8 ms·

Mt. Gox Halts Bitcoin Withdrawals, Price Drop Follows

135 points by zende 13y ago

davedx 13y ago
Interesting comment on Reddit: "I had a job interview with MtGox a couple of weeks ago for a frontend developer position. After talking about their technical environment I declined the position. Contemplated publicizing my story, but I have zero proof that the interview took place. But fuck me is their environment fucked up. Either way, I have been recommending to my friends to move any BTC away from Gox as soon as possible, and regret not bringing this advice into the open. I'm a Tokyoite, so if you want to talk to me about the job Interview, or just drink a beer, send me a DM." "I was told that up until a few weeks [at time of the interview] ago, there was hardly any development environment to test changes. Most changes were done straight on the production environment. Typing this made me throw up in my mouth. The guy who interviewed me was very friendly, but I felt like a psychiatrist more than a job candidate. The dude went on about how shitty the atmosphere is at the offices, and what he told me about Mark seems to be spot on from what OP has said. Interview guy, if you read this, sorry yo."
- jessedhillon 13y ago
  Can you post the link?
  - studio816 13y ago
    http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_at_mtgox_offices_5_to_7th_february/cf9ct0o http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_a...
- 3pt14159 13y ago
  I believe it. I've talked to a backend developer at Coinbase, he said their codebase is a mess and that he wouldn't hold any in their system. Also I submitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7169114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7169114 a couple of days ago based on what I found on Reddit. And this is Coinbase, the good guy. MtGox has always been a clusterfuck. This feels like the internet used to feel like. Back when you just used to assume that a credit card transaction wouldn't go through. Why? "Because internet". Bitcoin is so young and immature.
  - stcredzero 13y ago
    I've talked to a backend developer at Coinbase, he said their codebase is a mess and that he wouldn't hold any. This, and a few other things I've witnessed firsthand makes me wonder if Y-Combinator doesn't need better technical intelligence or some form of auditing. It could be done in a non-intrusive spirit of openness. Basically position it as a "show and tell" focused on technical process. Just have companies show what they're proud of, and if they so choose, show what they're ashamed of/what extent of technical debt they're in.
    - 3pt14159 13y ago
      I think that YC embraces technical debt. Exponential market growth means you can hire developers to re-write the problems in a couple years.
      - enraged_camel 13y ago
        Unless, of course, you are a company like Mt Gox and your technical debt is so huge that it sinks you. This is not a dig at Coinbase. I'm just suggesting that endorsing technical debt in the finance sector may not be smart.
        cookiecaper 13y ago
        There are many types of technical debt. It's something that accumulates organically in any real world project, because the real world doesn't care if your code is a paragon of programming excellence or not. It's expected, and simply part of the process, to develop technical indebtedness. The important part is controlling that indebtedness so that it doesn't cause major disruptions -- this usually means periodically cleaning up old debts and ensuring you have a robust system of monitors and failsafes. In a niche like finance, you certainly have to be more aggressive to ensure that no serious breakages or irrevocable indebtedness make their way into critical transaction code.
        stcredzero 13y ago
- nils-- 13y ago
  I worked at Gox as a PM for about three weeks before walking out. Currently looking for a new job. sigh. Would be willing to share my story, with proof, but sadly I'm not a good writer. :( But I can confirm that it is as screwed up as the commentor on Reddit wrote. Not even the developers would trust their money or BTC to Gox.
ck2 13y ago
Why would the price drop when there are other exchanges open?
- zanny 13y ago
  When you freeze billions of assets markets react. People can't move their Gox btc out, they can't cash out, so a double digit percentage of the market just froze.
- pbhjpbhj 13y ago
