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Mt. Gox Halts Bitcoin Withdrawals, Price Drop Follows

coindesk.com

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

#31

Post by mcherm »

maxerickson wrote: post #5
lectrick wrote: post #4

Buy when there's blood in the streets (assuming the fundamentals are still good, which it looks like they are...) http://www.bitcoinpulse.com/

Can you explain what you consider to be the more important fundamentals for bitcoin?

1. Number of users holding bitcoins

2. Number of users SPENDING bitcoins to purchase goods

3. Number of merchants accepting bitcoins for goods

4. Total $ value of bitcoins being spent to purchase goods

5. Total $ value of bitcoins being spent to perform international money transfers

6. Amount of press (bad press OK, good press is worth much more) that bitcoins are getting as it drives 1 and 3.

I'm sure others have their own list of fundamentals.

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

#33

Post by scott_s »

nwh wrote: post #14
yebyen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought some Jalapeños from BFL after my January order was not shipped until August, in the Black Friday sale. The sale was advertised as "units in stock, ready for immediate delivery" When they came (something like a full month later) they were approximately double the spec of the devices I thought I had ordered, but still for the same price. Thanks, I guess? I can't say if they're shipping any faster now, but if t…

The BFL gear is cute and all, but there's a simple fact with selling Bitcoin mining hardware that is probably never going to be overcome. Why would you sell something you could make profit on if you kept it for yourself? This is pretty much the reason why we have ASICminer, KNCminer and Bitfury all either running or building mammoth sized facilities of their own. I particularly liked this juxtaposition on their store…

The same reason that people would package and sell mortgage-backed securities, but not keep them for themselves.

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

#34

Post by Heliosmaster »

nwh wrote: post #14
yebyen wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought some Jalapeños from BFL after my January order was not shipped until August, in the Black Friday sale. The sale was advertised as "units in stock, ready for immediate delivery" When they came (something like a full month later) they were approximately double the spec of the devices I thought I had ordered, but still for the same price. Thanks, I guess? I can't say if they're shipping any faster now, but if t…

The BFL gear is cute and all, but there's a simple fact with selling Bitcoin mining hardware that is probably never going to be overcome. Why would you sell something you could make profit on if you kept it for yourself? This is pretty much the reason why we have ASICminer, KNCminer and Bitfury all either running or building mammoth sized facilities of their own. I particularly liked this juxtaposition on their store…

I asked the same thing on BTC StackExchange a year ago: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/5975/why-there-ar...

The most popular reply was:

It is not guaranteed that purchasing mining equipment will generate in its lifetime more than it cost to purchase. That depends on the future of BTC price and the difficulty, both of which are hard to predict.

"Those who believe, for whatever reason, that it will indeed be profitable, will purchase devices. But most companies selling mining hardware are in the business of designing hardware, not of speculation and running datacenters - in terms of both risk profile and expertise. So long-term they should just sell the hardware."

and also

"In the gold rush the people who made the most safe/constant returns where not the miners but the people who sold them the shovels"

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

#35

Post by maxerickson »

mcherm wrote: post #31
maxerickson wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain what you consider to be the more important fundamentals for bitcoin?

1. Number of users holding bitcoins 2. Number of users SPENDING bitcoins to purchase goods 3. Number of merchants accepting bitcoins for goods 4. Total $ value of bitcoins being spent to purchase goods 5. Total $ value of bitcoins being spent to perform international money transfers 6. Amount of press (bad press OK, good press is worth much more) that bitcoins are getting as it drives 1 and 3. I'm sure others have th…

Is there anybody publishing reliable numbers for any of those?

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

#38

Post by corford »

kirk21 wrote: post #18

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

I've been using http://www.kraken.com of late and it's been great - no problem wiring money to/from my bank account, easy to convert between LTC and BTC and market orders close immediately.

I've only been trading in small BTC amounts though so not sure if you'd hit liquidity problems if trying to trade large amounts (kraken's volume is quite a lot smaller than the bigger established players like bitstamp)

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

#39

Post by commandar »

vtempest wrote: post #32
kirk21 wrote: post #18

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

Coinbase.com is a great one, and they recently received venture funding

Coinbase is great for exchanging BTC/USD, but it's not a trading market like mtgox.

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

#40

Post by koliber »

minimax wrote: post #37

Consider this a reminder that while Bitcoin may be an interesting technological achievement, as a tradable asset it is still basically a toy. Crappy exchange technology combined with low liquidity is a perfect recipe for this kind of volatility.

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.
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