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Statement Regarding Temporary Hiatus on U.S. Dollar Withdrawals

mtgox.com

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

#101

Post by MacsHeadroom »

drcode wrote: post #54
pvnick wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any theoretical way to defeat these programs and ensure anonymity? I'm even suspect of SSL given private keys can probably be demanded through FISA court.

The 100% theoretically guaranteed method is the zerocoin extension: http://zerocoin.org/

Caveat, much higher bandwidth and data storage requirement.

One ZeroCoin transaction takes the bandwidth/storage space of something like 100 (or was it 1000?) Bitcoin transactions. That could add up fast.

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

#102

Post by gwern »

andrewla wrote: post #93
gwern wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I get a different version checking now - MtGox isn't even the most demanding of Bitcoin:

    icbitUSD    100
    bitstampUSD 103
    btceUSD     106
    cbxUSD Camp 107
    mtgoxUSD    109
    rockUSD     109
    bitboxUSD   118
It's tied with rock, and as I said, below BitBox. Looks like Bitstamp has diverged more, though.

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

#103

Post by pmorici »

jaggederest wrote: post #97
dragonwriter wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It takes a long time to transfer money into MtGox and with the wild price fluctuations it might be prudent to wait for a better price instead of buying at the current market price the second the transfer clears.

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

#104

Post by dragonwriter »

jaggederest wrote: post #97
dragonwriter wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

The same reason you'd keep any currency in an account tied to a particular marketplace: liquidity that allows you to trade without the delay of getting money into the marketplace from somewhere else.

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

#105

Post by pbreit »

patio11 wrote: post #28

Hate to quote myself, but see the P.S. here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5568610 If I were a gambling man, I'd say this is quite likely to be shoe #1.

Did they shut you down for risk or for using a personal account for business?

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

#106

Post by pyre »

jafaku wrote: post #79
pyre wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's based on a karma threshold, I haven't reached it yet, which would mean that the bar is fairly high.

If you want karma all you have to do is submit a lot of garbage, just keep it coming. Most of your submissions will get 0 votes, a few will get you 10 or 20 votes, and one or two will get you 300-400. That's how downvoters get their downvoting powers. Another option is to submit quality comments for a decade without being banned for saying something against Ruby or whatever the mods are emotionally or economically at…

No one has said that HN karma is worth anything. I was just providing anecdotal evidence on whether or not there is a karma threshold for moderator status.

Also,

  | for a decade
HN hasn't been around for a decade.

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

#107

Post by Robin_Message »

tlrobinson wrote: post #100
sneak wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think (not an expert) that with elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman (which e.g. Google uses), even with the private key and the whole session, you still can't decrypt the session (Diffie-Hellman provides a secure channel, public/private proves the server is who it says it is).

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

#108

Post by ensignavenger »

Nursie wrote: post #96
downandout wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, but there is nothing illegal about an in-person cash trade, so what are you going to bust them for? (Well, I suppose the cops can always find something to bust someone on...)

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

#109

Post by Nursie »

ensignavenger wrote: post #108
Nursie wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, but there is nothing illegal about an in-person cash trade, so what are you going to bust them for? (Well, I suppose the cops can always find something to bust someone on...)

There are all sorts of inventive ways the cops can seize money, especially if the amounts are both large and frequent.

In some places carrying huge amounts of cash is more than enough to get the cash temporarily impounded pending investigation, even with no other immediate suspicious circumstances.

Besides which, the point was that (in general) forcing users into these sorts of arrangements is much more onerous on them than just sorting it all out electronically.

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

#110

Post by jafaku »

pyre wrote: post #106
jafaku wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want karma all you have to do is submit a lot of garbage, just keep it coming. Most of your submissions will get 0 votes, a few will get you 10 or 20 votes, and one or two will get you 300-400. That's how downvoters get their downvoting powers. Another option is to submit quality comments for a decade without being banned for saying something against Ruby or whatever the mods are emotionally or economically at…

No one has said that HN karma is worth anything. I was just providing anecdotal evidence on whether or not there is a karma threshold for moderator status. Also, | for a decade HN hasn't been around for a decade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole
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