  MtGox is one of the biggest and most well known. As I understand each exchange basically sets there own price - but if one exchange lowers there buy price (they buy bitcoins for less dollars) then the others can do too? This is great for MtGox, all buy transactions pending just lost a $100 of the cost to fulfil. Surely then they wait for the bottom, initiate all transactions possible. Price rises and they can take in more dollars per bitcoin sold, speculating, that may be all that enables them to actually deposit the amounts on the transactions they "fulfilled" in order to make the price bounce. Crazy business.
  - ck2 13y ago
    After some research (aka googling) I discover the price is not sinking because of mtgox. It is sinking because of Russia. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7197173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7197173
aw3c2 13y ago
Oh no, my college fund investment!
Xdes 13y ago
I think all of us veteran Bitcoin users saw this coming for awhile now. It's all the new users (<1 year) that are affected. They tend to disregard our advice to steer clear of Mt. Gox (and holding their BTC in an exchange like a bank). They're probably the same people who keep supporting scammers like BFL.
- yebyen 13y ago
  I bought some Jalapeños from BFL after my January order was not shipped until August, in the Black Friday sale. The sale was advertised as "units in stock, ready for immediate delivery" When they came (something like a full month later) they were approximately double the spec of the devices I thought I had ordered, but still for the same price. Thanks, I guess? I can't say if they're shipping any faster now, but if the trend of decreasing wait times has continued, I'd expect that by now, they'll be competition for Amazon's rumored new "ship before you order" practices. Honestly for the new customers, if their ASIC parts were actually delivered in less than two weeks, I would have to say you're not getting the full BFL experience anymore, and you should probably ask for a refund. I will probably not order from them again.
  - nwh 13y ago
    The BFL gear is cute and all, but there's a simple fact with selling Bitcoin mining hardware that is probably never going to be overcome. Why would you sell something you could make profit on if you kept it for yourself? This is pretty much the reason why we have ASICminer, KNCminer and Bitfury all either running or building mammoth sized facilities of their own. I particularly liked this juxtaposition on their store — http://i.imgur.com/uZVKRBX.png http://i.imgur.com/uZVKRBX.png
    - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
      >Why would you sell something you could make profit on if you kept it for yourself? This question has been answered an immeasurable amount of times. Several groups organized ASIC production projects. Avalon, BFL, and a couple others I can't remember. None of these initial groups had the capital to finance the NRE (Non-Recurring Engineering) for the ASIC, nor were traditional venture capital sources willing to do so. The ASIC production process has a relatively a high NRE, but low incremental cost. So, Bitcoin folk organized and participated in pre-sales to finance the NRE for these ventures. They had to sell the things or they would never have been able to afford to produce the initial units. Additionally, even if some group would've had the capital to spin their own ASIC, it would have been a bad bargain for them to monopolize ASIC mining when competing against FPGA miners. Their capacity would have been limited to some fraction of the much smaller total network capacity in the FPGA era. Also, a single party swamping the network would've earned enmity from all of the other miners and Bitcoin users who could possibly have forced them out of the network, rendering their investment useless.
lectrick 13y ago
Buy when there's blood in the streets (assuming the fundamentals are still good, which it looks like they are...) http://www.bitcoinpulse.com/ http://www.bitcoinpulse.com/
- maxerickson 13y ago
  Can you explain what you consider to be the more important fundamentals for bitcoin?
  - nkuttler 13y ago
    Number of users.
  - mcherm 13y ago
    1. Number of users holding bitcoins 2. Number of users SPENDING bitcoins to purchase goods 3. Number of merchants accepting bitcoins for goods 4. Total $ value of bitcoins being spent to purchase goods 5. Total $ value of bitcoins being spent to perform international money transfers 6. Amount of press (bad press OK, good press is worth much more) that bitcoins are getting as it drives 1 and 3. I'm sure others have their own list of fundamentals.
