Statement Regarding Temporary Hiatus on U.S. Dollar Withdrawals • Hacker News Board

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

#81

Post by GigabyteCoin » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 5:55 PM UTC

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…

>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 attached to at the time. Then you may be able to downvote.

That strategy has worked for me.

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

#82

Post by jwr » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 5:57 PM UTC

GigabyteCoin wrote: post #66

colanderman wrote: post #62

FFS, the original title, something like "Mt. Gox suspends U.S. Dollar Withdrawls for two weeks", was FINE. "Statement Regarding Temporary Hiatus on U.S. Dollar Withdrawals" makes NO SENSE out of context. Mods: Please STOP rewriting titles to match the page! You're NOT doing it right!

Another suggestion would be to add a little "title edited by: MOD_USERNAME" tag to any edited titles so we could at least keep track of the moderators who are doing it incorrectly. As it stands, I have no idea if pg himself edited the title or if it was some random user who recently acquired the correct amount of karma.

What difference does it make whether pg did it or someone else did? The change was not a good idea.

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

#83

Post by jafaku » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 5:57 PM UTC

betterunix wrote: post #67

bdcravens wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your withdrawing in your local currency, right? The problem is with Mt. Gox and their ability to give you fiat, not Bitcoin.

Yeah, and what do you think would happen to Bitcoin if all the exchanges vanished? How long do you think the Bitcoin economy can survive on its own? The reality is that for the majority of its users, Bitcoin is not a currency; it is just a way to make payments in other currencies.

So it's like gold, but better.

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

#84

Post by trotsky » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 5:59 PM UTC

xnxn wrote: post #73

GigabyteCoin wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another suggestion would be to add a little "title edited by: MOD_USERNAME" tag to any edited titles so we could at least keep track of the moderators who are doing it incorrectly. As it stands, I have no idea if pg himself edited the title or if it was some random user who recently acquired the correct amount of karma.

> or if it was some random user who recently acquired the correct amount of karma I certainly hope moderatorship isn't granted based on a karma threshold.

They are Yc alum

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

#85

Post by betterunix » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 6:03 PM UTC

m-r-a-m wrote: post #14

sneak wrote: 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.

I don't think the entire usefulness of Bitcoin is related to staying anonymous as it's actually pretty hard to stay anonymous when using Bitcoin. Also, wouldn't the government need to be operating a certain percentage of the Tor nodes to do effective traffic analysis?

"Also, wouldn't the government need to be operating a certain percentage of the Tor nodes to do effective traffic analysis?"

Not if they can conduct surveillance on the entire Internet.

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

#86

Post by gwern » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 6:03 PM UTC

zwtaylor wrote: post #78

pdog wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That seems to be what's happening at the moment. I initially assumed this announcement would cause a panic sell-off, instead it seems as if a lot of users are now converting their USD back into BTC in light of the hiatus. The exchange rate has ticked up pretty steadily as a result.

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.

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

#87

Post by tlrobinson » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 6:07 PM UTC

downandout wrote: post #16

For those willing to wait, this should temporarily make arbitrage more profitable. People that cannot wait 2 weeks for withdrawals will have to use their USD balances at Mt Gox to (re)purchase Bitcoins, which can then be moved to other exchanges and sold. This will cause a temporary, artificial increase in demand at Mt Gox only, leading to a higher-than-normal price differential between it and other exchanges. That s…

Indeed, MtGox is trading about 5% higher than other USD exchanges right now.

There is a (small?) risk that this could be a sign of bigger trouble to come. I don't know if I'd be comfortable leaving USD funds in MtGox right now. Maybe that's a risk others are willing to take.

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

#88

Post by stephencanon » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 6:10 PM UTC

GigabyteCoin wrote: post #81

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…

>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 attached to at the time. Then you may be able to downvote. That strategy has worked for me.

> created: 741 days ago

That’s one short decade!

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

#89

Post by downandout » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 6:35 PM UTC

tlrobinson wrote: post #87

downandout wrote: post #16

For those willing to wait, this should temporarily make arbitrage more profitable. People that cannot wait 2 weeks for withdrawals will have to use their USD balances at Mt Gox to (re)purchase Bitcoins, which can then be moved to other exchanges and sold. This will cause a temporary, artificial increase in demand at Mt Gox only, leading to a higher-than-normal price differential between it and other exchanges. That s…

Indeed, MtGox is trading about 5% higher than other USD exchanges right now. There is a (small?) risk that this could be a sign of bigger trouble to come. I don't know if I'd be comfortable leaving USD funds in MtGox right now. Maybe that's a risk others are willing to take.

Agreed. It may be smarter at this point to buy Bitcoins with you USD balance and sell them for EUR, GBP or JPY. The volumes are smaller but it is possible.

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

#90

Post by downandout » Thu, Jun 20, 2013, 6:45 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #74

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.

Hardly shoe #1, more like #8 or #9. With the take down of Liberty Reserve, the killing off of a number of exchanges and interfaces to exchanges, its pretty clear the US Government at least has decided to focus for a time on the financial infrastructure which underpins a big chunk of Internet criminal activity. The privacy advocates are getting somewhat caught in the crossfire. As a company that works with internet ad…

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 types of activities that are associated with these activities.

What Patrick experienced is a symptom of the rules surrounding ACH transactions - namely that they can be charged back up to 6 months later (1 year in some cases). That makes banks squeamish about accounts receiving large numbers of them. I don't think ACH transactions in general are "associated" with criminal activity - most paychecks are delivered this way.