Bitcoin withdrawals are once again fully automated | Hacker News Reader

Bitcoin withdrawals are once again fully automated

bitstamp.net

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Wow, MtGox price is almost half that of Bitstamp:

MtGox: $346 for 1 BTC

Bitstamp: $651 for 1 BTC

When MtGox re-enables bitcoin withdrawals, will there be a surge of arbitrage trading?

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=define:+arbitrage+trad...

Not being able to transfer BTC out of MtGox

For now, you can't withdraw BTC from MtGox. You can "buy" them at ~$350 but you can't transfer them to another exchange to sell them, nor transfer them to a private wallet to keep them safe.

MtGox promises that they will soon make possible to transfer the BCT again. Some people believe that the problem will be fixed soon. Some people believe that it will implode and disappear because all the technical problems and you never will see again any of the BTC you "have" in MtGox.

A 50% discount can be interpreted as "the market" believes that there is only a 50% chance that you will see the BCT at MtGox again. (It's really more complicated, perhaps it's a 40% that you will see them soon and a 20% that you will see them in a year. Don't interpret the number too literally.)

That's probably the reason for the discount but I don't think it's a very good one. Suppose that MtGox has all its users' dollars but only half the BTC. Are the BTC holders going to accept a haircut of 50%? No, they'll demand that the pain be shared equally. Even if that argument gets rejected in court it'll still freeze all the dollar assets for a long time. Point is, goxBTC are devalued relative to actual BTC, but goxUSD ought to be devalued as well.

I think the reason goxUSD is not as devalued is because courts can be counted on to recognize USD claims, whereas it's a bit up in the air what Japanese courts will think of Bitcoin. As a result, goxUSD retains more of its value.

No, definitely not this. Japan has good case law regarding the protection of virtual goods, whereas there is a lot of ambiguity on this side of the pacific. If anything this is one point in favor of mtgox being in Japan.

Question from someone who doesn't know much about this: is it possible to know that there is a genuine market in these MtGox bitcoins i.e. that $350 is a genuine market price and not just something made up by the exchange to conceal a complete collapse in value?

I suppose Gox could be buying up all the goxcoins less than $300. But then you'd see a decrease in future volume until the volume reaches zero. They wouldn't do that, because they're not smart enough to pull it off without anyone noticing.

So if hypothetically Gox was the only buyer for bitcoins trapped in Gox, would they be buying them with real USD, or with 'trapped in Gox' USD that may or may not turn out to have any value?

It doesn't really matter, except for people that think it is a good idea to transfer assets into MtGox.

(Because fraudulent trades hiding that they can't cover their accounts aren't much worse than the situation where they can't cover their accounts)

There are several flaws that are still not fixed. This known vulnerability only "suspended trading" because people started using it too much. The other vulnerabilities aren't "in the wild" but offer similar exploits. I suspect that as soon as MTGox resumes we'll see a new exploit take its place.

If I were a conspiracy nut I'd tell you that the Merchant Services companies were responsible. But more likely I think that these issues are just the result of there being enough money at play now that there are those looking to beat the system and so instead of being a community of "hippies" who just want peace and love, the BTC community now has armed muggers and cat burglars. That's what happens when the hippies get to a point that they could buy mansions with imaginary coins they trade.

Whom might you be referring to when you say "Merchant Services companies"? Coinbase? Others?

Lady Visa and Master Card. The companies that have the most to lose if cryptocurrencies take off

They certainly do not. Western Union has more to lose.

68% of Western Union users are unbanked. You think people who live on Cash, because they need absolute liquidity are going to user BitCoin?

MtGox team can easily do arbitrage trading. They can buy a lot of bitcoins for half price at mtgox market, transfer them to bitstamp and sell (they admins, they have options to do it by hand). In a few minutes they can earn 100% from arbitrage trading.

But is taking advantage of other people's BTC being stuck there, strictly legal? If they're doing that, they're basically keeping other people's BTC hostage for personal profit.

