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Comment by yebyen | Hacker News Reader

Report from #mtgox when I asked, the deposits and withdrawals in USD are still flowing, but it's so slow they might as well not be. You can move your money out of Mt.Gox as bitcoins but you take a "9% haircut" because the Mt.Gox USD are undervalued.

(Unless of course your money is already bitcoins.)

Wire transfers are being fulfilled in an average of 7 weeks.

This is 100% hearsay but I went and asked yesterday because this article popped up on HN and was deleted before anybody had a chance to comment, and I wondered why.

No comments about the seizures, other than "anything but business as usual".

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> Wire transfers are being fulfilled in an average of 7 weeks.

If true they're dead. 7 weeks is unacceptable.

Some people are waiting even longer, like for 2 months and longer.

Given that I ordered two Jalapenos from Butterfly Labs in January and they've just shipped today, and people who ordered larger, more expensive items are waiting even longer, I'd say there's a certain tolerance for waiting when it comes to money and items crossing borders in the Bitcoin community.

No, there isn't tolerance. The Bitcoin community feels trapped and accepts fate.

BFL: they refuse refunds. You can get them if you push PayPal a bit, but BFL's policy is that you're stuck.

Mt Gox: despite multiple failures (security breaches, closing when they couldn't handle load, wire delays, etc) they still survive because they're the biggest.

Bitcoin is run by a bunch of hobbyists cashing in. The market will mature, and in time there will be a greasy spot where companies like BFL and Mt. Gox used to be. It's much like the early days of the Internet: early ISPs were charming, but eventually the Internet service grew and required companies that could operate at that level.

If all the companies selling mining equipment are incompetent and untrustworthy, you don't have to mine. I don't any more. You don't have to daytrade either.

I never said anything suggesting that all the companies were untrustworthy. I was responding to the idea that Bitcoiners are patient - I was pointed out that wasn't the case, but that some very large players in the industry have backed their customers into corners with little way out.

Given that pirateat40's ponzi managed to take in the majority of the Bitcoin community, I'd say their actions don't necessarily represent sound financial practice.

Even if you get 9% extra for waiting?

Consider this could happen to any Bitcoin exchange, and now the US Government has 5 million of their dollars. I would think that would put them on the road to licensed and bonded in 50 states -- they were saying before it costs about 5 million to become licensed and bonded.

Also, Mt.Gox is not a US company. SEPA/Euro transfers are being processed in a "reasonable amount of time" -- I don't know exactly what that means. I am from the US and I am becoming verified this week, since my BFL Jalapenos have just shipped it seems much more important than only a week ago.

It's 9% extra because nobody is able to get their money. It's a sign of the market failing.

The death of one exchange does not herald the death of the market. Absolute worst case, it moves off of public HTTP websites to back channels like #bitcoin-otc

There's always going to be a need for easy, anonymous value transfer.

I didn't imply that the Bitcoin market is failing, but this marketplace. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

Is an IRC channel easy and anonymous?

I've traded on -otc ~5 times now (http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=gwern&sign=...).

It's not easy, by any means, unless you're already familiar with IRC and crypto and signing messages.

But it's basically anonymous: the actual transactions happen in emails or privmesgs and so there are zero records beyond the feedback on bitcoin-otc.com (which is optional and can be meaningless†, for example, the ratings by 'newguy' and 'AVALON' on me), and there's no way to prove or disprove that a transaction happened without full access to the internals of whatever systems one side of the transaction is on. For example, there's no way for anyone to prove that I really did sell 0.25btc for $50 on Amazon; there's plenty of 0.25btc movements on the blockchain, and all Amazon sees is that I redeemed a giftcode from somewhere. And there's even less evidence if you're willing to send or receive cash in an envelope (http://bitcoin-otc.com/vieworderbook.php?type=&nick=&thing=&...). So it's about as anonymous as you want it to be.

† Specifically, you can be fairly sure the AVALON/newguy accounts did leave that feedback on me because the site accepts commands only from IRC accounts which have cryptographically proven their ownership of the account; but there is no way to be sure that I transacted with them or scammed them. As it happens, I did not and those ratings are revenge from a scammer for not falling for his tricks. Same problem as with public keys, and why people talk about web of trusts.

I've withdrawn from mtgox to a UK account via SEPA many times. It's never taken less than two weeks, and last time (about four months ago), it took nearly five weeks. Communication and transparency about waiting times has always been pretty bad. I'm lucky to have contact info for senior staff, who I can pester for assurances that they are just very backed up rather than in a meltdown situation. Were I an average customer I'd've assumed the worst.

> Even if you get 9% extra for waiting?

I'd rather get 10% less now than possibly nothing later.

So you picks your horses and you takes your chances.

then you have a poor understanding of money.

1) there is nothing to indicate that mt gox is insolvent so its not a matter of if, its a matter of when.

2) we can track their volume, its looking pretttttty good right now.

3) 10% every 7 weeks is not a bad roi. that's just shy of 100% return for a glorified short term loan.

> then you have a poor understanding of money.

Nah, I'm just not a gambler. I know when to get out of a deal and take a small loss instead of going broke later.

And the US government seizing funds of a company I have money parked in is a pretty strong signal to get out.

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