Quote from: mechs on September 15, 2013, 10:06:32 PM

Who actually believe the issues with USD withdrawals are really due to technical issued with their banking partners? I think it is obvious that they are operating a fractional reserve and do not have close to enough funds if everyone wanted to pull out their fiat. A real-life exchange or investment bank is required to put customer funds in segregated accounts, but this is not the case with Mt. Gox.

Mt. Gox does have the obligation to segregate customer funds and have 100% of them on deposit under the Japan Payment Services Act, or guaranteed by a bank. It's appropriate to ask the Japan Financial Services Agency to audit Mt. Gox.

Take a look at how Western Union Money Transfer operates in Japan:

"Western Union have signed and executed a Guarantee Agreement with the Royal Bank of Scotland (Japan Branch) to ensure that all users of the Western Union Money Transfer service in Japan are protected by the Performance Protection Funds contained in Article 44 of the Money Transfer Business Act."
"The standard time for completing a money transfer transaction is approximately 10 minutes".
"Western Union seek to resolve all claims related to the Money Transfer process as soon as we can. In case of dis-satisfaction, consumers may contact Japan Payment Service Association with claims and request for Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). Japan Payment Service Association may introduce details of ADR. Please contact 03-3219-0628. The dispute reolution institutions used for this service are: The Tokyo Bar Association: 03-3581-003, The Dai-ichi Tokyo Bar Association: 03-3595-8588 and the Daini Tokyo Bar Association: 03-3581-2249"

That's what a legit money transfer company looks like in Japan. Does Mt. Gox look like that?

The "Japan Payment Service Association" is a "self-regulatory association" (like NASDAQ in the US) for the payment services industry. They take complaints about payment service companies. Mt. Gox is supposed to be a member (it's not optional), but I doubt that they are. It's worth raising that issue with the Payment Services Association.

One interesting point of Japanese law is that if a money transfer company goes under, the customers are the first to recover funds; all other creditors then divide up what's left. This is the reverse of US practice, where "unsecured creditors" come last. This also has the implication that creditors of Mt. Gox may be secured creditors, which improves the odds of claims against funds forfeited by Mt. Gox to the US Government.

The point I'm making here is that you don't have to put up with Mt. Gox's excuses. You can apply pressure from several directions and probably get paid.