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Comment by alanbyrne | Hacker News Reader

Firstly, that's very cool. Well done!

Secondly, I know hardly anything about bitcoins - but here all I see is an arbitrage opportunity. Buy bitcoins from BTC-e and sell them on MTGox, which seems to be consistently around 150 (I assume USD) different.

Am I missing something here?

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withdrawing USD from mtgox and transferring them to btc-e takes roughly two hours, depending on which payment processor you choose. okpay is usually pretty fast, but you loose about 50$ on commission. furthermore unless you are verified on mtgox, you've got a withdrawal limit of 1000$ per day. add to that the time interval during which your money is locked up either in the blockchain or the payment processor and you end up with substantial risk between the trades.

EDIT: This only worked until the end of may - I've just noticed that OKPAY withdrawal is no longer an option: https://www.mtgox.com/pdf/20130528_okpay_statement.pdf

The fact that there is a gap that large between exchanges is indicative of a huge liquidity problem in the exchanges. Big enough that I wouldn't go near it...even with my arbitrage-loving mitts.

It is impossible to withdraw USD from MtGox.

Excuse my ignorance, but can you elaborate?

It isn't impossible but users have to wait arbitrarily large amounts of time in order to withdraw - some people report waiting for months.

People have said they're nearly insolvent. They're also being sued I think. So, withdrawing USD from Mt. Gox you're screwed... I waited 3 months and gave, up, converted my dollars into bitcoin and sold it elsewhere.

Selling on MtGox, from what I understand, takes days (if not weeks). Buying is more straightforward.

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