76
Many people already do this with bitcoin. In finance, this is called arbitrage trading, or simply arbitrage, sometimes even abbreviated arb.
The reason for the price differences are fees for transferring between the bitcoin exchanges (you have to transfer both, bitcoins and fiat currency for a complete cycle) and fees for trading bitcoins against fiat ...
59
I noticed this question was posted a long time ago and perhaps things have changed so I took the liberty to dig in again and also aggregate most of the answers given here and here’s what I found:
It’s indeed impossible to buy Bitcoins with Paypal DIRECTLY even today and it's mainly because of Paypal’s TOS (Section 3.7 here) and the issues of chargeback.
...
54
I did some more digging on bitcoin.it and answered my own question. According to the FAQ and the list of payment methods, the reason that Paypal and Credit Cards are not accepted is to prevent fraud (by doing a fraudulent charge-back). For this reason, none of the exchanges accept these as forms of payment.
In short, you cannot (directly) use these to buy ...
40
I've writen software to arbitrage on some US exchanges.
I couldn't arbitrage without software because:
It was hard to account for all fees to understand if an opportunity is profitable.
It took a couple of minutes to evaluate opportunities (query an exchange's order book, query another exchange's order book, do an evaluation, execute a sell, execute a buy) ...
32
PayPal's user agreement prohibits the use of their payment network for buying digital currency.
Here's an approach. With VirWoX you can buy SLL and pay with either credit card or Paypal. Then you can trade your SLL for BTC:
http://www.VirWoX.com
Sporadically you will find inventory on BTCQuick:
https://btcquick.com
And finally, there is the ability to ...
23
What's stopping people from doing so? What's the catch?
The catch is that few people have been able to get US dollars out of Mt. Gox since June 20, 2013, when Mt. Gox imposed a "hiatus" on US dollar withdrawals. Mt. Gox has a long list of excuses for not paying their debts, which you can find on their site. Some of their excuses strain credulity. This ...
23
To actually try and answer your question, Mt Gox acted as a trusted middleman in btc trading, and thus had to have control over their users money.
Let's say dude A has a few btc he wants to sell, and dude B has a few dollars he wants to buy btc for. B doesn't want to pay until A sends him the btc, and A doesn't want to send his btc to B until B pays. ...
17
I just asked on the #mtgox IRC channel, and was told:
06:36 < dooglus> what does the "Open Transaction (6 Confirmations)" option
do when withdrawing BTC?
06:48 < Cory> If the Bitcoin address you're withdrawing to is a MtGox address,
it will use the network and blockchain anyway.
06:49 < Cory> Otherwise, if ...
16
Because Mt.Gox has to abide by anti money laundering laws they require at least some form of identification. Although this is a requirement for Fiat to Bitcoin conversion there is no need to link your normal bitcoin transactions to your Bank Account / Identity. Wallet services that deal solely with bitcoin do not need to comply with AML laws and hence ...
16
Properties of a yubikey:
A yubikey contains a secret symmetric key.
Knowledge of this key allows emulating that yubikey.
The server needs to know that key.
The YubiKey AES Key information can never be extracted from a YubiKey device – only programmed to it
So Mt.Gox's insistence on sending the key to you ensures several important properties:
You're not ...
14
People had bitcoins loaded on Mt.Gox internal trading accounts (trading wallets). This goes both for fiat currency and bitcoins.
Bitcoin withdrawals were shut-down for a few weeks now, which created concepts like "goxbucks" or "goxcoins" as you could not get any Bitcoins out.
Now, the Mt.Gox is closed completely, so you cannot get either fiat currency or ...
13
Mutum Sigillum LLC was the legal entity that Mt. Gox used for transferring funds using account-to-account transfers and for adding to (and withdrawing from) their account using bank funds.
Mutum Sigillum LLC is not registered as a money transmitter in any states.
It may not even be registered as a Money Service Business (MSB) through FinCEN.
FinCEN ...
