Exchanges shutting down

[dancupid]

The exchanges take their fee from both sides of the transaction - so you can double any estimate.

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[kokjo]

Remember 2 things people: DCMA (well most probably weren't even intersted in 'this stuff' back then)
and the US Patriot Act.

Both have their equivalent all over Europe and the Asian industrialized nations heck even the whole world. Don't be that naive   

link to the EU Patriot Act, please?

I don't know what it is called where you live, every nation has it's own implementation.

can you even imagine a world without it?

[ElectricMucus]

Remember 2 things people: DCMA (well most probably weren't even intersted in 'this stuff' back then)
and the US Patriot Act.

Both have their equivalent all over Europe and the Asian industrialized nations heck even the whole world. Don't be that naive   

link to the EU Patriot Act, please?

I don't know what it is called where you live, every nation has it's own implementation.

can you even imagine a world without it?

I can imagine may things, basically all I ever do 

[kokjo]

link to the EU Patriot Act, please?

I don't know what it is called where you live, every nation has it's own implementation.

can you even imagine a world without it?

I can imagine may things, basically all I ever do 

certainly not. come to denmark

[Crypt_Current]

It was actually pretty scary (I remember reading it in 2005), but thankfully never ratified, as far as I can tell:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitution_for_Europe

[kokjo]

It was actually pretty scary (I remember reading it in 2005), but thankfully never ratified, as far as I can tell:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitution_for_Europe

+1 see? Europe is better, ElectricMucus.

[Crypt_Current]

It was actually pretty scary (I remember reading it in 2005), but thankfully never ratified, as far as I can tell:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitution_for_Europe

+1 see? Europe is better, ElectricMucus.

Well, for what it's worth, I remember reading a draft of this treaty back in 2005 and it scared the shit out of me.  I'm currently trying to dig that up...  France and the Dutch held their ground against this thing for a reason.

And, I live in the USA and I am a proud American and I love my country, so please stop hatin'; however, I will defend your right to hate. (but only so far on any given day ... depends on my mood).

[kokjo]

It was actually pretty scary (I remember reading it in 2005), but thankfully never ratified, as far as I can tell:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitution_for_Europe

+1 see? Europe is better, ElectricMucus.

Well, for what it's worth, I remember reading a draft of this treaty back in 2005 and it scared the shit out of me.  I'm currently trying to dig that up...  France and the Dutch held their ground against this thing for a reason.

And, I live in the USA and I am a proud American and I love my country, so please stop hatin'; however, I will defend your right to hate. (but only so far on any given day ... depends on my mood).

oh im not hating, we just better than you, except for making burgers

[Crypt_Current]

It was actually pretty scary (I remember reading it in 2005), but thankfully never ratified, as far as I can tell:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitution_for_Europe

+1 see? Europe is better, ElectricMucus.

Well, for what it's worth, I remember reading a draft of this treaty back in 2005 and it scared the shit out of me.  I'm currently trying to dig that up...  France and the Dutch held their ground against this thing for a reason.

And, I live in the USA and I am a proud American and I love my country, so please stop hatin'; however, I will defend your right to hate. (but only so far on any given day ... depends on my mood).

oh im not hating, we just better than you, except for making burgers

But yous are haves bad grammar  XD

[kokjo]

It was actually pretty scary (I remember reading it in 2005), but thankfully never ratified, as far as I can tell:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitution_for_Europe

+1 see? Europe is better, ElectricMucus.

Well, for what it's worth, I remember reading a draft of this treaty back in 2005 and it scared the shit out of me.  I'm currently trying to dig that up...  France and the Dutch held their ground against this thing for a reason.

And, I live in the USA and I am a proud American and I love my country, so please stop hatin'; however, I will defend your right to hate. (but only so far on any given day ... depends on my mood).

oh im not hating, we just better than you, except for making burgers

But yous are haves bad grammar  XD

oh yes, im not a one native English speakering.

[Serge]

OP, lets call it the end now and release you once for all from returning back here

[ElectricMucus]

It was actually pretty scary (I remember reading it in 2005), but thankfully never ratified, as far as I can tell:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_establishing_a_Constitution_for_Europe

+1 see? Europe is better, ElectricMucus.

Well... unless I'm living under a rock

In the June 2007 European summit meeting, Member States agreed to abandon the constitution and to amend the existing treaties, which would remain in force. They also agreed a detailed mandate for a new intergovernmental conference to negotiate a new treaty containing such amendments to the existing treaties (primarily the Treaty of Rome and the Treaty of Maastricht). These negotiations were completed by the end of the year, the new treaty which had previously been referred to as the Reform Treaty become the Lisbon Treaty on its signing in Lisbon on 13 December 2007.

