A broken MtGox effectively breaks realistic LocalBitcoin prices too

[thoughtfan]

I just warned my siblings who were considering using LocalBitcoins.com to buy at today's bargain-basement prices that the prices offered by the sellers (especially GBP) are totally off kilter.  The reason being most traders use a calculation for their dynamic pricing that includes the mtgox price.

I'm finding the most reliable way of getting an idea of bitcoin valued in usd now is to use BitPay's listed prices (or formula).*

So what I'm recommending my siblings do (and will offer you folks too) if intending to buy on LocalBitcoins whilst MtGox is broken is to click on whatever you need to to get a phone number then make contact with the seller to ask if they would set their price manually to reflect (plus whatever commission they normally would add) the BitPay price.  You have the justification if you wanted to make a purchase from the many services offering BitPay as a payment option that is the calculation that would be used to calculate your bill in bitcoins.

So don't lose out

* I actually like the principle behind BitPay's means of calculating price and would like to see it more widely used.  I have a variation on it that uses the top four USD exchanges by volume as listed on BitcoinCharts.org/markets that uses the average of the pair of Asks that are closest together.

[the founder]

use Campbx pricing,  it APPEARS to be accurate-- there's a running ticker / rss / api here

Mt.Gox is a turd that needs to be flushed.

[thoughtfan]

use Campbx pricing,  it APPEARS to be accurate-- there's a running ticker / rss / api here

Mt.Gox is a turd that needs to be flushed.

Why would you go with that price alone?  Being 5th USD exchange by volume in the bitcoincharts table it doesn't even figure in my calculations that uses 4 let alone BitPay's that uses 3.  I'm all for lessening the dependency on MtGox but I'd be reluctant to trust latest prices there alone as a reliable indicator, nor that of any other single exchange other than MtGox when they together represent such a small proportion of trading volume.

[the founder]

use Campbx pricing,  it APPEARS to be accurate-- there's a running ticker / rss / api here

Mt.Gox is a turd that needs to be flushed.

Why would you go with that price alone?  Being 5th USD exchange by volume in the bitcoincharts table it doesn't even figure in my calculations that uses 4 let alone BitPay's that uses 3.  I'm all for lessening the dependency on MtGox but I'd be reluctant to trust latest prices there alone as a reliable indicator, nor that of any other single exchange other than MtGox when they together represent such a small proportion of trading volume.

5th...  by my calculation they are #1 today....   considering nearly every other exchange is offline.

[justusranvier]

If I ever bring back my sell ads on Localbitcoins I'd want to revise them to base pricing off of Bitfloor since that's the exchange I can most easily move dollars into to replenish the BTC I would be selling.