MTGOX was down on Jun 23. Now its back up and running.

[waltmarkers]

No announcement or anything - are the trades still happening against those on the book before this happened?

[1714039257]

1714039257

[1714039257]

1714039257

[1714039257]

1714039257

[1714039257]

1714039257

[1714039257]

1714039257

[thoredy]

As I saw no response from MT.Gox support and the site is stopped for more than 4 hours I decided to withdraw my btc's. What happened I do not know, but I would not wait whatever it is to come good or bad, I'm safe now.

[genuise]

No announcement or anything - are the trades still happening against those on the book before this happened?

Nope, no trades for almost 6 hours

[gnar1ta$]

Oh look...business as usual for Gox.  Here's a surprised face for you    Glad I moved everything out of there last week.

[vssa]

I decided to peg my bitcoins to gold spot at 1573.6 with bitdaytrade.com i think it is good Opportunity to hedge and may be profit some Bitcoin.

[Technomage]

It's quite likely that there is nothing to worry about. We'll just have to wait a bit to find out what's going on. People seem to be paranoid about Gox these days for absolutely no reason. They've had some issues with Dwolla which have more to do with Dwolla than Gox, and suddenly people are all "it's going to fold any day". Give me a break for Satoshi's sake.

[bb113]

It's quite likely that there is nothing to worry about. We'll just have to wait a bit to find out what's going on. People seem to be paranoid about Gox these days for absolutely no reason. They've had some issues with Dwolla which have nothing to do with Gox, and suddenly people are all "it's going to fold any day". Give me a break for Satoshi's sake.

At the very least, Gox has a serious communication problem. How long did it take them to even start explaining the Dwolla situation?

[kneim]

It's quite likely that there is nothing to worry about. We'll just have to wait a bit to find out what's going on. People seem to be paranoid about Gox these days for absolutely no reason. They've had some issues with Dwolla which have more to do with Dwolla than Gox, and suddenly people are all "it's going to fold any day". Give me a break for Satoshi's sake.

Hope this has nothing to do with Dwolla, then I would worry ...

[adamstgBit]

So is this how normal stock exchanges work? downtime during the weekend? That sucks.

hmmm ya! most are offline more then 50% of the time
bitcoin is weird in that its traded 24/7

cant wait to hear what happened, its probably nothing more then a computer glitch...

Mark has to wake up and hit reboot...

[piotr_n]

One would think that after what happened one year ago MtGox would have someone on duty 24/7...
Though it doesn't seem like so - good to know, BTW

[casascius]

The issue leading people to worry "it's going to fold any day now" is not Dwolla, but bank wires too. We would understand if it was just Dwolla, and many would buck up and pay the ~$50 cost of a bank wire. The problem is bank wires are delayed too, for no good reason, for weeks before they ever get initiated into the banking system, and that can't be Dwolla's fault at all.

[Hexadecibel]

The issue leading people to worry "it's going to fold any day now" is not Dwolla, but bank wires too. We would understand if it was just Dwolla, and many would buck up and pay the ~$50 cost of a bank wire. The problem is bank wires are delayed too, for no good reason, for weeks before they ever get initiated into the banking system, and that can't be Dwolla's fault at all.

is that wires going in and out?

[Spekulatius]

The symptoms are others than one week before: Order list is seen now, orders can be cancelled, but new orders are kept in a "pending" state.

So I think, for some reason new orders cannot be placed, but existing ones are cancelled, so the gap between bid and ask grows.

Suppose it's only a technical issue. Waiting on Mt.Gox to wake up.

I wonder, currently if you look at orderbook you can see how price is changing, and on the bid side it is droping and on asks side it is rising.

Would it be from technical and financial point of view better to shut down the orderbooks too , because  in current situation when there is no actual trading orderbook cannot be qualified as representing actual market status.

I mean will this induce panic or? What am I missing?

Unless an anniversary hack is revealed, I dont think so. Whenever MtGox was down in the past (unless there was a hack) trading just commenced naturally afterwards.

[Herodes]

Yeah, it's currently 05:31 in Japan.

So Mark's probably sleeping.

