in two days. They did however as the price was falling and they needed a little time to beg, borrow and steal enough to be able to settle their gaping short position. Hurr durr.

Yes, it's circumstantial evidence, and yes they are idiots. Nevertheless, never attribute to plain stupidity that which also could be explained by malice. You'll live longer that way.

PS: She.

"The only Bitcoin service that has never been hacked"... zing. Lol.

[Inedible]

YOU CANNOT.    Unless, you use the numbers from the "deposits" (which ARE NOT yours to use)   When someone deposits, the money goes into the exchange (it should be segregated but in the failures of exchanges it does not seem to have been (even corzine was not doing seg properly).   If you were doing this, you are basically "borrowing" others money and using it to short to make the commission to keep the flow going).

That can't be legal.

Really?   how naive are you?   Mt Gox is following the money laundering laws but name the organization that is regulating how they conduct business?   You are complete fools if you leave deposits there.   The winklevoss' did not not (and they are spoiled idiots) and yet you do?

Anyone can make a bold claim.

Can you back it up with evidence?

[Minor Miner]

YOU CANNOT.    Unless, you use the numbers from the "deposits" (which ARE NOT yours to use)   When someone deposits, the money goes into the exchange (it should be segregated but in the failures of exchanges it does not seem to have been (even corzine was not doing seg properly).   If you were doing this, you are basically "borrowing" others money and using it to short to make the commission to keep the flow going).

That can't be legal.

Really?   how naive are you?   Mt Gox is following the money laundering laws but name the organization that is regulating how they conduct business?   You are complete fools if you leave deposits there.   The winklevoss' did not not (and they are spoiled idiots) and yet you do?

Anyone can make a bold claim.

Can you back it up with evidence?

What is a bold claim?   That the winkelvoss' did not leave money on the exchange?   Read their quote yourself hero.