USD to USSA is very slow, and you can send a thank you letter to a certain "special investigator" at DHS for that.  Withdrawals pose a threat to your homeland security, they say.

You already made your profit, and cashing out should be faster than this. :-/  Have you asked support about this?  Perhaps the long queue works differently?  Have you cancelled any withdrawal during this period?

Yep.  Arbitrage is risk free profit.  Keeping BTC is not, since the price may fall.  If you think the BTC price will go up, you should keep your BTC instead of selling.

I aim for at least 12%, and this still happens when a rally is initiated (action always start at MtGox).  Lower than that isn't worth the trouble.  I aim for one withdrawal per two weeks, and am not in a hurry.

UPDATE:
I got my money today, 1800€.  So my last finished 3 withdrawals:
1800€ : 26. August  ---->  10. September
217€ :  26. July ----> 19. August
200€: 23. July ---->  25. July

So I can confirm, that it's like one SEPA every ~20 days (from the day one SEPA was finished, not canceled)

I requested a SEPA withdrawal BEFORE you did (23th August) and still nothing from Gox's side. Here you have again the proof that "queue organized in request order" is utter bullshit.

Cancelled withdrawals may count as well.  It did in my case.

What was the response from support?  There is obviously something wrong.  Same account as last time, btw?

This is not likely to happen, because:
1. MtGox is still the safest exchange with noticeable volume.
2. MtGox is the only exchange with a well functioning multi-currency market.  This adds an extra dimension to trading.
3. MtGox has by far the deepest books and best liquidity.  You can trade large amounts without moving the price too far.
4. MtGox is where all the action happens.  Other exchanges only react to the movements on MtGox.
5. MtGox still has > 50% market share.

I still do most of my trading on MtGox due to 1, 2 and 4.  Especially 2.  Mastering it can be very profitable.  I have added three zeroes to my initial investment since I first started to experiment with it 1.5 years ago.  This isn't possible on any other exchange.  You may be able do something similar by trading on multiple exchanges, but at a much higher risk.

Just wanted to add that I always knew that the "queue in receival order" criteria was BS, because when in July I was receiving SEPA transfers in just 2/3 business days there were a lot of complaints about very long delays in SEPA withdrawals. I entertained the idea that Gox was giving priority to bigger withdrawals, but now I see is not the case as my withdrawal is more than double than the one that someone reported to have requested on August, 26th and received today.

In any case it looks to me that Gox is blatantly lying on pretty much everything. I don't buy they are "overwhelming" the biggest bank in Japan with their ridiculous volume, and I don't buy the withdrawals are processed I  FIFO order.

Here is the response I received from MTGOX

MY original Set of Questions:

Davidaspitzer, Sep 10 06:05 (JST):
I run a legal Blog (BTCLAG.org) and a lot of my readers have asked me what I know about the seemingly extraordinary Lag in getting USD out of MTGOX. I replied to them "I don't know, let me me try it out" So I sold (1) one bitcoin on the 20 of August and transferred the resulting USD balance to my confirmed US checking account linked to my MTGOX account. It is now 20 days later. So my question is what is up? I am not a banking expert but wire transfers are all automated through computers so I don't really understand the standing explanation of backup, as it would infer that the banks are unable to process an increased volume from just your small percentage of transactions, but seamlessly process Billions of other transactions from other sources in just a few days. I have heard whispering of floating cash after your seizure by the US government. There is also eroding consumer confidence due to your alleged two week hiatus to improve USD cash withdrawal times which to many outside observers was merely a cash hold out to compensate for the account confiscation by the US Government. I am actually a big supporter of your service and hope that you can sort these issues out, but the huge price spread for btc on your site as compared to every other exchange would anecdotally indicate that people are cashing out their cash positions and buying and moving BTC to other sites, which is artificially creating a demand bubble on MTGOX for BTC. I humbly suggest that you will need to be more transparent with your situation as the Bitcoin community is a fairly saavy and impatient group as a whole, who will simply move their business elsewhere

RESPONSE

Hello David,

Thanks for you support towards MtGox and we really appreciate the same. Currently there is an unusual delay in processing the withdrawals since the banks could not match the pace of BTC transactions. We have stringent limits imposed on the number of withdrawals that we could process in a given day and this is not mainly that MtGox is left without funds., Honestly MtGox has enough reserves and we request not to incline towards any false speculations that are being spin against the company as such. We are working along, almost round the clock to establish more banking partners globally and to ease the way the transactions are being carried out to our customers.

Definitely we are expecting to revert back the situation to normal. Please be assured and we are thankful for the support towards us during these hard times.

Best regards,

Mt.Gox Team
https://www.mtgox.com

[Attention: Please protect your account using OTP to ensure that your funds are safe and secure. Failing to do so makes your information vulnerable to hackers.
Please visit https://mtgox.com/security]



My Follow Up:

Why were you able to serve the volume before but now are unable to? I have heard mentioned somewhere that you can only process 10 swift transfers a day - is that true? I have never heard of such a limitation but then again I am not a banking expert. If it is limited to 10 a day how was this never an issue until just after the recent issues with FINCEN? Surely there were more then 10 requests for bank/wire transfers prior to the abolition of DWOLLA.

That one set off my BS alarms - I think if you are going to make such a bold statement that a little more substantive evidence and explanation is needed. "Hey, my pet dragon ate my deposit slip, that's why i cant pay my bills - hmmm ok  - I think I am going to need to see this alleged dragon"

Seriously a certified letter from their banks stating that they are the bottleneck and unable to process MTGOX's volume would be a nice start