Nobody knows.

The excuses from Minergate staff are, for lack of a better word, lame:  "Billing system is down for maintenance.  We are updating daemons, and our crack team of theoretical physicists are re-wring the Jefferies tubes to be in better quantum coherence."  (Which part am I joking about?)

This all might be vaguely possible -- Can it be true they have yet to learn the need to have separate development and production systems? -- but it is very strange and ominous that that money-in system (mining, block finding) never seems to go down "for maintenance" while the money-out system (withdrawal) one has never worked reliably.

On the plus side, I finally managed to get my funds out.  Took about a week.  A friend has also extracted his funds as well -- but only after a much longer delay, obfuscation and silence.

I can think of some unsavory reasons why Minergate is acting the way it is, but I ultimately have no evidence one way or the other.  All I know is that while Minergate claims they are the most profitable pool -- maybe they are! -- and they do have very nice software, but whatever is the point if you can't get your money out on demand?

So we won't be going back until we hear that Minergate has implemented near real-time automatic payouts, like every other pool does, and that, out of basic fairness to pool members, if the payout system goes down, they so does the mining system.  Let them swim in a pool of pain with the rest of us...