Mt. Gox Impact Diminishes as Market Price Dissociates
thegenesisblock.com
thegenesisblock.com
http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/1xmfby/i_jus...
I find it hard to imagine that they won't solve the withdrawal concern soon. Especially with today's update.
With BTC (and similar systems), you can pay for protection when you need it, while having a cheaper service when you don't.
And this isn't something discovered with BTC, some of us live in countries with sane payment systems that are cheaper than CCs. They just don't work abroad, which nowadays is a major limitation.
¹ Technically, you never actually need an exchange at all, there are other ways of getting Bitcoins.
A system that forces you to trust (without being able to verify) every single merchant you do business with is flawed.
Same with hosted wallets and exchanges.
Not the same. For one, you only need to trust one exchange to use Bitcoin with N merchants, so the attack surface is much lower. Secondly, you only need to trust them for enough time to move the Bitcoins out - a few hours, whereas with CCs, the merchant can save the info forever, for all you know.
Not to mention that, if Bitcoin becomes successful, and I doubt it will, people will receive Bitcoins from other sources (e.g. some people are already paid in BTC).
There's no PCI Compliance equivalents for them, so, you can expect much worse. And how can you trust them? They don't get audited and are not certified. How can you know for sure that they are not gonna manipulate the market or run away with your funds?
You should read on that PCI compliance. Most merchants do not get audited, they can audit themselves[1]. Many, if not most, are not compliant[2]. Tens of millions of CCs have been leaked since just 2006.
Besides, nothing in Bitcoin prevents the creation of independent certification authorities. Unlike with the CC system, it's not a built-in flaw, it's just a temporary situation.
Most of those don't even have a physical address (Bitstamp and BTC-e), no phone number, and info is very limited in general.
Just like with many CC merchants.
My point is that everything comes at a price. Bitcoin is cheap as it lacks all that, which is not necessarily a good thing!
And my point is that what Bitcoin lacks can be added, without increasing the costs of every single transaction by allowing massive amounts of fraud, like the CC system does.
[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/pay-with-plastic-risk-your-perso...
[2] http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/24/pci_dss_compliance/
No, with Bitcoin, you don't need PCI compliance, because there's no way fir the merchant or someone who hacks it to steal your wallet from the information they get. You only need to audit the exchanges / only wallets (the current equivalent of banks, which get audits anyway).
And by the way, the proof that those costs are not inevitable, is the fact that some countries like mine (Portugal) are already using sane push-based payment systems for decades now. and they are cheaper and easier for merchants than CCs. The advantage of Bitcoin is that it works internationally.
The high bar to bitcoin gambling is evidenced by the fact that relatively few people are doing it, for how many people love to gamble. Bitcoin gambling is astronomically dwarfed by other forms of gambling. It's a fucking rounding error.
I mean, it obviously isn't, but if you are willing to ignore the "acquire an Italian sports car and know how to drive it" part...
And the people who lost some of their money by investing in a volatile new market, then tried to gamble their way back to a break-even point and lost? They bear no responsibility for this? Instead, your solution is to outlaw gambling?
Sometimes I despair of my fellow man. By the way, I don't even gamble (in my entire life, I've gambled one single time, not counting two-dollar NCAA basketball pools in HS).
But it really disturbs me how people want to just outlaw what people should be free to do if they wish. Do you have any idea what they're doing to gamblers because of laws like you're advocating? They're sending in SWAT squads in massive raids, where the "target" frequently ends up shot, or at least their dog.
What about alcohol, do you want to outlaw that? It sure causes a lot of problems. Why not just return to Prohibition?
On the other hand, if some powerful Bitcoin player somehow has insider information on Gox's (in)solvency (quite possible) and is still trying to sell Gox coins or Gox bucks that he/she knows to be worthless, that's clearly crossed the line into fraud, and existing fraud regulations are more than adequate for that. Absolutely no additional regulation is needed to prosecute that (see what's happening to pirateat40). However, I have not seen that this is happening, so I'd like to see the thread you're referring to. As it is, your position on gambling makes me extremely skeptical toward your claims.
Edit: OK, edited out "are you fucking kidding me". I apologize to fellow HNers for such an emotional comment -- first time ever (check my history). But I'm so tired of people calling for more laws when we're so close to living in a police state.
State lottery is regulated. It also physically prevents people from putting money into it, which they cannot afford to lose (well, there are services that automate this for you at a price). Gambling is addictive and more often ruins lives than it makes people rich - I know this first-hand as I have relatives who just cannot get out of the vicious circle! I have no doubt that in the future all gambling will be prohibited and will be severely prosecuted.
Same thing with bars. I know guys who drink their paychecks; every weekend, they're at the bar / strip club, spending every last cent in their bank accounts.
Same thing with electronics stores, jewelry stores, etc.
Should we legislate financial responsibility to prevent idiocy? I'm a responsible person, and I will gamble a hundred bucks every six months or so. I have a lot of fun; it's a glamorous evening where you're paying for an experience. I shouldn't have to stop doing that because some moron is gambling his grocery money away. I shouldn't have to stop drinking because someone else is giving himself cirrhosis.
I understand the counterargument - "You're having a frivolous evening. You don't need that. What's it to you? Your idea of a good time is also destroying famiies and ruining lives." But where does it end? I know plenty of people who put themselves horribly into debt with credit cards. I know people who spend their student loans on weed. I know people who speed and wreck their cars. Should we ban everything that can possibly be abused by clueless people?
And I understand better now, you're emotionally involved in the issue. I'm sorry your relatives have this problem, but they'd have the same issue with the state lottery in every state I've ever lived, since none of them require an ID (so no way to prevent people from spending their last dollar).
And no, gambling doesn't make many people rich. I think most of us know that, at least from a rational perspective.
By the way, alcohol very near ruined my life permanently, before I stopped drinking 10 years ago. Should I call for peoples' enjoyable evening glass of wine to be banned, and for them to be "severely prosecuted"?
And good luck with your "all gambling will be prohibited". More and more states are legalizing gambling, since it's a nice revenue stream.
Regarding gambling, I am talking about distant future (20+ years from now). In 20 years, alcohol might be irrelevant, but today, two glasses of red wine, for example, have a health benefit. What is the benefit of putting $20 in a slot machine? Maybe some arm exercise.
Gambling tricks the brain differently. If you get a hangover, next time most people will be more careful drinking as much. I got drunk once pretty severely and now I get stick just smelling hard liquor (thank God, red wine is okay). With gambling, after a big loss, people often rush back in the casino as soon as possible to try to recover what they've lost.
Fortunately, it isn't meant to be a "trendline", but instead a measure to show that correlation between exchanges does not exist anymore.
Different exchanges are supposed to have correlations near 1.00. (.99 to .95 is to be expected) However, with correlations near .5, it is clear that Bitstamp prices are very different from Mt. Gox prices.