2013-08-05 Amid epic woes, Bitcoin’s largest exchange rolls out faster hardware

[patricktim]

Things have gotten increasingly messy this year for Mt. Gox, Bitcoin's largest exchange. There was the whole currency crash in April followed quickly by a DDoS attack directed at the exchange. Next came the US government stepping in to seize Mt. Gox funds from Dwolla, a mobile payment service. And in late June as that investigation continued, Mt. Gox flat-out suspended US-based withdrawals as the volume of transactions continually overwhelmed the site.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/amid-slew-of-epic-woes-bitcoins-largest-exchange-rolls-out-faster-hardware/

[vokain]

A comment on the MtGox situation and recent development

This is a great business case study.

Chapter 1:
The first bitcoin exchange founded by Jed Caleb, running it from the start with passion for great customer satisfaction. It is growing massively. There were some technical issues, but they always got solved.

Chapter 2:
Mark Kapeles buys MtGox. Luckily for him, bitcoin takes off in the public and exchange volume rises. He is happy.

Chapter 3:
He does not seem to be as passionate and dedicated to customer service as the MtGox founder which leads to a lot of frustration. Hacks happen, security breaches, etc. MtGox is not innovating at all: The website and exchange options are as they were 2-3 years ago... Still today, there are no stop loss, stop buy, trailing orders, etc. something that many exchanges have and something that would also lead to better customer satisfaction and more volume for the exchange..

Chapter 4: The lack of innovation, bad marketing, PR and customer service leads to lower customer trust.

Chapter 5: The attempts of complying with money service regulations etc. are too late and withdrawals got stopped or delayed so much that the community loses even more faith..

Chapter 6: People leave MtGox in masses and other exchanges profit.

This is how market leaders fall... while with just a little business and marketing sense this could have been avoided... Just my 1ct ....

finally MtGox is trying to react with PR statements, but still, based on my own experience nothing moves really smoothly in terms of withdrawals. I cancelled mine after 5 weeks of false promises from MtGox.

I read the press release https://www.mtgox.com/press_release_20130805.html. It is silent with specifics when it comes to USD withdrawals.

I agree. With every piece of communication they erode my trust further