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Comment by t0 | Hacker News Reader

The press must know by now Mtgox is an inflated price, but they still continue to reference it as the price of bitcoin.

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Perhaps it's moderately inflated, but it is still the most well-known exchange among the populace; therefore, they're going to go with it. It's sort of like real currencies. Yes, on the spot market they're worth X, but when you're on the street trying to exchange it, it'll be worth X * 0.9.

Exactly. Good luck getting 100% of the spot price of Gold.

In a perfect world the newspapers would use the combined weighted price for the last few weeks shared by all of the exchanges, but we're dealing with reporters here.

It's inflated because USD withdrawals are severely delayed, often taking months to clear. There are people waiting since June 2013 for withdrawals.

Domestic JPY withdrawals seem to happen smoothly so some people use that route to get fiat out.

It used to be where 80 percent of the transactions happened. Now it's more like 25 percent, and Bitstamp seems to have surpassed it recently, at least for BTC/USD:

http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

Agreed, no one should be quoting Mtgox price these days.

Worth noting that BitStamp has double the volume of gox recently. And Stamp actually acts like a liquid company, getting people their money without fuss.

Not only is it inflated, but it has more volatility. I no longer own any bitcoins, but if I were going to invest or purchase from an exchange, it would not by MtGox because of all the HFT that happens there.

High frequency trading minimizes volatility. And MtGox is notorious for not taking weeks to pay out. So I'm not entirely sure what you're on about.

>>And MtGox is notorious for not taking weeks to pay out.

There must be a typo there. The word "not" should be removed. MtGox is a mess. It doesn't matter if MtGox values bitcoin at $999,999 each. You'll never see a dime. I'm curious to know who is using that exchange and how well it's working for them. Maybe they're daytraders who don't actually feel like getting fiat yet. I know I've been trading coins<--->fiat on btc-e.com but haven't actually requested the USD of my profits yet. When that time comes, I plan to buy bitcoin ---> coinbase.com ---> bank account. And in this way I pay the rate coinbase.com will give me.

If you try to go MtGox--->BankAccount, failure. So the fiat/BTC rate on MtGox is meaningless unless you're lucky enough that it actually worked for you.

selectodude, Can you explain how HFT minimizes volatility? I was always under the impression HFT made the swing wider as when the price drops, naive algorithms sell anticipating a wider drop.

Why not? Anyone with a free account can sell at this this price.

You can sell but you can never get the USD from that sale.

This is called spreading FUD. All it takes is 3 weeks.

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