Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mt. Gox Halts Bitcoin Withdrawals, Price Drop Follows

coindesk.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 151 posts

Re: Mt. Gox Halts Bitcoin Withdrawals, Price Drop Follows

#141

Post by BlackDeath3 »

cookiecaper wrote: post #136
BlackDeath3 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up until a few days ago, I had been too lazy to go through the trouble required to ensure that I trusted my ability to administer and recover my own personal Bitcoin wallet, instead deferring the responsibility to the online service that I stored them with. Though I realize the flaws in this method, I just didn't feel up to it. With all of this news about MtGox, I've accelerated my transitioning process.

Yes, this lesson has been learned dozens of times in the Bitcoin community by now. Never store significant quantities in web wallets of any kind, even if it presents as an "account" at an exchange. Move all significant quantities of coins to a local wallet and make a million secure backups of that wallet. When you want to use these coins, send them from your local wallet. There is no reason not to have a local wallet…

The problem for me wasn't learning the lesson, it was having the proper motivation to get off my ass and do it. But I agree. If you cannot trust yourself, give yourself a reason to, and then do it.

Re: Mt. Gox Halts Bitcoin Withdrawals, Price Drop Follows

#142

Post by koliber »

dalke wrote: post #53
koliber wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I am in no position to predict the future of bitcoins, all new markets have these problems. At an early point in their history, stocks also had low liquidity and crappy technology. Both of these conditions will improve as an asset becomes more popular. It is a chicken-and-egg problem.

I think your sentence has too much of a tone of inevitability. "... will improve as an asset ..." should surely be "will improve if an asset ..." or perhaps "... in order for ...". There's plenty of new markets which failed to take off, and died after a few years of use. Confederate dollars aren't quite the useful currency they once were, as an obvious example. Otherwise it cuts too close to survivorship bias: is the…

You are right. I should have added "will continue to improve, unless they implode.".

Re: Mt. Gox Halts Bitcoin Withdrawals, Price Drop Follows

#143

Post by koliber »

RyanZAG wrote: post #64
Stubb wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the question of where the money will come from to improve the technology. One of the benefits of BTC is the low transaction cost. But it might be that those transaction costs are exactly what's needed to fund exchange development.

I think you've hit the nail on the head here - scaling up a real exchange is incredibly difficult and the kind of talent you need to hire probably has a price tag hugely in excess of the revenue of all BTC exchanges combined. These guys are probably struggling to even understand the problems they're experiencing, so it should come as no surprise that they're having technical difficulties. I bet they're having even mo…

Whatever happens, the market will set the price. Perhaps the current transaction costs are too low to enable high-quality scalable exchanges with the necessary tools (whatever they may be). However, if such exchanges are advantageous, the transaction cost will rise.

Re: Mt. Gox Halts Bitcoin Withdrawals, Price Drop Follows

#144

Post by nils-- »

davedx wrote: post #70

Interesting comment on Reddit: "I had a job interview with MtGox a couple of weeks ago for a frontend developer position. After talking about their technical environment I declined the position. Contemplated publicizing my story, but I have zero proof that the interview took place. But fuck me is their environment fucked up. Either way, I have been recommending to my friends to move any BTC away from Gox as soon as p…

I worked at Gox as a PM for about three weeks before walking out. Currently looking for a new job. sigh.

Would be willing to share my story, with proof, but sadly I'm not a good writer. :(

But I can confirm that it is as screwed up as the commentor on Reddit wrote. Not even the developers would trust their money or BTC to Gox.

Re: Mt. Gox Halts Bitcoin Withdrawals, Price Drop Follows

#146

Post by schrodinger »

jcfrei wrote: post #96
kirk21 wrote: post #18

Ok, time to find another exchange. Considering http://www.coinnext.com and https://localbitcoins.com Other suggestions?

I've done most of my trading on https://btc-e.com/ . Never encountered any problems. To my knowledge it is also the second largest exchange for BTC/USD by volume ( see: http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/currency/USD.html - MtGox' volume just jumped a lot in the past days).

