Quote from: sturle on September 24, 2013, 02:20:28 PM

Quote from: rpietila on September 24, 2013, 07:48:03 AM

Quote from: CompNsci on September 24, 2013, 02:56:34 AM

This is interesting. I agree it is most consistent with Gox not having enough USD. It costs about 3% to convert to USD at retail in Japan.

The fee is 5% plus some, so it appears there is also an international wire transfer involved, with the various fees along the way.

After their USD losses perhaps they are running a fractional reserve in USD. The real solution here would be for them to actually explain what is going on.

I think it is public knowledge that $5 million was confiscated from Mt.Gox customer funds. Considering that it is a Japanese company that does not likely have such a sum of their own, excess funds, in foreign currency, this resulted in a deficit and fractional reserve in customers' accounts. It is almost certainly the root cause of this bank run.

Could you explain where MtGox's 10 million USD profit so far this year has gone, or are you only looking at one side of the equation? Not to mention there are > 12 million USD worth of bids in the order book. 5 million doesn't explain anything. You need at least 20 million USD to explain this as a lack of funds.

I strongly believe Gox is an honest company run by an honest manager (Karpeles). They have proved it for the last years. But the hard cold fact is they are short of $10M, which is quite a sum, and they are very probably running fractional reserve in customers accounts. That's the only reasonable explanation to the absurd delays with withdrawals. We know:

- Gox handled a very big volume BEFORE the Dwolla and Coinlab issues, and they handled that volume FINE
- Bitstamp is now handling a volume that is increasing day by day, and they are doing it FINE
- Stating that Gox is "overwhelming" the biggest bank is Japan is laughable at best. That's BS.
- Gox needed to increase their operational costs during the bubble, precisely to be able to handle the customers and volume growth. We do not know how rationally that growth was managed.
- Gox invested in new servers, trading engine, etc. shortly before the Dwolla and Coinlab issues
- Being scrutinized by US regulators is quite a stress, which certainly leads to more expenses: expensive lawyers, licenses, etc. We can safely assume they are spending a lot to pull their shit together.
- Gox is offering an "emergency" withdrawal option that goes with a 5% fee. Surprise! There is no "overwhelming" if you choose that option.

Finally, the hard cold fact is Gox is having tremendous issues with withdrawals (delays and more delays), and as per Occam's Razor, the easiest answer is they have liquidity problems. Saying stupid things like "the old financial system is having problems to follow the thriving BTC economy" and such is an insult to the intelligence of their customers. They probably offer the "5% emergency withdrawal" so they can make as much money as possible with such a leonine fee, to eventually cover the holes left by the US DHS and Coinlab.

TL;DR: the hard cold facts seems to indicate that: a) Gox is an honest company, but they are withholding information regarding why they are having these problems, and in fact they are probably lying; b) they are heavily delaying outcoming wires, while incoming wires work just fine (ohhh... No "overwhelming" with incoming money?). Everything strongly indicates they are having liquidity problems, and that they have been forced by circumstances (seizures, Coinlab misappropriation) to run a fractional reserve.