However, I have some viewpoints:

1. Mark need to trust 1 or two others to have admin access to MtGox. What if he gets hit by a bus ? Where's the backup solution ?
2. As MtGox is the biggest exchange, they should take great care to monitor all systems 24/7, if not they lose business, and trust is eroded.
3. There's a lot of businesses depending on MtGox being available, and therefore point 2.) is extra important.

MtGox has already clearly shown that they are not good at communication with the customers and PR work overall, so they should actually get help from somebody that is good at this.

In the end, I don't think there's anything to worry about, once Mark gets back, he'll probably kick all in working order again.

HOWEVER, this is simply not good enough in the corporate world of today. When Gox decided to run their exchange 24/7, that's also what they need to do in a serious way, then 'glitches' are not acceptable. And if it occurs, it should be fixed, and the community should get an honest and candid explanation of what happend, and it should not happen again.

If I were Mark, I'd let external experts review the code base to avoid future "glitches" and also have a financial audit of MtGox to regain trust in the community.

I have no doubt that Mark believes in bitcoin and work hard to make MtGox a good exchange, but he needs to see his own limitations, and to delegate work, he can't do it all himself.

Because of all the unrest these days (delayed payments etc), personally I don't hold any funds at MtGox, be it USD or BTC at the moment.

I would love to see MtGox succeed, but they have to up their game, as other professional players WILL move into this market.

One thing that I absolutely would love to see was better follow up of withdrawals. Customers actually invest their funds, and this is money that the customers own. When withdrawals take 30 days or more, these monies are being held 'hostage' and the customers needs to be notified about the status of their withdrawal in a much better way.

There should be absolutely no need for any customers coming running to this forum to resolve a withdrawal request.

Many people are too proud to admit to weaknesses and problems. IF there's USD liquidity problems at Gox, which many customers seems to believe, then it would be better if MtGox was honest about it, and told the community about the current situation, and made a plan to get out of that situation, perhaps raising fees temporarily and doing other measures to balance the books.

If it is so that only the customers that complains the loudest are the ones getting their cases solved, so that the Gox crew can avoid the fire, while the rest who wait in patience are the ones having to endure the painful waiting of their funds, it is a very unfortunate situation and while Gox is perhaps scared of telling how the situation is, perhaps they're afraid of losing customers. Not telling how things really is, could backfire pretty hard in the end. As we all know, the road to "hell" is paved with good intentions.

It's also very dangerous not to care about the customers, because once there are viable alternatives, customers will move to other exchanges. Being biggest today, doesn't mean you'll stay biggest forever.

Swift handling of customer funds is the single most important thing.

[MemoryDealers]

I called Mark's cell twice and sent him a text.  No reply,  but it was around 4AM Sunday morning in Tokyo.

[Spekulatius]

YEEEY!! Im the first to post:

ITS BACK UP!!


-edit- kind of

[FlipPro]

Yeah, it's currently 05:31 in Japan. [....]

+1

EDIT:

Except for the one about letting "external experts" review the code. A financial audit may be appropriate, if the community demands one, but anyone "reviewing" any code is just asking for trouble...

[bb113]

Yeah, it's currently 05:31 in Japan. [....]

+1

If you are going to hack gox do it when it is 3 AM in Japan

[kneim]

I have entered a valid buy order, seem's to be up again :-)

[Herodes]

I called Mark's cell twice and sent him a text.  No reply,  but it was around 4AM Sunday morning in Tokyo.

I propose one of the following:


1. Mark appoints a co-admin that can monitor gox, so Mark can sleep well.
2. I suggest that a bucket filled with cold tap water is attached to the roof above Mark's bed, whenever the need arise, some reputable Community members can send a txt/mail to a dedicated device that will turn the bucket upside down, and thus wet-booting Mark so he can mend his Gox services.

For all we know, perhaps he's gone somewhere and will be unavailable the entire weekend, perhaps he forgot his cell at home as well..

Update, seems like we had a trade:

Code:

Jun 23, 2012, 20:55:00	6.40000	0.20	
Jun 23, 2012, 13:42:28	6.43450	0.01