    - maxerickson 13y ago
      Is there anybody publishing reliable numbers for any of those?
      - Torn 13y ago
        IMO Bitcoin's limited amount incentivises speculation/hoarding over spending. Dogecoin, on the other hand, with its inflationary approach feels much more like something that can be used as a currency.
      - mcherm 13y ago
        I don't know of anyone. I sometimes estimate (3) and (6) by monitoring news stories. It doesn't give me absolute numbers, but some sense of scale. I sometimes see values reported for (2) or (4) from individual merchants, but they are rarely useful: the merchants report the great response they had in the weekend after first announcing their support for bitcoin, then we never hear numbers again. Occasionally we'll hear from sites like reddit about the total amount of contributions (not exactly goods, but close) being made in bitcoins: these are usually quite disappointing. I can think of no way to monitor (1) and (5) is likely kept secret on purpose. So these are the fundamentals I care about and that I think affect the long-term value of bitcoin (as opposed to its short-term speculative value). But I don't have a way to measure them, except for guessing based on press coverage.
plg 13y ago
I'm not bitter that when bitcoin was ~ $1/btc I almost bought 1,000 btc ... no not bitter at all :|
- yebyen 13y ago
  Cheer up, some of us actually had bit-fortunes and lost them at Satoshidice :)
  - plg 13y ago
    true enough. that would be an even worse feeling
  - terranstyler 13y ago
    Those were times, a gamble every 10 minutes, I didn't shave for weeks. I wonder why today lotteries are held only like once a week or so...
- hnnewguy 13y ago
  >I almost bought 1,000 btc Are you just as bitter that you missed Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, Priceline, Intuitive Surgical or CNR? Point being, these opportunities are everywhere, always. You're surrounded by them right now, they're just not obvious. But neither was BitCoin. And with the above you're actually buying into a real company, rather than speculating on a price change.
  - crazy1van 13y ago
    > Are you just as bitter that you missed Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, Priceline, Intuitive Surgical or CNR? Great point and one that is easy to lose sight of. I think bitcoin stings a little extra because many people on HN thought at the back of their mind that it might be big, but never acted. Whereas, at the time many of these stocks were cheap, most people weren't even considering buying them.
    - aninhumer 13y ago
JonSkeptic 13y ago
But Dogecoin is doing well.
- iamjustin 13y ago
  It really isn't, it's down to around 0.12 cents per doge. When Bitcoin goes down, it usually drags the rest down with it.
pistle 13y ago
Is this the technical way of shutting your doors to stop the run on the bank?
kirk21 13y ago
Ok, time to find another exchange. Considering http://www.coinnext.com http://www.coinnext.com and https://localbitcoins.com https://localbitcoins.com Other suggestions?
- x3ro 13y ago
  https://www.bitstamp.net/ https://www.bitstamp.net/ ?
- vtempest 13y ago
  Coinbase.com is a great one, and they recently received venture funding
  - nullc 13y ago
    Coinbase recently imposed a kind of ludicrous $3000 a day outbound limit on accounts that had previously been limited to 50 BTC/day. Removing the limit involves buying coin from them, waiting 30 days, and solving some seemingly impossible credit report based identity quiz (some people report passing after 10 tries, you're limited to one try per 24 hours).
    - politician 13y ago
      We did that back in the online poker gambling days. The casinos would throttle USD withdrawals, so that the players would be forced to wait and end up losing their chips by playing more. Physical casinos do this by attaching hotels next to the slots. This sounds similar.
  - commandar 13y ago
    Coinbase is great for exchanging BTC/USD, but it's not a trading market like mtgox.
- corford 13y ago
  I've been using http://www.kraken.com http://www.kraken.com of late and it's been great - no problem wiring money to/from my bank account, easy to convert between LTC and BTC and market orders close immediately. I've only been trading in small BTC amounts though so not sure if you'd hit liquidity problems if trying to trade large amounts (kraken's volume is quite a lot smaller than the bigger established players like bitstamp)
