MtGox withdrawal delays [Gathering]

[aynstein]

This was there response!!!!!!

"Thank you for the email. Few BTC withdrawals are delayed because of the multiple transactions requested at the same time causing network congestion. The transaction should eventually go through and we will update you once it is complete."


Haha, Wow... I CALL SHENANIGANS ON MTGOX! They are clearly playing games with my coins.

[tvbcof]

...
I have converted the remaining balance in mtgox to bitcoin and submitted the withdraw request to get all of it out.

I minimized my Mt. Gox account several months ago.  The warning signs were starting to pop up.  Hedged my bets by taking half as a wire (fail!) and moving half of the BTC away to capitalize in via different route.  Not that I ever thought that a complete collapse was likely at that time (or even now, for that matter) but why take a chance?

Was the same with Bitcoinica.  Some crook got 2 or 3 BTC of mine.  At the time it was effectively nothing, but as the price goes up it's kinda starting to piss me off on principle.  Oh well.

[bitcoinmarketmaker]

[zeroblock]

Some users are waiting for BTC withdraws under the premise of "network congestion" and "blockchain out of sync" from Gox.  Very blatant form of capital controls.

[Luno]

What if the "ASIC cartel" is this anyone? They (like most players in the Bitcoin world) have a vested interest in an everlasting uptrend in the Bitcoin price.

Because they want to sell their overpriced hardware.

With increasing difficulty this gets increasingly difficult. Unless ... unless the price of Bitcoin also rises 

So what if the "ASIC cartel" silently agreed to peg the market (or should I say: manipulate)?

That actually is a 'conspiracy hypothesis' worthy of critical analysis.  I like it!

That's actually not a 'conspiracy hypothesis' but the knowledge available for a small group of people. Oh wait... for everybody else IT IS the 'conspiracy hypothesis'.

+1: I think there is substance to that!

Remember Deepbit? Where did they invest all their coins?

[aynstein]

This was a follow-up response, after I complained and made it clear I would post my experience.

"Thank you for the email. We have forwarded this to our development team. You will updated once the transaction has been completed."

I think Gox's goose is cooked just in time for the holiday season.

[tvbcof]

It just occurred to me that although it is doubtful that pressure purely from mainstream financial institutions and regulators could drive Mt. Gox completely out of business, it is entirely possible that large players in the Bitcoin community could by engineering various liquidity events and such.  And Mt. Gox has made a lot of enemies (e.g., Peter Vessenes and the like.)  Not to mention all of the players who would like a bigger piece of the pie (e.g., Bitstamp, BTCChina, Bitpay, etc, etc.)

A combined effort between mainstream financial players and larger players in the Bitcoin sphere could have a really devastating effect on Mt. Gox in spite of Mark's long built empire of liquidity (including his Smaug-like situation sitting on atop pools of BTC of questionable history like to Bitcoinica stash and God knows what else.)

Just a hypothesis to mull over...

[Rampion]

Hey guys, sturtle already explained you that there is no stampede/bank run, MtGox made shiiiiiitloads of money and can cover any hole, the problem is just that they are so successful and their volume is so freaking high that they are overwhelming both the traditional financial system and the Bitcoin network, that's all

[tvbcof]

Hey guys, sturtle already explained you that there is no stampede/bank run, MtGox made shiiiiiitloads of money and can cover any hole, the problem is just that they are so successful and their volume is so freaking high that they are overwhelming both the traditional financial system and the Bitcoin network, that's all

Oh, thank heavens!  I just transferred all of the BTC that I own back to Mt. Gox for safe storage.  And I wired the balance of my checking acount there as well.  Thx a million for the info!

[bnjmnkent]

It just occurred to me that although it is doubtful that pressure purely from mainstream financial institutions and regulators could drive Mt. Gox completely out of business, it is entirely possible that large players in the Bitcoin community could by engineering various liquidity events and such.  And Mt. Gox has made a lot of enemies (e.g., Peter Vessenes and the like.)  Not to mention all of the players who would like a bigger piece of the pie (e.g., Bitstamp, BTCChina, Bitpay, etc, etc.)

A combined effort between mainstream financial players and larger players in the Bitcoin sphere could have a really devastating effect on Mt. Gox in spite of Mark's long built empire of liquidity (including his Smaug-like situation sitting on atop pools of BTC of questionable history like to Bitcoinica stash and God knows what else.)

Just a hypothesis to mull over...

Please elaborate on the various liquidity events.

[newguy05]

It just occurred to me that although it is doubtful that pressure purely from mainstream financial institutions and regulators could drive Mt. Gox completely out of business, it is entirely possible that large players in the Bitcoin community could by engineering various liquidity events and such.  And Mt. Gox has made a lot of enemies (e.g., Peter Vessenes and the like.)  Not to mention all of the players who would like a bigger piece of the pie (e.g., Bitstamp, BTCChina, Bitpay, etc, etc.)

