MTGox Green Address Withdraw time

[Stephen Gornick]

I was assuming the transaction would be sent out by the Green Address (1LNWw6yCxkUmkhArb2Nf2MPw6vG7u5WG7q ) stated by MagicalTux at : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=48170.0 , but instead I received it from:

Code:

1MVtwuuKvuzUa2mWiBnrA9UzqnP7tBaB9A (0.1 BTC - Output)
15sgsXuS7LPGPT18cjH5ecuUwPK6jTbFJZ (0.21206082 BTC - Output)
1BSX5JfYF9d4i7oU2DmQkbGFMqiQd7NoR3 (86.88689612 BTC - Output)

Which one would be the green address then?

Looks like tis is the transaction you are referring to:
http://blockchain.info/tx-index/3729526/a661f18b25d6bbd1a739ad10d8a88be872199eb6d8c46f2c4beac7438f5f7945

which gets a 404, so it doesn't look like a green address transaction:
 - https://www.greenaddress.org/api/v1/tx/a661f18b25d6bbd1a739ad10d8a88be872199eb6d8c46f2c4beac7438f5f7945

 - https://www.greenaddress.org

Maybe it was sent out manually after some internal problem without ensuring it came only from a green address.

[check_status]

I was assuming the transaction would be sent out by the Green Address (1LNWw6yCxkUmkhArb2Nf2MPw6vG7u5WG7q ) stated by MagicalTux at : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=48170.0 , but instead I received it from:

Code:

1MVtwuuKvuzUa2mWiBnrA9UzqnP7tBaB9A (0.1 BTC - Output)
15sgsXuS7LPGPT18cjH5ecuUwPK6jTbFJZ (0.21206082 BTC - Output)
1BSX5JfYF9d4i7oU2DmQkbGFMqiQd7NoR3 (86.88689612 BTC - Output)

Which one would be the green address then?

Mt. Gox is robbing Peter to pay Paul!

The bold address is what Mt. Gox uses to rob BTC from users accounts to satisfy outstanding BTC withdraws.
I had a BTC deposit to my Mt. Gox account from mining and they took it, it shows so in the block chain, and paid it to two other addresses.
Checking my account it shows the full balance, yet the block chain says different, BTC transferred from my Mt. Gox address to the Green address.
They are doing the Bitcoin Shuffle big time, WTF. They could be taking our BTC and trading on the market for all we know. 
I thought they were just an intermediary acting as a middle man, not pilfering my account to pay johnthedong. 
Seeing this activity doesn't make me feel good about their business practices. Looks like I'm going to have to get that paper wallet sooner rather than later.

Sincerely,

WTF

[Stephen Gornick]

I had a BTC deposit to my Mt. Gox account from mining and they took it, it shows so in the block chain, and paid it to two other addresses.

Every hosted EWallet service does this.

That isn't YOUR bitcoin address, that is Mt. Gox's bitcoin address.  They simply will credit your account for any payments sent to it.  Payments from that address go to withdrawal by other accounts or in consolidation transaction that occasionally happens.  That's just how EWallet services work.

 - http://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/EWallet#Things_to_be_aware_of
 

[GroundRod]

While reading these last few comments it occurred to me sounds like 'MF Global', and the whole thing about how the the customers money was to be kept segregated, but really that isn't the case.  

Appreciate all the expertise, experience and thoughts on this forum, learning so much as I go, trying to decide whom to trade with and whom not to get involved with, and how to deal with any funds not in my wallet right here on ye-old-harddisk, encrypted & backed up offline.  Clearly the exchange accounts (with whomever) need to be considered transitory places to have funds, because they are all more than likely programmed with rehypothecation in mind from the 1st line of code....

[Stephen Gornick]

While reading these last few comments it occurred to me sounds like 'MF Global', and the whole thing about how the the customers money was to be kept segregated, but really that isn't the case.  

MF Global's deal was that they used customers funds to cover shortfalls from MF Global's bad bets.  That's not the same as what I'm describing.  A hosted EWallet service such as what Mt. Gox uses for customers deposits may send the funds from those deposits to other customers for their withdrawals.  And because it is prudent to have offline, cold storage of funds to protect against any security breach, Mt. Gox may send the funds from your deposit to a cold storage address.

This is simply putting customer's funds into certain buckets.  The concept of segregating account means in this case that Mt. Gox doesn't draw from those buckets to pay salaries or expenses.  They need to have their own buckets for corporate funds.  There are regulations directing this in Japan where Mt. Gox is located.  I have no reason to believe that Mt. Gox would dip into customer's funds so for that reason and others I'm willing to trust them with amounts that I plan to use for trading.