Spooky23 13y ago
Why does anyone deal with MtGox? Nothing but drama.
Torn 13y ago
> As to get a better look at the process the system needs to be in a static state. The fact they can't spin up a new MtGox environment with cloned data stores is troubling.
- willis77 13y ago
  I also hope their technical competency beats their writing competency.
minimax 13y ago
Consider this a reminder that while Bitcoin may be an interesting technological achievement, as a tradable asset it is still basically a toy. Crappy exchange technology combined with low liquidity is a perfect recipe for this kind of volatility.
- jessedhillon 13y ago
  I'd sooner consider your comment a reminder that people will apply whatever possible interpretation to the facts is necessary in order to appear right. It's hard to even understand what it is you think you're contributing to the conversation. A dad-from-Growing-Pains-style chat on where to put our money? Reminding us that Mtgox -- which has a story on HN about them every other day -- is a clunky Rube Goldberg machine? This comment really seems like poorly disguised crowing and nothing more. Not a reminder, certainly. Maybe a reminder of your great prognosticatory abilities -- you took the default position on 99% of new technologies, products and innovations. Where do you find the courage?
  - minimax 13y ago
    Sorry I hurt your feelings. Did you lose money or something?
    - jessedhillon 13y ago
      No. It's really not obvious what it is you think you're adding to the conversation.
- logicallee 13y ago
  The interesting thing about bitcoin is that you can just trade your friends for some p2p, you don't need a central exchange. You don't need a bank account to send someone bitcoins or to get some. You can just hand someone $20 and your address and they can send it to you p2p. No banking infrastructure involved. That boggles the mind. It is impossible for bitcoin to become fully illiquid as long as people believe it has value, because there is no infrastructure to approve transactions. The approval happens p2p.
tibbon 13y ago
Is it just me, or does MTGox seem to be the BTC site that has the most problems? Maybe its just because of their size, but in comparison Coinbase and Blockchain have few problems.
headgsaket 13y ago
2 bad news day in a row, and BTC is sensibly at the same price level... This resilience is making me more skeptical of a upcoming crash event. Price stability is sinequanone for acceptance as a currency.
- Gracana 13y ago
  Well to be fair, the people most affected by this news can't do anything about it.
foobarqux 13y ago
MtGox badly needs a financial audit. It's easy to fund operations from deposits and, by having limited withdrawals, hide the fact that you are insolvent.
- zende 13y ago
  This is exactly why regulations exist. MtGox should need to register as a Money Service Business (MSB) in the US and as a Money Transmitter in each state that they support. That needs to happen even if they're not a US company. The same applies to the EU, Australia, Canada, and many other countries that have regulations around this kind of activity. The purpose of the regulations are to protect consumers for companies that are either malicious or incompetent. The problem is that the licensing process is expensive, painful, and long. There should be better ways. Nonetheless, there's a reason why the exist.
gabriel34 13y ago
So, is this really a technological issue or a liquidity crisis at Mt. Gox?
- quattrofan 13y ago
  It seems a technical issue, they are saying they won't process BTC transactions not that they wont process fiat withdrawals, although those have been slow for months anyway.
patrickg_zill 13y ago
Oddly funny, that the physical gold and silver buyer's mantra of "if you don't hold it, you don't own it" would apply to BTC.
- canvia 13y ago
  There are a lot of similarities. I see a lot of pump and dump terminology used in discussions of both topics as well, such as: If you buy only one single (bitcoin|oz of gold) now, one day you could be rich beyond imagination! The potential future price of (bicoin|gold) is over $100,000. There are only xxx (bitcoin|oz of gold) produced per year so it must be scarce and valuable! I'm in (bitcoin|gold) for the long haul! Buy and hold! Keep on stacking! The price of (bitcoin|gold) is manipulated downward. Buy now while it's cheap. The global economy is going to crash soon! Buy (bitcoin|gold) now or you will die when the crash happens!