What exactly are these Bitcoin withdrawals? I hear they tend to take a lot of time. I own some Bitcoin, but I bought them at a site that's not MtGox, though I think that site used the MtGox exchange, and stored the bitcoin at blockchain.info, which immediately had the bitcoins I purchased. No noticeable waiting for the transaction to be verified or anything.

So what exactly is the problem here? Are my bitcoins at blockchain.info safe? Do I care what happens at MtGox? Am I required to transfer them there before I can sell them there? (Very unlikely I'd ever want to use MtGox at this point, but you never know.)

Does anyone have any experience buying BTC at Bitstamp? was it good or bad?

I am planning on buying some BTC and did not know about this exchange, so I am curious about it, if anyone can share any info on it it would be great. Thanks!

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/19844i/

It's as good as any other BTC exchange I guess. I mean, it hasn't closed down and run off with everyone's funds. That's about all you can hope for these days. I also have no problems with BTC-e.com, but I only day trade there. I don't connect my personal banking info to it. Instead I use Coinbase.com for that intimacy. YC-backed, also very much enjoyed this video[1] and they're San Francisco based which is very close to me so I can stage my own protest if my funds disappear. :)

1. http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/17/foundation-brian-armstrong-...

Excellent! thanks a lot. Edit: So, you say you didn't submit bank info to Bitstamp, so how do you deposit the USD to get BTC? do you just directly move funds from Coinbase to Bitstamp in USD, then buy BTC at Bitstamp then move them back to CB?

Oops, sorry. I actually don't have direct experience with them.

I personally only use coinbase and btc-e. Other random folks I see online[1] seem pleased with bitstamp and I've never heard anything bad from coworkers who are into bitcoin that I talk to. My point-of-view on these bitcoin exchanges is pretty much they're all great unless you can find an overwhelming amount of negative opinions about them... or they're brand new with no history to judge them on.

1. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1m2upn/going_to_sta...

In my opinion, Coinbase and Bitstamp are currently the only Bitcoin exchanges worth using. Coinbase might be the better exhange (as far as I know, it wasn't vulnerable to the recent attack), but Coinbase is unusable for non-Americans as it doesn't accept international money transfers. Meanwhile, you can transfer money to Bitstamp regardless of where you live in the world (and if you're in Europe, currency transfers to Bitstamp are free of charge).

Coinbase uses bitstamp under the hood. It's just a mapping of bitstamp to the north american market.

Really? That's news to me.

They don't run their own exchange, except presumably when their own customers happen to have matching trades. Otherwise they use bitstamp as the clearing house - they basically act as a brokerage. The price you see on their site is just a filtered version of the current bitstamp price:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1mjjfb/how_i_succes...

I'd recommend kraken over bitstamp. Unlike bitstamp, kraken was immune from the malleability issues and didn't halt withdrawals.

I've bought around 4BTC across the last 2 years and they've always worked fine.

Their communication throughout the recent suspension of BTC withdrawals hasn't been the best, but I still consider them a pretty good service provider.

The up and coming new exchange Kraken.com looks very impressive. I've only been using it for about a week but their sites seems more professional than average, with two-factor auth, GPG-encrypted emails, and sensible and proportionate account verification steps. They also did not need to suspend their withdrawals which suggests that their wallet implementation is superior to what both MtGox and Bitstamp had prior to this week.

The major downside of Kraken is that their volume is still tiny.

I have also heard reports that they don't give clear indications of which territories they are allowed to trade with, so some people have signed up only to find they are not allowed to actually use the service, because of the country they live in.

I am from UK and have had no such issues. It is a shame that Kraken can't inform people up-front about that though.

Thanks for the replies. I'm currently in Mexico so I really don't know how that would work. Guess I'll have to find out.

What % of the Bitcoin transaction volume occurs through exchanges vs OTC? Anyone know?

Bitcoin is messed up!

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