
Bitcoin withdrawals are once again fully automated - coconutrandom
https://www.bitstamp.net/article/Bitcoin-withdrawals-are-once-again-fully-automated/
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welder
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...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=define:+arbitrage+trading)

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gus_massa
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.)

~~~
bayes
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?

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sillysaurus2
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.

~~~
bayes
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?

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drakaal
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.

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

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

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

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

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GBiT
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.

~~~
mcv
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.

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mcv
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.)

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saganus
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!

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Aqwis
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).

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

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Aqwis
Really? That's news to me.

~~~
maaku
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...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1mjjfb/how_i_successfully_manipulated_coinbases_price/)

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

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areeb
Bitcoin is messed up!

