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Comment by gibybo | Hacker News Reader

EDIT: It seems I've got the details wrong, please excuse this comment. I'm just leaving my original text intact so the replies make sense.

The MtGox USD price is not real. At least not for the purposes of arbitrage. Although it says $600 USD, no one (or almost no one) is actually buying or selling BTC on MtGox for $600 USD. They are buying/selling it for other currencies and MtGox is using an internal exchange rate to convert it to USD. Their internal exchange rate does not reflect the risk free rate you can actually get if you were to try to arbitrage it across borders (namely china/japan). MtGox does not allow you to withdraw USD.

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MtGox does allow you to withdraw in USD, it's just that you get put on a long processing queue. The problem is that their Japanese bank has restricted them to only 10 international wires per day. They've been having a really tough time with banks. Interestingly, if you have a Japanese bank account, you can withdraw Yen from MtGox within a few hours.

Regarding price - MtGox's has been fairly in step with BTCChina's price. BTCChina and MtGox both represent the top exchanges by 30-day volume, so it would seem to me that MtGox's price is more accurate than BitStamp's price which lags miserably behind every rally.

They've been having a really tough time with banks

Although from what I was reading the last time this came up, these issues are largely caused in no small part by poor decisions on the part of MtGox.

People ARE buying/selling on Mtgox at 600. However, the price is not "real" because it is inflated by the inability to withdraw USD from Mtgox.

What is happening is that people are buying BTC on Mtgox and then transferring it to other exchanges to withdraw their USD.

For more accurate price information I suggest goign off coinbase or bitstamp.

This is not true. Look at the price on BTCChina and you'll see it's pretty much equivalent to the USD price on MtGox. Bitstamp and Coinbase are lagging behind because BTCChina and MtGox make up most of the volume.

That is not true.

According to graph at the top of mtgox.com there are about 1000-3000 bitcoins being sold for USD every hour.

This volume is huge compared to the volume for euros or any other currency on Mtgox.

http://bitcoinity.org/markets/mtgox/EUR

Hm I had read previously that they only had one order book for all currencies, but now that doesn't seem accurate (or reasonable). Guess that's what I get for believing it without looking into it myself :/

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