135 points by zende 13y ago

Interesting comment on Reddit: "I had a job interview with MtGox a couple of weeks ago for a frontend developer position. After talking about their technical environment I declined the position. Contemplated publicizing my story, but I have zero proof that the interview took place. But fuck me is their environment fucked up. Either way, I have been recommending to my friends to move any BTC away from Gox as soon as possible, and regret not bringing this advice into the open. I'm a Tokyoite, so if you want to talk to me about the job Interview, or just drink a beer, send me a DM." "I was told that up until a few weeks [at time of the interview] ago, there was hardly any development environment to test changes. Most changes were done straight on the production environment. Typing this made me throw up in my mouth. The guy who interviewed me was very friendly, but I felt like a psychiatrist more than a job candidate. The dude went on about how shitty the atmosphere is at the offices, and what he told me about Mark seems to be spot on from what OP has said. Interview guy, if you read this, sorry yo."

jessedhillon 13y ago
Can you post the link?
- studio816 13y ago
  http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_at_mtgox_offices_5_to_7th_february/cf9ct0o http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_a...
3pt14159 13y ago
I believe it. I've talked to a backend developer at Coinbase, he said their codebase is a mess and that he wouldn't hold any in their system. Also I submitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7169114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7169114 a couple of days ago based on what I found on Reddit. And this is Coinbase, the good guy. MtGox has always been a clusterfuck. This feels like the internet used to feel like. Back when you just used to assume that a credit card transaction wouldn't go through. Why? "Because internet". Bitcoin is so young and immature.
- stcredzero 13y ago
  I've talked to a backend developer at Coinbase, he said their codebase is a mess and that he wouldn't hold any. This, and a few other things I've witnessed firsthand makes me wonder if Y-Combinator doesn't need better technical intelligence or some form of auditing. It could be done in a non-intrusive spirit of openness. Basically position it as a "show and tell" focused on technical process. Just have companies show what they're proud of, and if they so choose, show what they're ashamed of/what extent of technical debt they're in.
  - 3pt14159 13y ago
    I think that YC embraces technical debt. Exponential market growth means you can hire developers to re-write the problems in a couple years.
    - enraged_camel 13y ago
      Unless, of course, you are a company like Mt Gox and your technical debt is so huge that it sinks you. This is not a dig at Coinbase. I'm just suggesting that endorsing technical debt in the finance sector may not be smart.
      - cookiecaper 13y ago
        There are many types of technical debt. It's something that accumulates organically in any real world project, because the real world doesn't care if your code is a paragon of programming excellence or not. It's expected, and simply part of the process, to develop technical indebtedness. The important part is controlling that indebtedness so that it doesn't cause major disruptions -- this usually means periodically cleaning up old debts and ensuring you have a robust system of monitors and failsafes. In a niche like finance, you certainly have to be more aggressive to ensure that no serious breakages or irrevocable indebtedness make their way into critical transaction code.
        stcredzero 13y ago
nils-- 13y ago
I worked at Gox as a PM for about three weeks before walking out. Currently looking for a new job. sigh. Would be willing to share my story, with proof, but sadly I'm not a good writer. :( But I can confirm that it is as screwed up as the commentor on Reddit wrote. Not even the developers would trust their money or BTC to Gox.

ck2 13y ago

Why would the price drop when there are other exchanges open?

zanny 13y ago
When you freeze billions of assets markets react. People can't move their Gox btc out, they can't cash out, so a double digit percentage of the market just froze.
pbhjpbhj 13y ago
MtGox is one of the biggest and most well known. As I understand each exchange basically sets there own price - but if one exchange lowers there buy price (they buy bitcoins for less dollars) then the others can do too? This is great for MtGox, all buy transactions pending just lost a $100 of the cost to fulfil. Surely then they wait for the bottom, initiate all transactions possible. Price rises and they can take in more dollars per bitcoin sold, speculating, that may be all that enables them to actually deposit the amounts on the transactions they "fulfilled" in order to make the price bounce. Crazy business.
- ck2 13y ago
  After some research (aka googling) I discover the price is not sinking because of mtgox. It is sinking because of Russia. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7197173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7197173

aw3c2 13y ago

Oh no, my college fund investment!

Xdes 13y ago

I think all of us veteran Bitcoin users saw this coming for awhile now. It's all the new users (<1 year) that are affected. They tend to disregard our advice to steer clear of Mt. Gox (and holding their BTC in an exchange like a bank). They're probably the same people who keep supporting scammers like BFL.

yebyen 13y ago
I bought some Jalapeños from BFL after my January order was not shipped until August, in the Black Friday sale. The sale was advertised as "units in stock, ready for immediate delivery" When they came (something like a full month later) they were approximately double the spec of the devices I thought I had ordered, but still for the same price. Thanks, I guess? I can't say if they're shipping any faster now, but if the trend of decreasing wait times has continued, I'd expect that by now, they'll be competition for Amazon's rumored new "ship before you order" practices. Honestly for the new customers, if their ASIC parts were actually delivered in less than two weeks, I would have to say you're not getting the full BFL experience anymore, and you should probably ask for a refund. I will probably not order from them again.
- nwh 13y ago
  The BFL gear is cute and all, but there's a simple fact with selling Bitcoin mining hardware that is probably never going to be overcome. Why would you sell something you could make profit on if you kept it for yourself? This is pretty much the reason why we have ASICminer, KNCminer and Bitfury all either running or building mammoth sized facilities of their own. I particularly liked this juxtaposition on their store — http://i.imgur.com/uZVKRBX.png http://i.imgur.com/uZVKRBX.png
  - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
    >Why would you sell something you could make profit on if you kept it for yourself? This question has been answered an immeasurable amount of times. Several groups organized ASIC production projects. Avalon, BFL, and a couple others I can't remember. None of these initial groups had the capital to finance the NRE (Non-Recurring Engineering) for the ASIC, nor were traditional venture capital sources willing to do so. The ASIC production process has a relatively a high NRE, but low incremental cost. So, Bitcoin folk organized and participated in pre-sales to finance the NRE for these ventures. They had to sell the things or they would never have been able to afford to produce the initial units. Additionally, even if some group would've had the capital to spin their own ASIC, it would have been a bad bargain for them to monopolize ASIC mining when competing against FPGA miners. Their capacity would have been limited to some fraction of the much smaller total network capacity in the FPGA era. Also, a single party swamping the network would've earned enmity from all of the other miners and Bitcoin users who could possibly have forced them out of the network, rendering their investment useless.

