Statement Regarding Temporary Hiatus on U.S. Dollar Withdrawals • Hacker News Board

Re: Statement Regarding Temporary Hiatus on U.S. Dollar Withdrawals

#91

Post by zwtaylor » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 6:52 PM UTC

gwern wrote: post #86

zwtaylor wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to be what's happening at the moment. I initially assumed this announcement would cause a panic sell-off, instead it seems as if a lot of users are now converting their USD back into BTC in light of the hiatus. The exchange rate has ticked up pretty steadily as a result.

If it was just a MtGox only issue, then bitcoins on MtGox ought to be at a premium compared to the other exchanges. But if you look at http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/ it seems like MtGox is perfectly in line with the other markets - within half a dollar of Bitstamp and actually cheaper than BitBox etc.

This is true, but Mt. Gox historically has the lowest exchange rate as they have far more liquidity than other exchanges. Gox is also the primary indicator against which other markets rise or fall, today is no exception.

In an unrelated note, big fan of your site.

Re: Statement Regarding Temporary Hiatus on U.S. Dollar Withdrawals

#92

Post by quackerhacker » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 6:56 PM UTC

jaggederest wrote: post #64

dragonwriter wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Luckily, everyone with deposits in Mt.Gox can convert them to bitcoins and send them to some other address. If you have US dollars on Mt.Gox, and no one can take US dollars out of Mt.Gox now and there is very low confidence that this will change in the future, its going to be very hard to find anyone give up any other currency or virtual currency for US dollars -- whether you want bitcoins, yen, slips of latinum, o…

Sure they will, coinbase will quite happily turn them back into USD for you.

Exactly what I did when I heard about dwolla no longer offering withdrawals for MtGox....I love coinbase! It's so simple and the UI is clean.

Re: Statement Regarding Temporary Hiatus on U.S. Dollar Withdrawals

#93

Post by andrewla » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 7:05 PM UTC

gwern wrote: post #86

zwtaylor wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to be what's happening at the moment. I initially assumed this announcement would cause a panic sell-off, instead it seems as if a lot of users are now converting their USD back into BTC in light of the hiatus. The exchange rate has ticked up pretty steadily as a result.

If it was just a MtGox only issue, then bitcoins on MtGox ought to be at a premium compared to the other exchanges. But if you look at http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/ it seems like MtGox is perfectly in line with the other markets - within half a dollar of Bitstamp and actually cheaper than BitBox etc.

Check again -- look at http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/currency/USD.html. There's a significant premium on MtGox. At the time that I'm writing this, the values are

    mtgoxUSD:     112.99
    bitstampUSD:  107
    btceUSD:      106.87
    cbxUSD:       106.12
    vcxUSD:       105
    bitoxUSD:     95

Re: Statement Regarding Temporary Hiatus on U.S. Dollar Withdrawals

#94

Post by sneak » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 7:08 PM UTC

tlrobinson wrote: post #39

zachrose wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use separate hardware on public wifi. Take the battery out when you're done.

Was that a joke? What does public WiFi have to do with anything? We're talking about the NSA wiretapping Internet backbones and forging SSL certificates.

We're not talking about forging ssl certs and never have been. NSA doesn't do that and never will, for reasons which are totally obvious if actually think about what would happen if they did.

Re: Statement Regarding Temporary Hiatus on U.S. Dollar Withdrawals

#95

Post by rheide » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 7:12 PM UTC

pakitan wrote: post #61

rheide wrote: post #31

Just FYI, I made 6 bank withdrawals in Euro two months ago, and I still have only received 3 of them. They've used up all their goodwill with me.

I suppose you've talked to support about this? What's their excuse?

They say the bank processes a queue and there's nothing they can do to speed it up. Every couple of days a support guy leaves a message on my support ticket stating that they're still waiting for the bank to process stuff. MtGox is very obviously in over their head.

Re: Statement Regarding Temporary Hiatus on U.S. Dollar Withdrawals

#96

Post by Nursie » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 7:23 PM UTC

downandout wrote: post #90

ChuckMcM wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly shoe #1, more like #8 or #9. With the take down of Liberty Reserve, the killing off of a number of exchanges and interfaces to exchanges, its pretty clear the US Government at least has decided to focus for a time on the financial infrastructure which underpins a big chunk of Internet criminal activity. The privacy advocates are getting somewhat caught in the crossfire. As a company that works with internet ad…

It doesn't really make it that hard to cash in. See http://localbitcoins.com . You'll just get a slightly lower exchange rate. If they thought they didn't want people receiving traceable wire transfers from Mt. Gox, imagine how little they will like the alternative they are pushing people to - in-person cash trades. >The effect of that is what Patrick experienced where regulators start effectively 'regex' banning typ…

In person cash trades are easier to bust. Especially if there's much in the way of volume or the transactions are sizeable.

They are also far more hassle and potentially dangerous.

Don't pretend that making electronic transfers harder wouldn't suppress the market to some extent.

Re: Statement Regarding Temporary Hiatus on U.S. Dollar Withdrawals

#97

Post by jaggederest » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 7:26 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #65

jaggederest wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure they will, coinbase will quite happily turn them back into USD for you.

If you have bitcoins on Mt.Gox, sure, you can get USD for them elsewhere. The issue I was raising was that if you have USD on Mt.Gox and people don't think USD will be able to be extracted from Mt.Gox, you will have trouble converting your USD to bitcoin to get it off Mt.Gox, because people who have bitcoin on Mt.Gox will be reluctant to convert it to USD on Mt.Gox .

That's true, but I'm unclear why you'd store USD for any length of time on mtgox anyway.

Re: Statement Regarding Temporary Hiatus on U.S. Dollar Withdrawals

#98

Post by kragen » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 7:33 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #9

A reminder: bitcoin, like tor, is useless if the government has a realtime analysis of the L3 network traffic of a majority of the participants, as we have learned they do in the US under NSA's MAINWAY and MARINA programs.

It's only as useless as the stock market and SWIFT.

Re: Statement Regarding Temporary Hiatus on U.S. Dollar Withdrawals

#99

Post by nwh » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 7:49 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #94

tlrobinson wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was that a joke? What does public WiFi have to do with anything? We're talking about the NSA wiretapping Internet backbones and forging SSL certificates.

We're not talking about forging ssl certs and never have been. NSA doesn't do that and never will, for reasons which are totally obvious if actually think about what would happen if they did.

Assume they have access to the original pricate keys.

Re: Statement Regarding Temporary Hiatus on U.S. Dollar Withdrawals

#100

Post by tlrobinson » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 7:52 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #94

tlrobinson wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was that a joke? What does public WiFi have to do with anything? We're talking about the NSA wiretapping Internet backbones and forging SSL certificates.

We're not talking about forging ssl certs and never have been. NSA doesn't do that and never will, for reasons which are totally obvious if actually think about what would happen if they did.

By "forge" I meant using the private keys (obtained through FISA, or possibly cracked) to either decrypt or MITM SSL sessions, not using one of their own CAs to create a valid but obviously fake certificate, which I assume is what you thought I meant.

Maybe "forge" was the wrong word.