"I had a job interview with MtGox a couple of weeks ago for a frontend developer position. After talking about their technical environment I declined the position. Contemplated publicizing my story, but I have zero proof that the interview took place. But fuck me is their environment fucked up. Either way, I have been recommending to my friends to move any BTC away from Gox as soon as possible, and regret not bringing this advice into the open. I'm a Tokyoite, so if you want to talk to me about the job Interview, or just drink a beer, send me a DM."
"I was told that up until a few weeks [at time of the interview] ago, there was hardly any development environment to test changes. Most changes were done straight on the production environment. Typing this made me throw up in my mouth. The guy who interviewed me was very friendly, but I felt like a psychiatrist more than a job candidate. The dude went on about how shitty the atmosphere is at the offices, and what he told me about Mark seems to be spot on from what OP has said. Interview guy, if you read this, sorry yo."
I've talked to a backend developer at Coinbase, he said their codebase is a mess and that he wouldn't hold any in their system. Also I submitted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7169114 a couple of days ago based on what I found on Reddit. And this is Coinbase, the good guy. MtGox has always been a clusterfuck.
This feels like the internet used to feel like. Back when you just used to assume that a credit card transaction wouldn't go through. Why? "Because internet". Bitcoin is so young and immature.
This, and a few other things I've witnessed firsthand makes me wonder if Y-Combinator doesn't need better technical intelligence or some form of auditing. It could be done in a non-intrusive spirit of openness. Basically position it as a "show and tell" focused on technical process. Just have companies show what they're proud of, and if they so choose, show what they're ashamed of/what extent of technical debt they're in.
I feel like the "immaturity" argument is just an excuse. Bitcoin itself is young, but we know how to handle encryption materials safely, we know how to process online transactions, we know how to write exchanges, etc. Mt. Gox wasn't taking on any new problems here. Most of the new stuff that goes into Bitcoin is abstracted away by the Bitcoin protocol.
It'd be very nice for newer players with extensive experience in this area to step up. If not with a new service, then maybe fortifying an existing one (like Coinbase).
I usually wouldn't jump in on hearsay or be negative in this way. But Coinbase apparently proudly uses MongoDB as their database. Which is just, like, bizarre.
But hey, I'm a rather satisfied customer. Although I'd be much more satisfied if they'd have let me buy earlier in 2013, instead of having an opaque systemwide cap system and not providing helpful responses.
Would be willing to share my story, with proof, but sadly I'm not a good writer. :(
But I can confirm that it is as screwed up as the commentor on Reddit wrote. Not even the developers would trust their money or BTC to Gox.
There's plenty of new markets which failed to take off, and died after a few years of use. Confederate dollars aren't quite the useful currency they once were, as an obvious example.
Otherwise it cuts too close to survivorship bias: is there a popular asset where the market has "low liquidity and crappy technology"?
There may eventually be a time where trading in bitcoins is productive, but for now it is a bit risky.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/4676369/Seven-hou...
That boggles the mind. It is impossible for bitcoin to become fully illiquid as long as people believe it has value, because there is no infrastructure to approve transactions. The approval happens p2p.
Bitcoin and its ilk are going to repeat the issues the US had when small and regional banks all printed their own bills. Their info infrastructure were large books, updated monthly that provided info to determine exchange rates/values. People didn't like getting burned everywhere on transaction costs and their value going poof when unsavory characters ran the underlying banks into the ground or rumors about the stability of far off banks were spread.
Centralized. government-backed fiat currencies solve many issues that most Bitbugs are coming to grips with the hard way. It's those issues which are exposed publicly and quickly which will keep it the most amazing speculative financial invention to a group of fiercely, independently minded folks who have the skills and means to gloss over all the failings of such a device being a proxy for fiat currency. It's just another layer of abstraction, not a replacement. And it's a leaky abstraction.
This comment really seems like poorly disguised crowing and nothing more. Not a reminder, certainly. Maybe a reminder of your great prognosticatory abilities -- you took the default position on 99% of new technologies, products and innovations. Where do you find the courage?
The sale was advertised as "units in stock, ready for immediate delivery"
When they came (something like a full month later) they were approximately double the spec of the devices I thought I had ordered, but still for the same price. Thanks, I guess?