lectrick 13y ago

Buy when there's blood in the streets (assuming the fundamentals are still good, which it looks like they are...) http://www.bitcoinpulse.com/ http://www.bitcoinpulse.com/

maxerickson 13y ago
Can you explain what you consider to be the more important fundamentals for bitcoin?
- nkuttler 13y ago
  Number of users.
- mcherm 13y ago
  1. Number of users holding bitcoins 2. Number of users SPENDING bitcoins to purchase goods 3. Number of merchants accepting bitcoins for goods 4. Total $ value of bitcoins being spent to purchase goods 5. Total $ value of bitcoins being spent to perform international money transfers 6. Amount of press (bad press OK, good press is worth much more) that bitcoins are getting as it drives 1 and 3. I'm sure others have their own list of fundamentals.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    Is there anybody publishing reliable numbers for any of those?
    - Torn 13y ago
      IMO Bitcoin's limited amount incentivises speculation/hoarding over spending. Dogecoin, on the other hand, with its inflationary approach feels much more like something that can be used as a currency.
    - mcherm 13y ago
      I don't know of anyone. I sometimes estimate (3) and (6) by monitoring news stories. It doesn't give me absolute numbers, but some sense of scale. I sometimes see values reported for (2) or (4) from individual merchants, but they are rarely useful: the merchants report the great response they had in the weekend after first announcing their support for bitcoin, then we never hear numbers again. Occasionally we'll hear from sites like reddit about the total amount of contributions (not exactly goods, but close) being made in bitcoins: these are usually quite disappointing. I can think of no way to monitor (1) and (5) is likely kept secret on purpose. So these are the fundamentals I care about and that I think affect the long-term value of bitcoin (as opposed to its short-term speculative value). But I don't have a way to measure them, except for guessing based on press coverage.

plg 13y ago

I'm not bitter that when bitcoin was ~ $1/btc I almost bought 1,000 btc ... no not bitter at all :|

yebyen 13y ago
Cheer up, some of us actually had bit-fortunes and lost them at Satoshidice :)
- plg 13y ago
  true enough. that would be an even worse feeling
- terranstyler 13y ago
  Those were times, a gamble every 10 minutes, I didn't shave for weeks. I wonder why today lotteries are held only like once a week or so...
hnnewguy 13y ago
>I almost bought 1,000 btc Are you just as bitter that you missed Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, Priceline, Intuitive Surgical or CNR? Point being, these opportunities are everywhere, always. You're surrounded by them right now, they're just not obvious. But neither was BitCoin. And with the above you're actually buying into a real company, rather than speculating on a price change.
- crazy1van 13y ago
  > Are you just as bitter that you missed Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, Priceline, Intuitive Surgical or CNR? Great point and one that is easy to lose sight of. I think bitcoin stings a little extra because many people on HN thought at the back of their mind that it might be big, but never acted. Whereas, at the time many of these stocks were cheap, most people weren't even considering buying them.
  - aninhumer 13y ago

JonSkeptic 13y ago

But Dogecoin is doing well.

iamjustin 13y ago
It really isn't, it's down to around 0.12 cents per doge. When Bitcoin goes down, it usually drags the rest down with it.

pistle 13y ago

Is this the technical way of shutting your doors to stop the run on the bank?

kirk21 13y ago

Ok, time to find another exchange. Considering http://www.coinnext.com http://www.coinnext.com and https://localbitcoins.com https://localbitcoins.com Other suggestions?

x3ro 13y ago
https://www.bitstamp.net/ https://www.bitstamp.net/ ?
vtempest 13y ago
Coinbase.com is a great one, and they recently received venture funding
- nullc 13y ago
  Coinbase recently imposed a kind of ludicrous $3000 a day outbound limit on accounts that had previously been limited to 50 BTC/day. Removing the limit involves buying coin from them, waiting 30 days, and solving some seemingly impossible credit report based identity quiz (some people report passing after 10 tries, you're limited to one try per 24 hours).
  - politician 13y ago
    We did that back in the online poker gambling days. The casinos would throttle USD withdrawals, so that the players would be forced to wait and end up losing their chips by playing more. Physical casinos do this by attaching hotels next to the slots. This sounds similar.
- commandar 13y ago
  Coinbase is great for exchanging BTC/USD, but it's not a trading market like mtgox.
corford 13y ago
I've been using http://www.kraken.com http://www.kraken.com of late and it's been great - no problem wiring money to/from my bank account, easy to convert between LTC and BTC and market orders close immediately. I've only been trading in small BTC amounts though so not sure if you'd hit liquidity problems if trying to trade large amounts (kraken's volume is quite a lot smaller than the bigger established players like bitstamp)

Spooky23 13y ago

Why does anyone deal with MtGox? Nothing but drama.

