Hacker News Reader

Comment by seanalltogether | Hacker News Reader

It's now been over 5 weeks since I sold all my bitcoins on mtgox and still haven't received any of my money from them.

After waiting almost 3 months for my money (3 separate transfers), I asked them to revert the transfer and they quickly re-credited my account.

Their support will answer, except that they won't tell you how long it will take to get your money or how far you are in the queue.

Since then I've found a local exchange (anx.hk) in Hong Kong that is Government registered and actually pays out quickly (got my money in 3 days after testing a sale of a btc). They accept International accounts in USD as well apparently.

If I were you, I'd just try it: ask MtGox to revert your waiting transfers, buy some btc, transfer them to the new exchange and try to cash out.

(PS: Not affiliated in any way to them, just a user).

It has been well known that MtGox takes weeks to months, possibly longer, to process USD withdraws, for far longer than 5 weeks.

This won't be useful now, but always check bitcointalk.org before dealing with an exchange.

Coinbase is a better one to use, if you can use it. I would also recommend CampBX. This is biased towards an American perspective.

There is an easy solution for the MtGox withdrawal problem:

- open a bitstamp account, get it verified

- wait for the price between bitstamp and mtgox to be stable

- convert your mtgox usd to btc

- immediately transfer your btc to bitstamp

- immediately convert your btc back to bitstamp usd

- withdraw the usd

Only issue: hope the price doesn't move too much while it is in BTC.

Why did you sell on MtGox? If you'd done any research, you would have easily found that they have been having huge problems with cashouts for a long time now.

That's why MtGox price is inflated, high price != the best place to sell.

This is the thing that worries me.

I have 2 BTC and was hoping to sell to grab a MacBook but I get the feeling turds and fan are going to impact each other soon.

There is an old stockbroker joke about penny stocks.

Broker: "This stock is at 1 cent and could keep on going up."

Client: "BUY!"

The next day:

Broker: "Good news, the stock is at 3 cents and is showing no signs of slowing."

Client: "BUY!"

The next day:

Broker: "Awesome news, the stock is at 10 cents and people think it could hit 50 cents in a week."

Client: "SELL!"

Broker: " . . . to whom?"

ahhhhh you may be my soulmate on this thread :)

Which is why you look at market depth indicators. http://bitcoinity.org/markets or http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD_depth.html for example.

So sell them at an exchange that doesn't suck at withdrawals. BTC is trivial to transfer.

If you can find a place to buy a macbook directly with bitcoins, you'll be OK. Selling BTC for dollars is whats tricky, as it requires money to pass through Gox's bank account. The banks don't really like BTC that much, so it's a pain. I've bought things directly with BTC before and it's an easy process.

You may sell half. If it crashes you cashed out quite well. If it diesn't and reaches $10K you won't be sad.

heh this is funny to me (though i'm sorry for you, i don't mean to rub it in) only because when i suggested dollar-backed or gold-backed bitcoin a lot of people made fun of me saying "oh it's been done & it was corrupted" "mannnnn" "original sin" "blahhhhhh"

but.... whos to say the Bitcoin exchanges are better at banking than traditional banking industries? I understand they represent individual points of failure in the ecosystem, but soooooooo many users have gotten screwed by them thus far.

That's ok. I think it's funny too.

It was a quick purchase of a couple of bitcoins to see what the fuss was about. They've just sat in my wallet for a period of time.

They're better than the banking industry already (I've worked in it and can attest to how bad it is) but then again so is Jimmy Saville...

No need to cash out, you can buy from anywhere using all4btc.com. If you'd rather order it yourself than have someone else buy then try an Amazon gift card from gyft.com instead.

If you want to cash out to USD or Euros I run a service http://bitcoinsaresexy.com - you can cash out to amazon gift cards or even paypal money and then buy whatever you like ;)

Edit: really ? downvotes on this ? why ?

I've personally used his service twice. And besides PayPal's high fees it works as expected. I will happily use his service again.

If you are in the US, use CoinBase I don't even know why people even consider using Mtgox.

There's always localbitcoins! (And Coinbase has been relatively smooth)

I don't trust Mt. Gox's prices for this very reason.

Coinbase seems a lot more trustworthy in this department, but I don't fully understand how their exchange works. BTC-e seems to hit a relatively decent middle-ground.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com