Aren't they closing because of the Russia issues announced today?

Re: Mt. Gox Halts Bitcoin Withdrawals, Price Drop Follows

#147

Post by cookiecaper »

stcredzero wrote: post #139
cookiecaper wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many types of technical debt. It's something that accumulates organically in any real world project, because the real world doesn't care if your code is a paragon of programming excellence or not. It's expected, and simply part of the process, to develop technical indebtedness. The important part is controlling that indebtedness so that it doesn't cause major disruptions -- this usually means periodically c…

It's something that accumulates organically in any real world project, because the real world doesn't care if your code is a paragon of programming excellence or not. Which is short-sighted, really. Technical debt has somewhat the same properties as financial debt, which is why public companies have to disclose monetary debt and have plans for dealing with it. It's high time that the culture caught up to technical re…

Yes, I agree to an extent. I guess the problem is that quantification of technical debt is not so straightforward as financial debt.

When I say the "real world doesn't care", I don't necessarily mean that as a bad thing. The realities of shipping a product urge companies to make compromises. Like financial debt, technical debt is a useful tool, as long as it's used responsibly and kept under control.

Re: Mt. Gox Halts Bitcoin Withdrawals, Price Drop Follows

#148

Post by 3pt14159 »

srdev wrote: post #132
3pt14159 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe it. I've talked to a backend developer at Coinbase, he said their codebase is a mess and that he wouldn't hold any in their system. Also I submitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7169114 a couple of days ago based on what I found on Reddit. And this is Coinbase, the good guy. MtGox has always been a clusterfuck. This feels like the internet used to feel like. Back when you just used to assume that a…

> This feels like the internet used to feel like. Back when you just used to assume that a credit card transaction wouldn't go through. Why? "Because internet". Bitcoin is so young and immature. I feel like the "immaturity" argument is just an excuse. Bitcoin itself is young, but we know how to handle encryption materials safely, we know how to process online transactions, we know how to write exchanges, etc. Mt. Gox…

The difference is actually the VCs. They invest in people that have never built a stock exchange before.

Re: Mt. Gox Halts Bitcoin Withdrawals, Price Drop Follows

#149

Post by stcredzero »

cookiecaper wrote: post #147
stcredzero wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's something that accumulates organically in any real world project, because the real world doesn't care if your code is a paragon of programming excellence or not. Which is short-sighted, really. Technical debt has somewhat the same properties as financial debt, which is why public companies have to disclose monetary debt and have plans for dealing with it. It's high time that the culture caught up to technical re…

Yes, I agree to an extent. I guess the problem is that quantification of technical debt is not so straightforward as financial debt. When I say the "real world doesn't care", I don't necessarily mean that as a bad thing. The realities of shipping a product urge companies to make compromises. Like financial debt, technical debt is a useful tool, as long as it's used responsibly and kept under control.

Yes, but when the real world doesn't care so much about financial debt, things start failing. Witness 2008. This happens with tech debt too, it's just not well understood by the mainstream. I'm pretty sure when Alamo got acquired, it was in part due to their crappy software making them less convenient to visit and uncompetitive. I think it was them. I remember years ago one car rental company's agent terminals were so bad it just took twice as long to get through their line.

Re: Mt. Gox Halts Bitcoin Withdrawals, Price Drop Follows

#150

Post by jcfrei »

schrodinger wrote: post #146
jcfrei wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done most of my trading on https://btc-e.com/ . Never encountered any problems. To my knowledge it is also the second largest exchange for BTC/USD by volume ( see: http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/currency/USD.html - MtGox' volume just jumped a lot in the past days).

Aren't they closing because of the Russia issues announced today?

I don't think so. Btc-e is based in bulgaria and withdrawals/deposits have only been stopped for one russian provider (QIWI). See: http://newsbtc.com/2014/02/07/btc-e-stops-russian-ruble-depo...
Post reply on HN