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Statement Regarding Temporary Hiatus on U.S. Dollar Withdrawals

mtgox.com

51–60 of 113 posts

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

#51
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure an eavesdropper can simply watch for outgoing transactions which you never recieved and deduce that they originated from you. No fancy network analysis needed.

Exactly right. However, it means they would have to have direct access to 100% of the traffic from the user in question, while the original comment referred to having just a percentage of the backbone (user "sneak" has since edited the original comment to use different wording)

True, but that depends if you want to go from Bitcoin addresses to IP address or vice versa.

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

#52
post #3
post #2

Any theories how this will fair for the market cost of Bitcoin?

Although it could have some impact, your money isn't "locked" with MtGox due to being able to transfer it to another exchange as Bitcoins, and cash it out as another currency there.

Most on Mt. Gox don't have secondary accounts, and this is more likely for those who are looking to make short term $ (and who tend to panic sell). For the various exchanges they could move to, what's the turnover time to be able to trade and more importantly, make USD withdrawals? Will the other exchanges be ready for this? How exacerbated could this be if there's a price drop?

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

#53
post #34
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately true. I'd hate to tell everyone with money in mtgox that it is time for a bank run, but...

Luckily, everyone with deposits in Mt.Gox can convert them to bitcoins and send them to some other address. This is one of the benefits of Bitcoin.

Right, but my guess is people who have dollar holdings on mtgox aren't going to find it as easy now to sell them in order to do such a transfer.

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

#54
post #18
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.

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/

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

#55
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.

We probably saw the beginning of this problem a month ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5707936 . I can't imagine that the two are not related.

Also from the https://support.mtgox.com/entries/21649594-Withdrawals-and-D... :

OKpay has made the decision not to work with any Bitcoin exchanges as of May 29, 2013.

Dwolla has closed our account as of May 15, 2013.

All of the recent closures don't exactly instill confidence. Still, it might be possible to form or partner with a Japanese entity and receive domestic transfers from them.

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

#56

As many mentioned, you can easily move your Bitcoins out. However, I'd posit that 75% or more of accounts on Mt. Gox do not have a verified account elsewhere. Are the other exchanges prepared for the increased load if it comes? If one or two have downtime, what will that do to the price?

It's only a matter of time until there will be enough exchanges to satisfy the demand, the problem here and the potential price drop is only temporary. Bitcoin market has yet to adapt to all this.

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

#57
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.

I wonder about the economics. Could this just be an issue of them deciding to close down altogether? I don't know why, but this read to me more like a run on a bank, rather than a compliance issue. What did people do in the Great Depression? Bank holidays....

Unlikely. MtGox is not a bank. They charge commission on every trade and make pretty good money. They were running just fine 1 year ago when the volume was few times less so it's unlikely they are having financial problems now.

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

#58
post #34
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately true. I'd hate to tell everyone with money in mtgox that it is time for a bank run, but...

Luckily, everyone with deposits in Mt.Gox can convert them to bitcoins and send them to some other address. This is one of the benefits of Bitcoin.

This assumes they haven't already spent some of their depositors' bitcoin and can run out. (Not claiming they have done this, just pointing out this scenario is possible)

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

#59
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although it could have some impact, your money isn't "locked" with MtGox due to being able to transfer it to another exchange as Bitcoins, and cash it out as another currency there.

Most on Mt. Gox don't have secondary accounts, and this is more likely for those who are looking to make short term $ (and who tend to panic sell). For the various exchanges they could move to, what's the turnover time to be able to trade and more importantly, make USD withdrawals? Will the other exchanges be ready for this? How exacerbated could this be if there's a price drop?

A comment based entirely on speculation. Do you know for a fact that most people on Mt Gox don't already have another account elsewhere or can't figure out how to create one?

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

#60

As many mentioned, you can easily move your Bitcoins out. However, I'd posit that 75% or more of accounts on Mt. Gox do not have a verified account elsewhere. Are the other exchanges prepared for the increased load if it comes? If one or two have downtime, what will that do to the price?

> you can easily move your Bitcoins out

As long as they don't run out of bitcoins (I'm not claiming they've been spending their depositors' bitcoins, just pointing out that it's a theoretical risk.)

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