They aren't located in the same country as me though, and I don't want to study up on their regulations there.  As a result, I simply don't store much money with them.

[check_status]

Mt. Gox is adding complexity to the blockchain, making it more difficult to see at a glance the additions and subtractions I made relating to my address they gave me. I use the blockchain to monitor the activity on that address and they are poluting it with their accounting system. I'm monitoring the blockchain looking to see what value I'm getting mining at the pool I joined, to understand my earning ability with current set up.

The right way for Mt. Gox to pay out withdraws is from a withdraw address funded from 'cold storage' directly, not incoming deposits. Incoming deposits should be moved to "cold storage" addresses only.

You could say the Mt. Gox system of accounting which includes paying withdraws and moving to "cold storage" using a single address would make it easy, if they were so inclined, to hide shady payouts in the noise of their odd acounting system. Who would expend the effort to look through 4.5 million BTC of Mt. Gox transactions to find nK of shady BTC deals which would fund some obfuscated account which might then be used at some future time to crash the system for profit.

Have we not learned anything from how the Federal Reserve was created. Bankers created the stock market, got average Joe's to invest in it with money they borrowed from the independent banks, engineered the stock market crashes and while we were dealing with a financial crisis they offered to solve the volatility problem by creating a central bank.

[deepceleron]

I was assuming the transaction would be sent out by the Green Address (1LNWw6yCxkUmkhArb2Nf2MPw6vG7u5WG7q ) stated by MagicalTux at : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=48170.0 , but instead I received it from:

Code:

1MVtwuuKvuzUa2mWiBnrA9UzqnP7tBaB9A (0.1 BTC - Output)
15sgsXuS7LPGPT18cjH5ecuUwPK6jTbFJZ (0.21206082 BTC - Output)
1BSX5JfYF9d4i7oU2DmQkbGFMqiQd7NoR3 (86.88689612 BTC - Output)

Which one would be the green address then?

Mt. Gox is robbing Peter to pay Paul!

The bold address is what Mt. Gox uses to rob BTC from users accounts to satisfy outstanding BTC withdraws.
I had a BTC deposit to my Mt. Gox account from mining and they took it, it shows so in the block chain, and paid it to two other addresses.
Checking my account it shows the full balance, yet the block chain says different, BTC transferred from my Mt. Gox address to the Green address.
They are doing the Bitcoin Shuffle big time, WTF. They could be taking our BTC and trading on the market for all we know. 
I thought they were just an intermediary acting as a middle man, not pilfering my account to pay johnthedong. 
Seeing this activity doesn't make me feel good about their business practices. Looks like I'm going to have to get that paper wallet sooner rather than later.

Sincerely,

WTF

"I went to the bank to get my $0.40 back out, and it wasn't even the same $0.40, I checked the mint marks on the dimes! The bank teller told me that they have a computerized balance that shows how many dollars I have, but clearly they are just taking someone else's money to pay me back mine!"

That is lame that it didn't come from the green address, but you should also understand that mtgox doesn't pay transaction fees when you withdraw, so a 0.1 BTC transfer is likely going to be a low priority transaction on the Bitcoin network; you are lucky it went through at all. Using the green address option indicates you are making a time-sensitive payment to someone; mtgox should add a .001 fee from your balance to make it go through in a timely fashion.

[rjk]

"I went to the bank to get my $0.40 back out, and it wasn't even the same $0.40, I checked the mint marks on the dimes! The bank teller told me that they have a computerized balance that shows how many dollars I have, but clearly they are just taking someone else's money to pay me back mine!"

This. MtGox is a huge coin mixing service, no reason to break that functionality. You can still see your total deposits in the blockchain, but the balance won't be accurate.

[deus-ex-machina]

Hey guys, I've tried to withdraw a small sum of btc using the green address method at mtgox.com, and it's been almost 4 hours yet I didn't see any sign of the coin coming to my address. How long does the green address withdrawal take?
Thanks~!

Last time I used a green one, it was about 5 seconds. Otherwise it's maybe two days.

You probably either used the wrong one by accident, or an error happened.

[Stephen Gornick]

I use the blockchain to monitor the activity on that address and they are poluting it with their accounting system.

Mt. Gox is an exchange, not a system for tracking your mining proceeds.  You can always use your own wallet if you really need a method for accounting for that.

if they were so inclined,

They are regulated in Japan and I'm going to presume that doing what you suggest would be a criminal offense.  If you don't trust them and believe they would commit a criminal offense like what you suggest they could then withdraw your funds.  It is simple as that.

Have we not learned anything from how the Federal Reserve was created.

