If people can withdraw USD from MtGOX, then what is maintaining the 20% spread between them and all other exchanges?  Arbitrage traders should be hogging the place...

Perhaps there are many Chinese traders who do not believe that jan/31 would be the end, or that it would affect them.

There are however many people who bought bitcoins at or above 5000 CNY / 900 USD, who presumably will risk waiting a few more days for the price to go up rather than sell now at a substantial loss.

Huobi's traffic at this time of day is usually very small (~0.5 kBTC/hour or less) , even on Saturdays.

Perhaps the volume we are seeing now (~1.2 kBTC/h) comes from outside China?  Peraphs its clients were kept awake by the price swings?  Perhaps something else?

The MtGOX price in JPY is now 96939 ¥. which at the current official exchange rate (104.41) is 928.45 USD.

So MtGOX's price seems exaggerated even when exchanging to/from JPY.

Any theory for the discrepancy should work for both currencies.

Are there any reports of delays for JPY withdrawals?

Daily volumes of BTC trade to/from USD and other national currencies (in kBTC):


               !    Wed !    Thu !    Fri !   Sat !    Sun !    Mon !   Tue !   Wed !                     
  EXCHANGE     !  01/15 !  01/16 !  01/17 ! 01/18 !  01/19 !  01/20 ! 01/21 ! 01/22 ! Currencies considered

  Bitstamp     |  12.27 |   8.22 |  17.11 |  5.49 |   8.42 |   6.97 |  7.67 |  8.31 | USD                 
  BTC-e        |  10.24 |   7.59 |  13.51 |  7.46 |   8.48 |  10.29 |  5.67 |  7.44 | USD,EUR,RUR         
  MtGOX        |   7.54 |   5.91 |  12.23 |  6.20 |   8.49 |  12.10 |  7.25 |  5.51 | USD,EUR,GBP,AUD,JPY 
  BitFinEx     |   7.17 |   3.68 |  11.47 |  3.81 |   6.63 |   5.46 |  2.89 |  2.97 | USD                 
  Bitcoin.DE   |   0.51 |   0.38 |   0.61 |  0.27 |   0.23 |   0.39 |  0.45 |  0.69 | EUR                 
  Kraken       |   0.35 |   0.29 |   0.68 |  0.28 |   0.33 |   0.19 |  0.24 |  0.25 | EUR                 
  CaVirtEx     |   0.45 |   0.26 |   0.31 |  0.01 |   0.09 |   0.22 |  0.23 |  0.15 | CAD                 
  CampBX       |   0.16 |   0.12 |   0.16 |  0.04 |   0.04 |   0.10 |  0.09 |  0.05 | USD                 
  Crypto-Trade |    .   |   0.01 |   0.01 |   .   |    .   |   0.01 |  0.01 |   .   | USD                 

  SUBTOTAL     |  38.69 |  26.46 |  56.09 | 23.56 |  32.71 |  35.73 | 24.50 | 25.37 |                     

  Huobi        |  91.40 |  67.37 |  74.21 | 43.60 |  67.27 |  71.78 | 40.55 | 25.81 | CNY                 
  OKCoin       |  22.24 |  24.82 |  32.28 | 25.31 |  24.52 |  21.00 | 17.31 | 15.88 | CNY                 
  BTC-China    |   5.58 |   3.54 |   4.55 |  1.77 |   4.05 |   3.44 |  2.07 |  1.62 | CNY                 

  SUBTOTAL     | 119.22 |  95.73 | 111.04 | 70.68 |  95.84 |  96.22 | 59.93 | 43.31 |                     

  TOTAL        | 157.91 | 122.19 | 167.13 | 94.24 | 128.55 | 131.95 | 84.43 | 68.68 |                     



All numbers were collected by hand from the site http://bitcoinwisdom.com. Beware of possible errors.

For each exchange, the numbers include only the trade volume to/from the currencies listed in the rightmost column. The BTC-e volumes now include retroactively also exchanges to EUR and RUR (together about 1 kBTC/day or less).  Trade between BTC and other cryptocoins, such as LiteCoin, is NOT included.

The Coinbase volume is not available, neither at Bitcoinwisdom nor at Bitcoincharts.

Dates on the header line are UTC. Specifically, "01/15" means "from 01/15 00:00:00 UTC to 01/15 23:59:59 UTC". (Beware that Bitcoinwisdom uses your local time, so the date may appear to be off by 1 day.  For example, if you are 2 hours west of Greenwich, it may show "01/14 22:00" when the UTC time is "01/15 00:00".)

For many years to come, people will have to depend on exchanges and bicoin-based processors to use bitcoin. 

SheepMarketplace is not a risk anymore, it is a fact. A risk is something that could happen; Sheepmarketplace showed the risk of dealing with any exchange.

I believe I know enough about the positive arguments, and in general I do not dispute them.

