I think bitcoin is awesome but I have ongoing concerns. I agree with all of you that bitcoin is going to explode but at the same time have worries that I don't think are unfounded. Bitcoins are still largley paced at the whim of people with self interests at heart who control the majority of coins. In addition you have a major exchange that probably has a huge stockpile of coins themselves. Then we see these buying patterns from the whales of big buys into walls -> large bid walls placed to support the new price. This is not the behavior of your neighbors getting into btc.
I'm still concerned about MTGox and their FIAT problem. You're a BTC millionaire, and it amounts to several millions, lets say. You email them about making a withdrawal and you get this response (i got this response yesterday regarding my transfer request over SEPA, not USD, and not for that much ).
Hello XXX,
Thanks for your email. Kindly note that all the international withdrawals are delayed due to backlog. We are working hard to clear such pending requests manually. We are in the process of forming relationships with new partners, banks, and taking other steps to clear the backlog. So as of now we do not have an ETA to follow up and we are unable to determine the exact time frame for withdrawals. Kindly let us know if you have any questions.
Best regards,
Mt.Gox Team
https://www.mtgox.comThis has been going on for months. I take on board what people are saying that this could be a non issue. However people need to eat, and right now you can't go to the supermarket and feed your family with bitcoins. So you have essentially a number balance at an unregulated exchange which is really just a limited liability company. What else can you do but buy bitcoins with your milliions?
Then you have other exchanges providing a way out for payments, but that takes time and patience because until today these exchanges generally did not have a great book order depth. So slippage is a real problem for the BTC milllionaire who's only way to get his 10's of millions out from mtgox is to slowly pump it into bitcoins and try for an exchange that pays out. Luckily MTgox, for whatever reason still basically sets the BTC price. So what can you do? you can pump the price with your millions and patienty wait for bids to fill in on the other exchanges. You can move your accumulated BTC to liquid exchanges and slowly build up a fiat balance on that as bids support smaller dumps. If i put on my real tinfoil hat you wait until those exchanges build enough supporting bids and then you dump and start transfering your millions finally home.
I know all of this has been said before but it haunts me. If MTGox was paying out and if they werent still the exchange that sets the price and buy sell panic on the other exchanges I'd be way less concerned about this new price. Remember BTC is the only real way to pull money out reliably from MTGox..
Look. There is no elephant in the room. Mtgox is slowly be becoming a niche Japanese exchange.
Day traders still use it for volatility reasons but they don't even accept usd deposits anymore.
Meanwhile we are on the cusp of major exchanges opening in the UK and US. Within a year there will be several new players including an ever more likely ETF fund.
Mtgox will shrink in market share. A year from now I would be surprised if Mtgox had more than a 15% market share. And quite frankly, if they ran off with everyone's Btc, which is ridiculous, it would kind of serve the numbskulls right for still using the overpriced dinosaur anyway.
