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Mt. Gox Halts Bitcoin Withdrawals, Price Drop Follows

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

#71

Post by logicallee »

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.

The interesting thing about bitcoin is that you can just trade your friends for some p2p, you don't need a central exchange. You don't need a bank account to send someone bitcoins or to get some. You can just hand someone $20 and your address and they can send it to you p2p. No banking infrastructure involved.

That boggles the mind. It is impossible for bitcoin to become fully illiquid as long as people believe it has value, because there is no infrastructure to approve transactions. The approval happens p2p.

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

#72

Post by jessedhillon »

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…

There are plenty of talented people who believe in BTC enough that they would work to get in on the ground floor of an exchange. Who do you think are designing custom ASICs for mining?

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

#73

Post by jessedhillon »

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…

Can you post the link?

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

#74

Post by studio816 »

jessedhillon wrote: post #73
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…

Can you post the link?

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_a...

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

#76

Post by kyleblarson »

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.

I would imagine that similar things happened in the early days of online equities brokerages.

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

#77

Post by RyanZAG »

jessedhillon wrote: post #72
RyanZAG wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are plenty of talented people who believe in BTC enough that they would work to get in on the ground floor of an exchange. Who do you think are designing custom ASICs for mining?

As far as I know, the guys making custom ASICs for mining are selling them to miners for real dollars. I don't think that helps your point much.

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

#78

Post by RyanZAG »

kyleblarson wrote: post #76
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.

I would imagine that similar things happened in the early days of online equities brokerages.

Not even just the early days - Microsoft's fairly recent attempt at providing software for the London Stock Exchange met with disaster and frequent downtime [1]. This from a major tech giant, not just a card game exchange. Running a real exchange is a very difficult thing to do once the scale starts to ramp up.

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/4676369/Seven-hou...

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

#79

Post by glesica »

jessedhillon wrote: post #72
RyanZAG wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There are plenty of talented people who believe in BTC enough that they would work to get in on the ground floor of an exchange. Who do you think are designing custom ASICs for mining?

http://www.cringely.com/2013/09/30/doubts-bitcoin/

^ points out some nice parallels between the "Bitcoin rush" and the California gold rush. One of the points he makes is that it wasn't the miners, by and large, who ended up rich. It was the people who sold equipment and supplies to the miners. The namesake of Stanford University was one of them, interestingly.

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

#80

Post by 3pt14159 »

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 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 credit card transaction wouldn't go through. Why? "Because internet". Bitcoin is so young and immature.

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