A combined effort between mainstream financial players and larger players in the Bitcoin sphere could have a really devastating effect on Mt. Gox in spite of Mark's long built empire of liquidity (including his Smaug-like situation sitting on atop pools of BTC of questionable history like to Bitcoinica stash and God knows what else.)

Just a hypothesis to mull over...

jesus please stop with all the conspiracies, what's next mtgox was created by e.t.? 

it's simple, you cant withdraw fiat currency out of mtgox, so only way for people to get money out is to buy bitcoins and transfer it out. And for the bitcoin holders no point for them to sell on mtgox since they cant get money out, so they just transfer bitcoins out and sell elsewhere.  As more and more people realize this, the bid and sell side will continue to diverge, eventually end up in a panic.

an exchange cannot function if you cant get your money out. In the real world, if i went to any of the broker-dealer like interactive brokers or goldman sachs prop trading, and i cant wire out my money in the standard 24-48 hour window, major panic ensues and it will be on cnbc front page.

only reason noone gives a shit about mtgox taking months to wire money out is most have no clue, but now even their bitcoin is getting delayed by days, which is a sure sign of liquidity problems. 

Last time i will say this - get your bitcoins out of mtgox, it's just not worth the risk to leave it in there - there is no reward only risk.

ps: i got my initial 8 btc out finally after 3+ days.  I wrote another nasty email to them pretty much stating they are full of shit and i want my bitcoins or i will report them to the sesc, then a few hours later i got a reply saying in short oh the bitcoin was already transferred you made a mistake, i look up my block address timestamp and it was literally a few mins before the email was sent lol, i bet they manually did something to get the coins out then acted all innocent in the email.

funny stuff...

[papamoi]

Hey guys, sturtle already explained you that there is no stampede/bank run, MtGox made shiiiiiitloads of money and can cover any hole, the problem is just that they are so successful and their volume is so freaking high that they are overwhelming both the traditional financial system and the Bitcoin network, that's all

Oh, thank heavens!  I just transferred all of the BTC that I own back to Mt. Gox for safe storage.  And I wired the balance of my checking acount there as well.  Thx a million for the info!

lol

i m doing the same but in opposite direction
lol

[tickets]

Just some more experience points to add to the history here:

1 requested $USD withdrawal Sept 4, periodically ask about its status, always get the 'slight delay' excuse email, sometimes they
mention the 5% fee for 'urgent' withdrawals.

2 subsequently reequested more $USD withdrawn, but once I realized it wasn't going to happen, cancelled that and saw my $USD balance restored within hours

As I understand, withdrawals to asian banks are still happening promptly?  If so, what does it take to create a foreign bank account to receive the withdrawn funds (in yuan) ?   

3: Made several BTC withdraw requests last night and got errors saying 'invalid btc address'... the addresses were valid though - when I tried the same one later, it succeeded.

5: Made BTC withdrawal at 10:30AM EST, it's still not received 11 hours later.  Emailed support who just said to wait 24 hours.

6: Made 2 more BTC withdrawals just now, both completed within several minutes.


What I'd like at this point is to find something I can buy and sell, or at least overpay for.... for example, overpay a utility bill in BTC, but get the balance refunded as $USD.   Has anyone found anything to purchase with BTC which can be resold or refunded at the same rate to USd?

[Erdogan]

MtGox worked well during the two last turbulent sell-offs, the silk road event and the debt ceiling cancellation event. High volume and no lag.

The spread between MtGox and Bitstamp has been rather constant the last weeks, indicating that someone has found an arbitration channel to another exchange. The spread has in fact narrowed, it was 10% two weeks ago, now it is 8% most of the time. The arbitrageur has become more efficient or more people have joined the business, pressing the profit.

They have the obvious bank transfer problems, they have tightened the requirements for bitcoin transfers which is bad, they are pressed on support and communicate too little, but otherwise they seem to have a slick system and high trust, and is probably the exchange that has the most coins and fiat for sale on or off the order book.

I am not worried.

[NamelessOne]

It just occurred to me that although it is doubtful that pressure purely from mainstream financial institutions and regulators could drive Mt. Gox completely out of business, it is entirely possible that large players in the Bitcoin community could by engineering various liquidity events and such.  And Mt. Gox has made a lot of enemies (e.g., Peter Vessenes and the like.)  Not to mention all of the players who would like a bigger piece of the pie (e.g., Bitstamp, BTCChina, Bitpay, etc, etc.)

A combined effort between mainstream financial players and larger players in the Bitcoin sphere could have a really devastating effect on Mt. Gox in spite of Mark's long built empire of liquidity (including his Smaug-like situation sitting on atop pools of BTC of questionable history like to Bitcoinica stash and God knows what else.)

