
Bitcoin Builder: Trade “MtGox” BTC and “Real” BTC (and back) - shayanbahal
http://www.bitcoinbuilder.com
======
cobrabyte
Wow, there's no doubt there's a desire for this sort of service but what
they're asking to get an account rolling is nuts:

\- Full Legal Name \- Full Home Address \- Social Security Number \- Date of
Birth \- Picture of Govt ID (driver license, etc)

How desperate do you have to be to give up this information to an unverified
site?

~~~
mrb
Bitcoinbuilder.com is founded by Josh Jones, the co-founder of DreamHost. You
can trust he is legitimate.

~~~
cobrabyte
:) sure. let me just build a site right quick and link to some random person's
LinkedIn profile. I bet I could get a good 12 hours of yokels using it before
it was remedied.

If it's truly Josh Jones of DH, he is not instilling too much confidence. He's
even piggy-backing on CloudFlare's SSL... at the very least, he could have
opted for an EV SSL that showed that some certifying body truly checked out
the individual running the site.

This smells scammy... real badly.

~~~
nknighthb
"some random person's LinkedIn profile" which has 218 connections and
explicitly states "Dreamhost" under "Previous" and "Bitcoin Builder" under
"Current"?

Meanwhile, I'd trust CloudFlare to shut down a scam more than I'd trust any CA
to do so. EV certificates are the scam.

~~~
nwh
Uh, you know that CloudFlare has been used in the past to issue fraudulent
unverified SSL certificates, right? That's what happened to Bitcointalk.org,
CloudFlare signed a certificate for the domain after it was hijacked so that
the attacker could MITM the site.

The point is that linking to a LinkedIn profile proves nothing, there needs to
be cross-referencing.

[http://www.linkedin.com/in/tlytle](http://www.linkedin.com/in/tlytle)

See? I'm Larry Page.

~~~
nknighthb
As I already said in the very comment you're replying to, and as vertex-four
pointed out again, it is cross-referenced.

And several CAs are known to have signed fraudulent SSL certificates. I
suspect all of them actually have, but not all have been publicized. If you
think this makes CloudFlare less trustworthy than them, I really don't know
what to say other than you're crazy.

~~~
nwh
It was meant to be in agreement but incredibly badly written.

------
chrismorgan
This is an example of responsive design gone _horribly_ wrong. Try it at
various different resolutions. I first experienced it at about 860px wide, and
it is badly broken at that width. There's a range of widths of about 150px
which are very difficult to use. (Then there's the contents of the BTC
Builder's bubble, absolutely positioned in pixels although the image may
shrink, but that's just ugly and not debilitating.)

Please, people: just because you're using a framework that does _some_
responsive things doesn't mean it absolves you from the task of ensuring that
it works properly at different resolutions. Responsive frameworks are
deceptive.

~~~
true_religion
Having done a number of projects with responsive or adaptive design, most
people really pick a series of widths to optimize to because that's the
natural resolution of those devices.

For instance, you'd optimize from around 900px to 1050px to capture all modern
smartphones. Then say optimize up to 1440px to capture mid-resolution
desktops.

I'm not saying that's what they did here, but when you do this kind of
optimization there's small windows where a desktop user can resize their
browser to make the site appear broken. A little larger and it fits perfectly
in the large screen model, a little smaller and it fits perfectly in the small
screen model.

~~~
chrismorgan
It's not a good idea to allow it to be broken at _any_ size. In any design
that I implement, I deem unacceptable a solution that appears broken at 400px
wide, and similarly unacceptable a solution that is unusable at 300px wide
(minor layout breakage is permitted and a fair amount of horizontal overflow
is acceptable). Yes, really. _It is possible, and typically not difficult._ As
an example, my own website is moderately ugly at 250px wide but is still
entirely sound and usable. (I could still improve it by reducing the side
margins at such a small size.)

Seriously, use a tool like Firefox's Responsive Design View (Ctrl+Shift+M on
Windows/Linux) to conveniently verify that the design really works at all
different sizes. It's a great tool and helps you to experience all the
different sizes easily.

(Note also that I'm one of these 16px-is-a-good-default people who shuns 12px
or 14px body text; I have seen some people shrink their text size well below
that on mobile to fit in more stuff, and this is my advice on that matter is a
resounding _don 't do it!_ Start with legible text and then fit your layout
around it. Doing it the other way is a Very Bad Plan and will severely hinder
the usability of your website/product.)

------
yen223
Can't wait till people start selling bitcoin-backed CDOs.

~~~
winfred
Haven't you learned _anything_ from the last crash?

Doing that basically caused our economy to collapse for several years.
Instead, you should do it in a safe way, like with cubed CDOs that contain
slices of Bitcoin, LiteCoin and Dogecoin, there is no way that can ever go
wrong.

~~~
Mchl
"there is no way that can ever go wrong"

I just love this assertion :)

------
zhte415
If history were to repeat itself, this could be an excellent reverse pump-and-
dump.

1\. Create an exchange for trading Magic The Something. Use Bitcoin.

2\. ???

3\. MtSox has become the largest Bitcoin exchange ever. USD exchange for the
moon.