Torn 13y ago

> As to get a better look at the process the system needs to be in a static state. The fact they can't spin up a new MtGox environment with cloned data stores is troubling.

willis77 13y ago
I also hope their technical competency beats their writing competency.

minimax 13y ago

Consider this a reminder that while Bitcoin may be an interesting technological achievement, as a tradable asset it is still basically a toy. Crappy exchange technology combined with low liquidity is a perfect recipe for this kind of volatility.

jessedhillon 13y ago
I'd sooner consider your comment a reminder that people will apply whatever possible interpretation to the facts is necessary in order to appear right. It's hard to even understand what it is you think you're contributing to the conversation. A dad-from-Growing-Pains-style chat on where to put our money? Reminding us that Mtgox -- which has a story on HN about them every other day -- is a clunky Rube Goldberg machine? This comment really seems like poorly disguised crowing and nothing more. Not a reminder, certainly. Maybe a reminder of your great prognosticatory abilities -- you took the default position on 99% of new technologies, products and innovations. Where do you find the courage?
- minimax 13y ago
  Sorry I hurt your feelings. Did you lose money or something?
  - jessedhillon 13y ago
    No. It's really not obvious what it is you think you're adding to the conversation.
logicallee 13y ago
The interesting thing about bitcoin is that you can just trade your friends for some p2p, you don't need a central exchange. You don't need a bank account to send someone bitcoins or to get some. You can just hand someone $20 and your address and they can send it to you p2p. No banking infrastructure involved. That boggles the mind. It is impossible for bitcoin to become fully illiquid as long as people believe it has value, because there is no infrastructure to approve transactions. The approval happens p2p.

tibbon 13y ago

Is it just me, or does MTGox seem to be the BTC site that has the most problems? Maybe its just because of their size, but in comparison Coinbase and Blockchain have few problems.

headgsaket 13y ago

2 bad news day in a row, and BTC is sensibly at the same price level... This resilience is making me more skeptical of a upcoming crash event. Price stability is sinequanone for acceptance as a currency.

Gracana 13y ago
Well to be fair, the people most affected by this news can't do anything about it.

foobarqux 13y ago

MtGox badly needs a financial audit. It's easy to fund operations from deposits and, by having limited withdrawals, hide the fact that you are insolvent.

zende 13y ago
This is exactly why regulations exist. MtGox should need to register as a Money Service Business (MSB) in the US and as a Money Transmitter in each state that they support. That needs to happen even if they're not a US company. The same applies to the EU, Australia, Canada, and many other countries that have regulations around this kind of activity. The purpose of the regulations are to protect consumers for companies that are either malicious or incompetent. The problem is that the licensing process is expensive, painful, and long. There should be better ways. Nonetheless, there's a reason why the exist.

gabriel34 13y ago

So, is this really a technological issue or a liquidity crisis at Mt. Gox?

quattrofan 13y ago
It seems a technical issue, they are saying they won't process BTC transactions not that they wont process fiat withdrawals, although those have been slow for months anyway.

patrickg_zill 13y ago

Oddly funny, that the physical gold and silver buyer's mantra of "if you don't hold it, you don't own it" would apply to BTC.

canvia 13y ago
There are a lot of similarities. I see a lot of pump and dump terminology used in discussions of both topics as well, such as: If you buy only one single (bitcoin|oz of gold) now, one day you could be rich beyond imagination! The potential future price of (bicoin|gold) is over $100,000. There are only xxx (bitcoin|oz of gold) produced per year so it must be scarce and valuable! I'm in (bitcoin|gold) for the long haul! Buy and hold! Keep on stacking! The price of (bitcoin|gold) is manipulated downward. Buy now while it's cheap. The global economy is going to crash soon! Buy (bitcoin|gold) now or you will die when the crash happens!