Mt.Gox is also not processing EUR SEPA wires - probably they are bankrupt

[EuroBit]

Mt. Gox is currently sitting on a couple of thousands of EURs of me.
The SEPA wires were all started a few weeks ago. All of them are still just in "confirmed" and not in "processed" status.

Their support tells me one day, that actually the money had already been sent, another day that it has in fact not been sent yet. They cannot give ANY estimation on when it will happen.

So here is what I think:
They are bankrupt. If you still have money in Mt.Gox consider writing it off as a loss and be happy that you learned to not trust invisible businesses that have no faces on their website and are in shady jurisdictions.

Sorry to post this here - as a Newbie I unfortunately can't post elsewhere. Just registered to share my 2 cents and let everyone know that the USD withdrawal halt is probably a cover up and hides the fact that they in fact also stopped SEPA wires with EUR currencies.

[DeathAndTaxes]

If you really thought MtGox was short funds wouldn't the smart thing be to buy BTC and withdrawal rather than just assume a complete loss?  I mean in what scenario would it make sense not to do that.

[EuroBit]

I would have done that, unfortunately I sold BTC for EUR long before these announcements had been made.
Since these wires are now stuck at Mt. Gox there is no chance for me to just send the BTCs out to a credible exchange.

I mainly want to warn people. If you still have cash available or BTC at Gox, take the loss and send it out as quickly as possible.
I think Mt. Gox operates as a pyramid scheme and they are simply out of cash. Maybe they are even artificially keeping the exchange rates high.

All these companies of theirs have a very minimal stock capital, so no wonders they are using their customers bank:
http://imfed.org/ratings/mt-gox-tibanne-co-ltd/

[milone]

Mt.Gox is a lot of things, but bankrupt is not likely one of them. They make a ton of money and they obviously don't invest all of it back into hardware and software. I'd put my money on incompetence rather than bankrupt, but I don't know that that makes it any better.

[EuroBit]

It's definitely weird that the parent company in Japan has only
about 25k EUR share capital. The company in poland has even less (about 1k EUR). Thats a joke for a financial operation of some scale.

I think they are not trustworthy. They got a major blow from a few account seizures and they are really low on cash.
Right now they just can't give everyone at once all the money that everybody requested. So -legally/technically- they are bankrupt.

It's a carrousel scam. They are using funds from new users to pay old ones and at some point this model will -like all carrousel scams- no longer sustain, so the whole operation folds/pops.


As someone who still needs to get a couple of thousands of euros out of that carrousel I have an incentive to tell everybody "Mt. Gox is safe, they are awesome", because if others believe i might be happy to get my cash out.


However - thats not how I roll. I've seen these things in trading companies too often to not smell when something is rotten and (thats just my opinion) Mt. Gox is about to pop. They might be able to drag it out a bit and calm things down for a little longer, but they are definitely already death-struck (in my opinion).

I am happy to be convinced otherwise by their actions, but it's definitely not what I am expecting. Also their customer service (what you filed under incompetency) is setup to calm things down and just randomly delay people getting upset and taking action, but they don't know whats going on either and just tell you one day "it was sent, check your account" and another day "oh, we have a delay, we don't know how long it may take" (day, weeks, months, years, centuries - who knows).

[DiamondCardz]

Mt. Gox is terrible and always will be, why do people still use it? We need a p2p exchange, or else you get shit like this happening.

[hany103]

I hope MtGox is not bankrupt or it will be a big blow to the bitcoins, anyway until we know what is wrong with MtGox people can you BitStamp

[EuroBit]

Your bitcoins in other wallets will also be de-valued if Mt.Gox blows up.
It will make people question other exchanges stability as well unfortunately.
And honestly: I like BitStamp, but what makes you think that they can't go bust. Even banks (and they have some regulation and minimum capital requirements) blow up.

Like it was said: The only real solution is p2p. Exchanges will always blow up, cut down by regulators etc.
Right now there are two stable exchanges left, BitStamp and Coinbase. For CoinBase you at least know the team and that they got a truckload of venture capital money.... for BitStamp: unknowns in Slovenia, now 1 british pound limited company.

No faces on their website. No disclosure of earnings and reserves etc.
If someone wants to build a trustworthy and stable non p2p exchange, he has to disclose all that stuff: persons, financials, location, etc.