4\. Create an internal account, as all using the exchange have coins held with
the exchange, including internal accounts.

5\. As rumours of insolvency arise, offer progressively declining ratios of
'MtSox' held Bitcoins vs 'Real' Bitcoins. Exchange privately held 'Real'
bitcoins for larger amounts of 'MtSox' Bitcoins: 'Real' Bitcoins hit the
transaction chain, and a MtSox internal transfer is made to the internal
account.

6\. Sometime in the future it emerges that MtSox was never insolvent, but by
transactions in the actual Bitchain, the internal MtSox account has now
accumulated a large number of Bitcoins for a fraction of their 'Real' value.

Profit! (With only a little ???)

------
nullc
Bitcoin builder only pays out BTC once per 24 hours (apparently it's manual),
it also doesn't have a lot of liquidity (e.g. selling 1000 GOX there would
drop the price to half what it currently is).

People looking to make a profitable goxusd->goxbtc->btc->bitstamp usd chain of
trades should probably do an OTC trade on IRC on freenode #mtgox-otc:
[http://webchat.freenode.net/?randomnick=1&channels=mtgox-
otc](http://webchat.freenode.net/?randomnick=1&channels=mtgox-otc)

~~~
bittrade
For those of you interested in a similar trade with bitcoins but without
assets in Gox, you can list or buy a contract on the BTC price ratio between
Gox and BitStamp. Takes 5 minutes, no login needed and secured by multisig
[https://www.cointures.com](https://www.cointures.com)

------
pavanky
Can someone explain to me what "MtGox BTC" is ?

~~~
aestra
BTC on MtGox are at a very low price right now because people are dumping them
for (say) USD because they believe MtGox will go under and they have a better
chance at getting USD from MtGox than BTC if that happens. Speculators are
betting MtGox survives and buying up these discounted BTC (that perhaps could
be worthless...) in the hope that MtGox eventually fixes their problems and
allows withdraws so they sell them for a higher price.

These BTC might or might not exist since a bug caused some double spending on
MtGox.

That's how I understand it.

[http://www.pfhub.com/speculators-purchasing-rights-to-
mtgox-...](http://www.pfhub.com/speculators-purchasing-rights-to-mtgox-
accounts-amid-price-decline-389/)

~~~
nazgulnarsil
has gox admitted any losses yet?

~~~
nwh
Nope, just speculation.

------
gkoberger
It's a tossup ("50/50"?) that Mtgox recovers, and then there's the risk that
it'll crash as soon as it does. Is there any point in buying Mtgox bitcoin at
this point, or would it just be throwing away money?

~~~
cheald
That's where the potential for speculation comes in. If you can buy Mtgox BTC
_and_ manage to extract it from Mtgox systems at some point in the future, you
can make a lot of money by buying for Satoshis on the BTC.

On the other hand, if you buy these, MtGox never re-enables the ability to
transfer the BTC they hold on your behalf into your own wallet, and then can't
get someone else to take them, you're completely out of your original purchase
capital.

I don't think anyone expects MtGox to survive as a major player after this,
but _if_ you can get it out of their systems and into your own wallet, 1 BTC
that's currently in MtGox is as good as 1 BTC anywhere else. What's being
speculated on here is the confidence that MtGox will at some point restore the
ability for people to transfer BTC out of their system, and the confidence
that people will be able to extract (at current exchange rates) at least 20%
of their BTC held there.

------
nacho2sweet
This reminds me of the trade in Full Tilt Poker money while everyones money
was locked for a year. I seen some sizeable accounts get sold around the table
at 10 cents on the dollar.

------
oakwhiz
So now we have meta-exchanges?

I wonder if buying up MtGox BTC would work as a strategy to claim damages in a
lawsuit. Kind of like buying up low-value debt and then collecting on it.

------
codeka
If Mt. Gox actually _does_ recover, it's going to be very bad for everybody
else as people try to dump their Mt. Gox BTC as quickly as they can...

~~~
cheald
Why? People would just withdraw their BTC from MtGox-held accounts into
personal wallets that they control.

------
ck2
_Transfer your "trapped" Mt. Gox BTC to us... it actually works_

Um how? Since mtgox isn't allowing btc transfers?

~~~
oscilloscope
MtGox has internal transfers between accounts on their trading/accounting
system. These are not actual transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain.

------
maxbrown
Interesting way to capitalize on the Gox issues. Wonder how much volume this
can do...

~~~
Ellipsis753
It can do the amount people are currently listing. So right now you can buy
about 65 MtGox-bitcoins for 0.4 real bitcoins each (or less).

------
shayanbahal
there has been 7177.7139292 BTC traded so far according to the trade history
data
([https://www.bitcoinbuilder.com/trades.php](https://www.bitcoinbuilder.com/trades.php))

~~~
shayanbahal
7578.94335978

~~~
Tepix
So that's a profit of around 64.000 EUR

~~~
shayanbahal
and counting.... 11640.4576238 BTC total of transactions so far

------
anigbrowl
Well, if nothing else that's the end of Mt Gox.

------
crystaln
Seems like a good use case for Ripple.