Mt. Gox is not a bank.  They do not have the right to lend customer's deposits, nonetheless to do so leveraged ten times over deposits like a bank in the U.S. does.

Yes, we have learned.  That's why we use this Bitcoin thing.  The reasons we choose it include how we can store value in our own wallets under our own control.  I get that you are concerned for everyone else -- but you ... as an individual are not forced to leave your bitcoins with any exchange or hosted wallet provider.

[SgtSpike]

Mt. Gox is adding complexity to the blockchain, making it more difficult to see at a glance the additions and subtractions I made relating to my address they gave me. I use the blockchain to monitor the activity on that address and they are poluting it with their accounting system. I'm monitoring the blockchain looking to see what value I'm getting mining at the pool I joined, to understand my earning ability with current set up.

The right way for Mt. Gox to pay out withdraws is from a withdraw address funded from 'cold storage' directly, not incoming deposits. Incoming deposits should be moved to "cold storage" addresses only.

You could say the Mt. Gox system of accounting which includes paying withdraws and moving to "cold storage" using a single address would make it easy, if they were so inclined, to hide shady payouts in the noise of their odd acounting system. Who would expend the effort to look through 4.5 million BTC of Mt. Gox transactions to find nK of shady BTC deals which would fund some obfuscated account which might then be used at some future time to crash the system for profit.

Have we not learned anything from how the Federal Reserve was created. Bankers created the stock market, got average Joe's to invest in it with money they borrowed from the independent banks, engineered the stock market crashes and while we were dealing with a financial crisis they offered to solve the volatility problem by creating a central bank.

Do you not understand that EVERY SINGLE Bitcoin-based service does this?

By default, the Bitcoin client sends out whatever coins would cost the least in transaction fees.  That usually means the oldest and largest deposits will be used to send out coins whenever a customer withdraws from their account.

You cannot (and should not) rely on the blockchain to show you your account balance with any online Bitcoin service.  You should rely on the service itself to show your account balance.

As deepceleron pointed out, your expectations are about as ridiculous as wanting to get the same coins and bills you deposited back from the bank when you withdraw.  It's not going to happen.  If you want the same coins and bills back, then you need to rent a safety deposit box and dump them all there, which would be akin to uploading an encrypted wallet to a data storage website.

[GroundRod]

@Stephen Gornick - Stand corrected and want to 'believe' your right, everything is on the up & up, simple wanted to make the very point you closed with> "As a result, I simply don't store much money with them."

@SgtSpike - Agreed, simply came here wanting to understand this 'Green Address' thing & trading time concept, before I actually create an account with MtGox, wound up seeing some other really great observations about how exchanges work, and posted to encourage polite discussion, not inflame nor veer to far off topic, sorry to OP if that is the case, and will not post again here until I've got an account setup and can see what your talking about for myself.  For me, getting funds in/out of the exchange quickly is paramount.

At this point, would not at all be against setting up an account with MtGox because of what we're discussing here or anything else I've heard.  Can understand the concept of prioritizing transactions by amount and the like, still if that is case, seems to me they should be more clear up front about how that works.  Actually tried to create an account with them last weekend, and failed, because the new account 'submit' button wouldn't work.  Created a ticket, that 'submit' button did work, and got a fast response, thanking me for the inquiry.  Then the next day a more detailed response saying we understand your system & browser setup, others are also reporting that problem, we are working on it and hope you'll check back with us soon.  Yesterday I got another email from them, asking me to take a survey and let them know, if they were doing a good job for me....or not.  So far that is my involvement with MtGox.

The only thing that shocks me about all this so far, is how few people want to take personal responsibility for their own funds and/or are willing to give over that authority to a foreign entity, even with BitCoins!  When I finished installing my 1st BitCoin wallet (v0.6), and it had finally finished downloading & processed the blockchain, that was when I started to realize what it was & felt the surge of personal power & really wanted to get involved, I'm not about to give that up to anyone else easily.

Long before this, had I determined to never again have a safety deposit box or trust another institution, especially one in banking or investing, to store a substantial portion of my wealth.  Same goes for the storage of PM's, although I can understand that for folks with far more worth than I, in say something like Silver, have a need & willingness to pay storage fees to contain it all.  The fact that sites now exist (& will likely thrive) because they are designed from the ground up, to store encrypted wallet data on their website, for a small fee, well it simply boggles my mind---for BitCoins?  What are people thinking, that they insist on setting themselves up like this, because they can't make a backup?  Is it some sick need to always have another to blame, if something goes wrong? 