Nobody in the BTC community is working on building trust right now, which is a bad signal for new people in terms of adoption (i never posted here, but i am a bitcoin adopter since the very beginning).

[arbitrage001]

Mt.Gox is a lot of things, but bankrupt is not likely one of them. They make a ton of money and they obviously don't invest all of it back into hardware and software. I'd put my money on incompetence rather than bankrupt, but I don't know that that makes it any better.

I will tend to agree with this one. Hard to believe a brokerage business going bankrupt when they are charging 0.6% both sides, unless they got most of their USD seized by authority. Even then, it shouldn't take them more than 1-2 years to recover if the volume stay.

[Asrael999]

If MtGox does go under it is going to pummel bitcoin value - and as a consequence possibly result in the ASIC revolution stopping dead as orders get pulled and manufacturers go under.  After all who is going to buy a USD 5K mining rig when BTC is worth <$10.

As to the idea that brokerages that make 0.6% on each transaction cannot go bust - just google John Corzine. Remember MF Global......

[Birdy]

It's a carrousel scam. They are using funds from new users to pay old ones and at some point this model will -like all carrousel scams- no longer sustain, so the whole operation folds/pops.

Ehm....what? This doesn't make sense.
It's an exchange.
Person A has $100, person B has 1 Btc. They trade, Gox gains 1.2% for enabling this trade.
If you see the trade volume, they made tons of money doing this.

Unless they were screwing with the system by using the money/btc in there as in fractional reserve banking.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I would have done that, unfortunately I sold BTC for EUR long before these announcements had been made.
Since these wires are now stuck at Mt. Gox there is no chance for me to just send the BTCs out to a credible exchange.

MtGox customer support can cancel withdrawals in progress (or at least they have in the past).  It has to be done manually but you can open a support ticket, have them cancel the withdrawal, and buy BTC.  I mean if you are convinced your money is 100% lost anyways why wouldn't you.  Anything is better than -100%.

[B613]

For me it all depends on people. One can audit, check, make transparent all year round. Then comes Eron and Madoff. One could think that with all checks and balances in place things like this are simply not possible. Well, they are.

As I said, one has to build organisations keeping in mind that they are made of fallible people. There are plenty of start-ups who find themselves in deep mud when they attempt to scale up. They find that procedures that worked in family business, stop working when employing more people.

I think that MtGox is at such junction. It started to play with really big players. It promised to transfer its US clients to a US governed entity and came short on promises. It made itself some powerful enemies.

My point is that when MtGox was small, it had a small management team. Everyone was, more or less, playing the same family friendly tune. Then they got partners which turned out not as nice. Their relationship went really sour. Now it got ex-friends playing against it.

I think it will be very hard to put down MtGox. But if it would happen, contrary to what people here suggested, the value of BTC will go up and value of USD will plummet. At least initially. A lot of people will try to sell USD kept on MtGox for BTC, and transfer it away.

[hany103]

I don't understand why would Mt.Gox go bankrupt, they don't buy or sell bitcoins, they just take fees of of trades

[arbitrage001]

If MtGox does go under it is going to pummel bitcoin value - and as a consequence possibly result in the ASIC revolution stopping dead as orders get pulled and manufacturers go under.  After all who is going to buy a USD 5K mining rig when BTC is worth <$10.

As to the idea that brokerages that make 0.6% on each transaction cannot go bust - just google John Corzine. Remember MF Global......

Jon Corzine was gambling with customers money. Mtgox problem is government trying to stop them from able to move money.

[arbitrage001]

Looks like they are trying to comply with the regulatory body of the US.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1hb3vp/new_corporation_filing_in_deleware_usa_mt_gox_inc/

[EuroBit]

So since I jumped the gun here, I also want to update with the news from today:
My cash arrived. I am not saying Mt.Gox is stable for eternity, but the news that they are trying to throw themselves into the regulation at least gives hints at that they are pushing hard to be a stable and trustworthy business.

[MineriaCloud]

Thanks for the update. We can just assume they are under a massive retrieval on funds in the couple of days. So its possible expected that it can take longer to receive funds.

The problem with business involved money is that people are very sensitive to money issues. I complete understand this, holding to receive your funds, gives you a bad vibe.