And this is almost as bad, but besides the case (or not it still reduces the sovereignty of member states and so increases centralization)

I live in Austria, we have something here called the "Sicherheitspolizeigesetz" which is essentially the Patriot act adopted for a small nation without substantial military resources but it reduces civil liberties non the less and was adopted imminently after the USA did their Patriot Act.
While some implementations of whatever you may call it may sound more liberal at first glance if you look into it it basically means the same pretext can be applied in the same exact way as in the "big thing" from the US.

Right there are some places in the industrialized world which lead the whole thing in terms of practical usage, I wouldn't want to live in London, NYC or Singapore but besides some hotspots there is a continuous trend towards a more police state like society as well.

[d.james]

Now look at the volumes in dollars.  The standard 0.6% commission rate yields about $8000 per month for Mt. Gox, $810 per month for Tradehill, and $384 a month for Btc-E.  And that's a maximum; many big traders get discounts.

AFAIK, Mt.Gox charges 0.6% standard commission for both buyers and sellers, effectively they're charging 1.2% for each trade.
So they're getting $16,000 a month max(assuming your $8000 figure was correct),still not a lot but surely looks twice as better.

[Nagle]

Average volume for the past month looks like about $150k USD/day, which at 0.5% commission, is $750/day, or $22500 per month.  Are you sure you were looking at volume in dollars, and not volume in bitcoins?  $8000 per month / .006 = $1.3M per month, and they had $600k in currency volume yesterday alone.

You are right. Sorry.

Of course, with Bitcoins at $2.50 or so, the difference isn't that big any more. Even Mt. Gox's $22K a month isn't much for a business in Tokyo which has a few employees, a server farm, bank transaction costs, and substantial exposure to theft losses.

Every other exchange is making too little money to survive.

[Zotia]

Now look at the volumes in dollars.  The standard 0.6% commission rate yields about $8000 per month for Mt. Gox, $810 per month for Tradehill, and $384 a month for Btc-E.

The current 30 day volumes for those sites at the time of this post... 
(See http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/ for current numbers).


6,136,000 USD for MTGOX
619,000 USD for TH
293,000 USD for BTCE

Now let's calculate their monthly income at 0.6% commission that is taken from both sides of the trade...

MTGOX... 6,136,000 USD * 0.006 * 2 = 73,632 USD
TH... 619,000 USD * 0.006 * 2 = 7,428 USD
BTCE... 293,000 USD * 0.006 * 2 = 3,516 USD


You are off by nearly an order of magnitude.

And that's a maximum; many big traders get discounts.

The lowest commission rate at mtgox is 0.25%, so let's use that as a minimum...

MTGOX... 6,136,000 USD * 0.0025 * 2 = 30,680 USD
TH... 619,000 USD * 0.0025 * 2 = 3,095 USD
BTCE... 293,000 USD * 0.0025 * 2 = 1,465 USD

[old_engineer]

The lowest commission rate at mtgox is 0.25%, so let's use that as a minimum...

MTGOX... 6,136,000 USD * 0.0025 * 2 = 30,680 USD
TH... 619,000 USD * 0.0025 * 2 = 3,095 USD
BTCE... 293,000 USD * 0.0025 * 2 = 1,465 USD

Back when hey had a flat 0.6% back in June, they made $42,000 IN ONE DAY when volume was $3.5M, and have had a number of days over $20k.  I guess there still is a lot of interest in bitcoin, wouldn't you agree Nagle?

The network effect is strong, and though 2-3 exchanges would be nice, the fact that bitcoin doesn't need any exchanges is worth pointing out yet again.

[tvbcof]

Regarding exchange revenue, two factors which make it hard (for me) to do the math are as follows:

 1) who does dark pool stuff (at least CampBX iirc) and if anyone, is it possible to obtain some rough numbers here?

 2)  The overhead of dealing with funding hassles, fraud, AML stuff, etc must be significant.  I would guess that would even a majority of the operating expenses for an enterprise which is big enough to do it semi-adequately, and then even if it is about as well automated as possible.

[imsaguy]

For all I care they could all shut down.

A decentralized exchange method will come up.

#bitcoin-otc

[PatrickHarnett]

When I went past MtGox's office in July it was unfortunately a Saturday and closed, but the offices were part of a major corporation, not a small bitcoin trading company.  They might rent some space or use some of the hosting services for the IT company there, but not a proper "store front".

More likely they operate out of the "home" address that was hunted up some months ago.  Plus, the cost of running it once it is set up is smaller.

[eldentyrell]

A decentralized exchange method will come up.

A huge part of we call an "exchange" is largely an "interface to the fiat banking system".

The fiat banking system will not interface with a decentralized exchange.