Maybe I'm yet missing the point, or perhaps its laziness, perhaps accepting the fact that they don't understand all the concepts, and it's easier to find someone else that 'appears' to be trustworthy, is the way to go, anything but figuring it out for themselves.  Of coarse, in many cases this is simply fantasy. 

What I've learned from this thread is that storing more than ones positions require, on any given exchange or other potentially transitory website, is well.......simply asking for trouble.  Getting in & out of there fast, should be everyone's main concern.

Actually yesterday I opened an account on CampBx, simply because I liked the guy's presentation on an older OnlyOneTV.com BitCoin show interview, he's in the same country as I live, willing to except money orders to add funds to my account, all those work for me & are very inexpensive, so allows for a portion of my meager paycheck to be sent in cheaper than even a bank wire transfer.  Do I trust he & his service, again not anymore than I have to, in order to complete a needed currency transaction.  At this point, absolutely will not trust Dwolla to handle my funds for even a few minutes.  At some point, may not even come to trust the USPS to honor a payment on a money order transfer, who knows.  That is how low my opinion of our current financial & government system has become.

The trading over at CampBx looks to be very thin, but hopefully more will come and it will do well and prosper, paying much of a premium to support the underdog isn't something I can afford to do much of, yet would like to help it grow volume.  Also please do look for me as I try to develop a positive presence on OTC and trading here, working on some barter ideas.  Nor do I expect CampBx handles funds much differently that MtGox does, although I've not conducted a transaction yet, see nothing like this Green Address concept there....

@check_status - Not at all surprised by what your reporting, just another proof to me, of how valuable BitCoins really are, and the transparency that the BlockChain tools allow individuals to discover for themselves.  My take is that whatever any given organization is really doing behind the scenes with customer funds, is their affair and hopefully built on mutual trust as being a priority, but never forget that what you see in your 'personal' account balances with any of them, is only as real as you want to believe it is, until it's safely back in your own personal wallet, I would consider it <transitory>.  Hope one day soon, to understand things well enough that I can figure out when & how to view my own blockchain transactions as you do.  Rapidly coming up the learning curve, but still have a long way to go, compared to most of you.  Many mysteries to be solved....lov'n it! 

Appreciating so many great posts on this forum, one could say it's become an addiction.

Happy bit trails,
GR

[check_status]

"I went to the bank to get my $0.40 back out, and it wasn't even the same $0.40, I checked the mint marks on the dimes! The bank teller told me that they have a computerized balance that shows how many dollars I have, but clearly they are just taking someone else's money to pay me back mine!"

Paraphrasing in hyperbole my hyperbole? Well, I guess I opened the door.

MtGox is a huge coin mixing service, no reason to break that functionality.

There is enough reason to remove it from Mt. Gox. They are currently the defacto price and trend setter for Bitcoins, their influence can wholly affect Bitcoins value, for it's good or for it's detriment.

They are regulated in Japan

I'm sure their laws only affect monetary transactions not Bitcoin transactions, like every other country.
Can you legislate the hearts of men?

Mt. Gox is not a bank.

In my analogy, Mt. Gox = Stock Market.

Do you not understand that EVERY SINGLE Bitcoin-based service does this?

It is flawed and can be used by those in control of said system to accumulate funds for what ever purpose it so chooses, i.e. to make daily market trades of buy low sell high for profit; to fund an account and accumulate a quantity sufficient enough to crash that market.
They can generate multiple addresses, n% of transactions per day, mixing them in with the legitimate transactions, so that after collecting deposits pay n% to n% of addresses which they have exclusive control over.

As deepceleron pointed out, your expectations are about as ridiculous as wanting to get the same coins and bills you deposited back from the bank when you withdraw.

deepceleron paraphrased in hyperbole my hyperbole, poking in fun at me. You can withdraw this comment if you want.

So, how else do I monitor my Mt. Gox address to find out if my password gets "hacked" and some "hacker" dumps my funds to crash the market.
(When reading this use hand gestures to simulate quotations and assume I have millions in a single Mt. Gox Account.)

Not at all surprised by what your reporting, just another proof to me, of how valuable BitCoins really are, and the transparency that the BlockChain tools allow individuals to discover for themselves.  My take is that whatever any given organization is really doing behind the scenes with customer funds, is their affair and hopefully built on mutual trust as being a priority, but never forget that what you see in your 'personal' account balances with any of them, is only as real as you want to believe it is, until it's safely back in your own personal wallet, I would consider it <transitory>.  Hope one day soon, to understand things well enough that I can figure out when & how to view my own blockchain transactions as you do.  Rapidly coming up the learning curve, but still have a long way to go, compared to most of you.  Many mysteries to be solved....lov'n it!

