2. You are comparing apples and bicycles. On some exchanges all the volume is counted as USD. MtGox has a working multi-currency exchange. This is their main feature. If you deposit EUR and buy or sell and withdraw EUR, the trade will be reported as EUR. Some other exchanges (noteably Bitstamp) will report this as USD.
2. I did not know Bitstamp aggregated all currencies and quoted them as dollar exchange volumes, I though they just traded dollars again apologies.
Sturle, I respect your opinion on a lot of things even though I disagree with it but not on this one. My humble opinion is that this statement is just utterly stupid.
Bitstamp has the USD/BTC currency pair. That's it. You can only trade USD against BTC there.
I know. This is their biggest shortcoming. They should really do something about it. Now there is an extra conversion fee of 0.4% to deposit or withdraw EUR, and in addition to this there is the uncertainty of the USD value. :-(
This is why all their volume is obviously counted as USD.[/b] This also means that Bitstamp comes out on top if we compare Bitstamp's USD volume with MtGox's USD volume right now (16,808 BTC traded in USD at Bitstamp today, 9,314 at MtGox).
Yes, but I am sure you understand this is a meaningless comparision. You compare one exchanges total volume to another exchange's volume in one single currency. This is extra pointless now that people are getting out of USD for obvious reasons.
What Sturle is trying to argue is this:
If you deposit EUR to Bitstamp then that money is automatically converted to USD. It is therefore, correctly, counted as USD when you trade the USD now in your Bitstamp account for Bitcoins. Sturle seems to think that Bitstamp should report USD which has previously been EUR as EUR because that somehow makes sense to him. I think that would make zero sense.
No, I never wrote that. I do not think Bitstamp should report in any other way. Just that people should keep this in mind when comparing volumes. Bitstamp's USD volume is artificuially inflated by the way the exchange works, while MtGox report actual volume in all currencies separately.
I have a bank account in Sweden. It's got SEK in it. My deposits to Bitstamp goes like this: I enter the amount of EUR I want to send using SEPA. The SEK in my account is then converted to EUR and sent to Bitstamp. Bitstamp then converts it to USD and deposits it in my account at Bitstamp. So what is in my Bitstamp account when my funds arrive? SEK? EUR? No, it's USD that ends up in my account. I can then send that USD out with an international wire or request a SEPA transfer and have that USD converted to EUR and then SEK. (if anyone is wondering, sending SEK ends up costing me 0.1 on the USD/SEK rate, if USD/SEK is 6.47 then I'd end up with an efficient rate at 6.57 and that's what I'd consider the cost/rate of my USD in my spreadsheet).
Yep. Bitstamp's failure to implement proper multi-currency trading is quite expensive for their customers. (The SEK/EUR conversion rate you get in your bank is bad, btw. I'm sure you can find a cheaper one.) And you are forced to keep your assets in USD or BTC, and have nowhere to run if you expect BTC to fall and USD to drop heavily on Monday morning. Your only rescue is to buy BTC and transfer your BTC to MtGox to sell for another currency.
The way I see it: If you send something that ends up as USD in your Bitstamp account then USD is what you have in your Bitstamp account and it is not at all relevant if this money was in the form of JPY, SEK, EUR, NOK, gold, rocks or leaves before it ended up as USD. USD is what you have at Bitstamp and USD is what you trade at Bitstamp and USD volume is what it will and will be counted as.
Of course. But I hope you agree that comparing USD volume on Bitstamp with the USD volume of an exchange where you can trade BTC against multiple currencies is completely meaningless. You are comparing total volume with an arbitrary share of the total volume. Comparing Bitstamp USD volume with MtGox USD volume is equivalent with comparing Bitstamp USD volume with MtGox JPY volume or MtGox SEK volume.