Just a hypothesis to mull over...

jesus please stop with all the conspiracies, what's next mtgox was created by e.t.? 

it's simple, you cant withdraw fiat currency out of mtgox, so only way for people to get money out is to buy bitcoins and transfer it out. And for the bitcoin holders no point for them to sell on mtgox since they cant get money out, so they just transfer bitcoins out and sell elsewhere.  As more and more people realize this, the bid and sell side will continue to diverge, eventually end up in a panic.

an exchange cannot function if you cant get your money out. In the real world, if i went to any of the broker-dealer like interactive brokers or goldman sachs prop trading, and i cant wire out my money in the standard 24-48 hour window, major panic ensues and it will be on cnbc front page.

only reason noone gives a shit about mtgox taking months to wire money out is most have no clue, but now even their bitcoin is getting delayed by days, which is a sure sign of liquidity problems. 

Last time i will say this - get your bitcoins out of mtgox, it's just not worth the risk to leave it in there - there is no reward only risk.

ps: i got my initial 8 btc out finally after 3+ days.  I wrote another nasty email to them pretty much stating they are full of shit and i want my bitcoins or i will report them to the sesc, then a few hours later i got a reply saying in short oh the bitcoin was already transferred you made a mistake, i look up my block address timestamp and it was literally a few mins before the email was sent lol, i bet they manually did something to get the coins out then acted all innocent in the email.

funny stuff...

If it comes down to it I will have to do similar tactics. My large withdrawal is still in limbo and not anywhere on the blockchain after 24 hours.

[hutcho]

My withdrawal came in and it was just under 24 hours. They stated 1-24 hours in the email.

[Nagle]

An exchange cannot function if you can't get your money out. In the real world, if I went to any of the broker-dealer like interactive brokers or Goldman Sachs prop trading, and I can't wire out my money in the standard 24-48 hour window, major panic ensues and it will be on the CNBC front page.

Only reason no one gives a shit about Mt. Gox taking months to wire money out is most have no clue. But now even their bitcoin is getting delayed by days, which is a sure sign of liquidity problems. 

Exactly.  I get the impression that many people in the Bitcoin world have no clue what happens when a real broker defaults on their obligations. They're effectively out of business within hours, as other brokers won't deal with them, and they're closed down within days.

[pletharoe]

Just some more experience points to add to the history here:

As I understand, withdrawals to asian banks are still happening promptly?  If so, what does it take to create a foreign bank account to receive the withdrawn funds (in yuan) ?   

This was not my experience.  I tried to withdraw around $5,500 to my Hong Kong bank account with no luck.  After 6-7 weeks I gave up.

[tvbcof]

...
Just a hypothesis to mull over...

jesus please stop with all the conspiracies, what's next mtgox was created by e.t.? 
...

It is a valid and powerful technique in reaching and understanding of the world to consider as many hypotheses as one can dream up, then knock out one which fail to match observations.  In fact it a big part of why science has progressed so quickly after the age of enlightenment.

There is no shame whatsoever in considering a hypothesis which turns out to be incorrect.  Just the opposite really.  There is much shame in failing to consider a hypothesis because it conflicts with some sort of orthodoxy, dictate, or underlying desire for something to be a certain way.

I actually considered your hypothesis that Mt. Gox was created by E.T.  It to a fraction of a second of light work.  While I don't rule out the possibility, it is not a very productive avenue for analysis for a variety of reasons.

[tvbcof]

It just occurred to me that although it is doubtful that pressure purely from mainstream financial institutions and regulators could drive Mt. Gox completely out of business, it is entirely possible that large players in the Bitcoin community could by engineering various liquidity events and such.  And Mt. Gox has made a lot of enemies (e.g., Peter Vessenes and the like.)  Not to mention all of the players who would like a bigger piece of the pie (e.g., Bitstamp, BTCChina, Bitpay, etc, etc.)

A combined effort between mainstream financial players and larger players in the Bitcoin sphere could have a really devastating effect on Mt. Gox in spite of Mark's long built empire of liquidity (including his Smaug-like situation sitting on atop pools of BTC of questionable history like to Bitcoinica stash and God knows what else.)

Just a hypothesis to mull over...

Please elaborate on the various liquidity events.

Manipulating the availability of fiat or BTC in various marketplaces.  I am sure that there are people who will take a temporary loss with the hope of engineering a situation which will produce an even bigger pay-off at a later time (else there would be no market manipulation which I believe laughable.)

It occurred to me some time back that someone with a lot of BTC to play around with could put in a lot of bids.  Then they could start selling.  The spot price would go down, but a lot of the coins would just end up being sold to themselves.  Yes there would be a hit in terms of exchange fees, but it could probably be made up in other ways if one could anticipate a sharp downward push on the spot price (as an example.)  Of course if one is selling to themselves to a significant degree then one maintains their BTC position accordingly (if that is important to them.)

How much an exchange of Mt. Gox's size could be damaged by systematic and targeted manipulation games is unknown.  Perhaps not at all but it would not surprise me if a coalition of like minded parties could team up to cause headaches if they chose to attempt it.  At least in this nascent Bitcoin ecosystem.

One thing that is observable is that somehow a startlingly wide gap has opened between Mt. Gox and other exchanges and that the distortions they have created have had a notable impact on the way customers use and feel about Mt. Gox as an organization.  Admittedly there is an chicken/egg argument to be made here though.