Currently Bitcoins are worth approximately 40+ million. Mt. Gox is in a position that could kill Bitcoins and there is not much anyone in the community can do about it. It has already been demonstrated that their platform does have a catastrofic affect on Bitcoins value, what has already happened will happen again. Security resides outside such a centralization of control.

I wonder if Namecoin could handle buy and sell requests and make trading decentralized. ABM's could be used for those who don't have existing bank accounts. Of course this would only be a temporary solution to ween people off of FIAT currencies. Once Bitcoin trades to cash reduce to n% cash transactions could be depricated and Bitcoin wins.

[SgtSpike]

@GroundRod - I agree with you about not trusting any other institution.  I hold all of my BTC myself, and I don't give any company my wallet for backup, encrypted or not.  I only send BTC to MtGox or other websites when necessary to transaction on them, but I never store coins longterm with anyone but myself.

Do you not understand that EVERY SINGLE Bitcoin-based service does this?

It is flawed and can be used by those in control of said system to accumulate funds for what ever purpose it so chooses, i.e. to make daily market trades of buy low sell high for profit; to fund an account and accumulate a quantity sufficient enough to crash that market.
They can generate multiple addresses, n% of transactions per day, mixing them in with the legitimate transactions, so that after collecting deposits pay n% to n% of addresses which they have exclusive control over.

As deepceleron pointed out, your expectations are about as ridiculous as wanting to get the same coins and bills you deposited back from the bank when you withdraw.

deepceleron paraphrased in hyperbole my hyperbole, poking in fun at me. You can withdraw this comment if you want.

So, how else do I monitor my Mt. Gox address to find out if my password gets "hacked" and some "hacker" dumps my funds to crash the market.
(When reading this use hand gestures to simulate quotations and assume I have millions in a single Mt. Gox Account.)

If you don't trust MtGox to be able to give you back what you deposited, then don't deposit with them.  It's really that simple.  They have no obligation to show that the coins you deposited are still there - only an obligation to give you coins equal to your account balance if and when you request them.

How do you monitor your MtGox account?  Well, you could log in and take a look at your account... or build an interface to the MtGox API that alerts you any time a buy or sell order is generated on your account.  Etc, etc.

And your first point is ridiculous.  There is no reason that MtGox would need to transfer coins between their own addresses to crash the market.  You don't "own" any of the addresses on MtGox.  They aren't your addresses - they are MtGox's.  If MtGox wanted to crash the market, they could just magically make buy orders disappear.  Or they could "sell" a bunch of coins they don't even have.  Remember that no transfer of coins actually happens when a buy/sell order is executed on MtGox - it is only trading "virtual" Bitcoins between user accounts.  In other words, it is only adjusting account balances in it's database, without actually moving any BTC anywhere.  When a user withdraws BTC, that's when it will actually create a new transaction in the Bitcoin blockchain!  And that is why  attempting to monitor the addresses you deposit to in the blockchain will get you nowhere, and tell you nothing.

[dooglus]

By default, the Bitcoin client sends out whatever coins would cost the least in transaction fees.  That usually means the oldest and largest deposits will be used to send out coins whenever a customer withdraws from their account.

That's not right.

The Satoshi client tries to use the smallest value of inputs possible.  It doesn't try to minimise transaction fees, or select coins based on age, with the exception that it will avoid using coins with less than 6 confirmations if possible.

If you have 101 1 BTC coins, and one 110 BTC coin, all of which have over 6 confirmations, and you try to spend 100 BTC then it will use the 101 1 BTC coins, not the single large coin.  You'll get 1 BTC back in change.

[dooglus]

If you want the same coins and bills back, then you need to rent a safety deposit box and dump them all there, which would be akin to uploading an encrypted wallet to a data storage website.

Or using BlockChain.info's MyWallet service at https://blockchain.info/wallet - the MyWallet service doesn't have access to your private keys, so can't move your coins around without your permission.

[SgtSpike]

By default, the Bitcoin client sends out whatever coins would cost the least in transaction fees.  That usually means the oldest and largest deposits will be used to send out coins whenever a customer withdraws from their account.

That's not right.

The Satoshi client tries to use the smallest value of inputs possible.  It doesn't try to minimise transaction fees, or select coins based on age, with the exception that it will avoid using coins with less than 6 confirmations if possible.

If you have 101 1 BTC coins, and one 110 BTC coin, all of which have over 6 confirmations, and you try to spend 100 BTC then it will use the 101 1 BTC coins, not the single large coin.  You'll get 1 BTC back in change.

Well, technically, yes.  But we're talking about the same thing here.  Minimizing inputs also serves to minimize transaction fees.