Unfortunately there are negative or highly uncertain arguments and I have still to see good answers to them. "Selling" articles like Mark's generally avoid them.

The risk of bitcoins being stolen (possibly en masse) by hackers is an example. 

Bitcoin is only one cryptocoin.  Why should it be the one to survive?

Non-cancellation may be good for merchants (especially dishonest ones) but is bad for customers. 

Governments can ban, restrict, or heavily tax cryptocoins if it suits them.

What will prevent banks and Wall Street from taking control of Bitcoin?

How could the value of a bitcoin be stabilized enough for merchants who thrive on 2% profit?

And so on...

In order to use your bitcoins, at some point the key have to be entered into a computer... 

Indeed he was referring only to stealing your bitcoins by hacking into the merchant.  But what will the common reader understand when he reads "organized crime is unhappy", "consumers bear no risk of loss, fraud or identity theft"? 

Why did he not point out that bitcoins have other serious risks that credit card users will not expect? Fine to bring up the Target case, but should he not mention SheepMarketplace too?

As others have pointed out, the Chinese New Year holidays last a couple of weeks, and presumably have started already.

This article by Mark Andreessen

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/why-bitcoin-matters/

claims that Bitcoins cannot be stolen.  But of course they can, if people keep the keys in an easily hackeable computer or smartphone (which increasingly means "any computer"), or hand over their bitcoins to exchanges.  (How can he say that that after the SheepMarketplace incident?)

In a sense, it is your computer, not you, who owns "your" bitcoins; and if Apple or the NSA or the Russian mafia control your computer, they will control your bitcoins too.

Indeed stealing Bitcoins is easier and "safer" than stealing credit cards, because a virus can spend your bitcoins as soon as it infects your computer, whereas cashing out from a stolen card usually implies human intervention, delays, checks, etc.

In case anyone cares, here is a plot of the transaction logs for some exchanges, for about 40 min around 19:00 UTC today:



Note that MtGOX prices were reduced arbitrarily by 11% for plot scaling reasons.  The CNY/USD conversion rate (6:1) was picked arbitrarily too.

Transactions per minute in that interval:   OKCoin 4.56, BTC-e 3.47, Bitstamp 2.24, Huobi 1.92, MtGOX 0.94.

Mean transaction volume (BTC) in that interval: MtGOX 2.07, Bitstamp 1.79, Huobi 1.09, OKCoin 0.77, BTC-e 0.45

Well, Huobi's Wednesday was not a replay of last Sunday after all.  Volume increased only a little bit in the afternon, and price dropped ~40 CNY instead of jumping up by ~180 CNY.

They must have had a hell of party on Tuesday night... 

(Seriously though: anyone would dare guess how Huobi's clients access the internet?  By smartphone, PC at home, PC at work, at cybercafes, ...?)

My guess is that it is someone with a large amount of USD in a MtGOX account who has decided to move it out even if it means a 15% loss.  It would make sense for him to buy a little at a time (so as to avoid trigering a rally) and pause whenever the penalty becomes too big.

Huobi's volume so far looks like a replay of last Sunday morning, and the price curve looks similar too. Their clients then woke up late with a bad hangover, but got really wild in the afternoon.  If the replay continues through the afternoon, there will be another rally to ~5200 CNY.

If it doesn't, who knows.

Another article with more links:
http://msn.foxsports.com/buzzer/story/daily-buzz-sacramento-kings-bitcoin-peyton-manning-bill-belichick-paul-mccartney-sam-gardner-011614

It seems that they too are receiving payments in USD, through BitPay; not directly in bitcoins.

That is what I meant for "more USD volume".  Bitstamp's USD volume today seems to be at least 5x what it was in Oct/2013.

I bet that they are making a lot more money now.

Exchanges generally earn more when there is more USD volume.  Falling prices may create a momentary surge in volume, but smaller income in the end.

Bitcoin exchanges are unusual among stock/commodity markets because they basically trade only one item. Unlike NYSE or CME, their future is tightly bound to the future of that item.

Large buys at the upper end of the spread suggest people desperate to buy, rather than to sell.

Perhaps there are many MtGOX clients, with lots of USD in their accounts, who either have urgent bills to pay, or are increasingly worried that they may never get any money out.  Such clients would be willing to buy BTCs at the inflated MtGOX price so that they can sell them in some other exchange.  Does this make sense?

Of course there may be other explanations, including complicated manipulations, fake transactions, insider trading, etc. etc.

Well, it seems that most people out there have not heard of the complaints about MtGOX, and still think of it as "the" Bitcoin exchange. A collapse would be featured on TV and newspapers, and probably scare some investors away.

By the way, MtGOX must be very attractive for the newbies who have BTC to sell and are looking for the best price, but do not know of its withdrawal problems.  The Bitcoin community should put pressure on MtGOX to clearly and truthfully warn its clients of the withdrawal delays, and/or spread the word around.