I can't say if they're shipping any faster now, but if the trend of decreasing wait times has continued, I'd expect that by now, they'll be competition for Amazon's rumored new "ship before you order" practices.
Honestly for the new customers, if their ASIC parts were actually delivered in less than two weeks, I would have to say you're not getting the full BFL experience anymore, and you should probably ask for a refund.
I will probably not order from them again.
I particularly liked this juxtaposition on their store — http://i.imgur.com/uZVKRBX.png
Also before you do business with any BTC company you should probably search Google and Pacer for pending lawsuits. BFL has had lawsuits pending against it in state and federal court alleging fraud since at least late Nov. 2013 but no one noticed until yesterday because they named BFL as "BF Labs" which is an uncommon way of referring to them. Some other mining equipment manufactures have federal lawsuits pending against them for fraud as well.
The fact they can't spin up a new MtGox environment with cloned data stores is troubling.
:|
Are you just as bitter that you missed Apple, Microsoft, Tesla, Priceline, Intuitive Surgical or CNR?
Point being, these opportunities are everywhere, always. You're surrounded by them right now, they're just not obvious. But neither was BitCoin. And with the above you're actually buying into a real company, rather than speculating on a price change.
Great point and one that is easy to lose sight of. I think bitcoin stings a little extra because many people on HN thought at the back of their mind that it might be big, but never acted. Whereas, at the time many of these stocks were cheap, most people weren't even considering buying them.
2 years ago i turned over my bitcoins at 5x return in 3 months. there's no way i would have held on to them for a 5000x return.
In US-dollars, over time, I profited, but there were no US dollars involved in any of those transactions, except what BFL surely got from BitPay for my orders. I traded basically 22 Bitcoins for a decent shot at about 12 Bitcoins.
So it goes with the preorder game!
I almost think that it will... in other words a bitcoin-like bubble will happen again, but maybe just once, and then not again (because there are so many people like me who feel like they missed out the "first time" on bitcoin)
Short term the price will drop even more dramatically, but once recovered, it should increase more, as main exchanges will get more busy. Or is there a flaw in my logic?
Localbitcoins ~50 pounds compared to two days ago.
2. Number of users SPENDING bitcoins to purchase goods
3. Number of merchants accepting bitcoins for goods
4. Total $ value of bitcoins being spent to purchase goods
5. Total $ value of bitcoins being spent to perform international money transfers
6. Amount of press (bad press OK, good press is worth much more) that bitcoins are getting as it drives 1 and 3.
I'm sure others have their own list of fundamentals.
The purpose of the regulations are to protect consumers for companies that are either malicious or incompetent.
The problem is that the licensing process is expensive, painful, and long. There should be better ways. Nonetheless, there's a reason why the exist.
If you buy only one single (bitcoin|oz of gold) now, one day you could be rich beyond imagination!
The potential future price of (bicoin|gold) is over $100,000.
There are only xxx (bitcoin|oz of gold) produced per year so it must be scarce and valuable!
I'm in (bitcoin|gold) for the long haul! Buy and hold! Keep on stacking!
The price of (bitcoin|gold) is manipulated downward. Buy now while it's cheap.
The global economy is going to crash soon! Buy (bitcoin|gold) now or you will die when the crash happens!
I've only been trading in small BTC amounts though so not sure if you'd hit liquidity problems if trying to trade large amounts (kraken's volume is quite a lot smaller than the bigger established players like bitstamp)
Bitstamp is also good, I hear, but I just went with finex because their fees are lower =P.
I think it is important to use an exchange outside the US though, because I expect the fed to start going Orwell on any bitcoin company soon.
There's also the Canadian https://www.vaultofsatoshi.com/, which seems to be top notch as far as the tech (multiple 2FA options, OpenPGP cryptography for email, etc.).
Removing the limit involves buying coin from them, waiting 30 days, and solving some seemingly impossible credit report based identity quiz (some people report passing after 10 tries, you're limited to one try per 24 hours).
This is great for MtGox, all buy transactions pending just lost a $100 of the cost to fulfil. Surely then they wait for the bottom, initiate all transactions possible.
Price rises and they can take in more dollars per bitcoin sold, speculating, that may be all that enables them to actually deposit the amounts on the transactions they "fulfilled" in order to make the price bounce.
Crazy business.
It is sinking because of Russia.