12
Current market depth available at
https://mtgox.com/api/0/data/getDepth.php?Currency=USD
All trades which happened in the last 24 hours available at
https://mtgox.com/code/data/getTrades.php
Retrieves 100 trades that happend after specified transaction
https://mtgox.com/code/data/getTrades.php?since="transaction tid"
A script is required to retrive ...
11
MtGox Live now supports 17 currencies. Use this URL with the desired country code:
http://mtgoxlive.com/orders?currency=YOUR_DESIRED_CURRENCY_CODE
BTC // Bitcoin
USD // USA
EUR // Euro
JPY // Japan
CAD // Canada
GBP // Great Britain
CHF // Switzerland
RUB // Russia
AUD // Australia
SEK // ...
11
Here's a good interview by Gregory Maxwell himself who's a Bitcoin developer:
Oh there is a “problem” in the Bitcoin protocol, known since at least
2011 (see the link I gave). But for normal applications, not involving
unconfirmed transactions, it shouldn’t cause any severe problems
because wallets can handle it locally.
This has to do with ...
11
This is generally called counterparty risk - if your resources are in custody of someone else, there is a risk that they go bankrupt and you lose it. And in that case it is too late and your options are limited to making a sadface :( and writing it off as a loss - do note that you can get x% of the loss back from your income tax in most places.
There are ...
10
At the time of this writing, "Verified" Accounts are eligible for monthly/daily withdrawal limits up to 10 times the default daily amount and 5 times the default monthly amount, while "Trusted" Accounts are eligible for monthly/daily withdrawal limits up to 100 times the default daily amount and 50 times the default monthly amount.
For verified status it is ...
10
What malleability means is that you can't store the transaction ID that bitcoind returns from its sendtoaddress API call and expect that number to mean anything at all later.
Instead, if you want to keep track of a high volume of outgoing transactions, you have to wait for the transactions to be fully confirmed and immune to blockchain reorganizations, and ...
10
It also shakes confidence in BTC both for the BTC community and the public in general. When I say BTC I am encompassing all other *coin. It is analogous to the failure of a large bank--except without any insurance.
9
It is because it is more expensive and has delays longer and more unpredictable to get $USD out of MtGox, and because they are facing regulatory and lawsuit problems. US branch of MtGox, known as Mutuum Sigillum, may bankrupt or get more assets seized. Simply put, a dollar at MtGox is not worth as much as a dollar elsewhere. MtGox is more accessible/less ...
8
All you'll ever get is speculation. Nobody knows why prices change.
It's just like when you listen to the news and they tell you that stocks dropped because of "profit taking". Clearly, people were selling if stock prices dropped. But nobody really knows if people were taking profits, cutting losses, or something else entirely.
These are emergent behaviors ...
8
One of the major reasons standing in the way of profiting from arbitrage opportunities has to do with "volume".
The volume for either exchanges is not high enough yet to support big trades. Large profits require large trades (in arbitrage). Making $1,000 may be feasible between exchanges, but that's an extreme best case scenario and using 10k in capital! ...
7
Buying bitcoins for credit card or PayPal is very problematic, but all hope is not yet lost.
Every now and then a new service pops up that thinks it cracked the secret of how to do this sustainably - http://www.mrcoins.org/ seems to be the flavor of the month. Such services usually take a very high fee.
CoinPal was a great service when it ran, and they ...
7
EDIT This information is now out of date - voting to close this question
You could use Intersango
It's a well-trusted exchange that operates within the Eurozone (and in the UK). You see their current fee structure provides SEPA transfer:
Country Accepting deposits Processing withdrawals
GBP (domestic) Free Free
EUR (SEPA) ...
7
if you want fast http ticker use the new fast_ticker :
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1c9npl/mtgox_fast_ticker_last_only_no_rate_limit_1second/
http://data.mtgox.com/api/2/BTCUSD/money/ticker_fast
and you will get 1 second only cached minimalist ticker ( last )
if you need more ( low, high, volume ) you have the normal ticker, most probably ...
7
Mtgox owner was already in japan and already had his company there when he decided to buy mtgox from historical owner Jed in 2011.
mtgox owner s blog : http://blog.magicaltux.net/
hosting company that existed years before he decided to buy mtgox : http://legal.tibanne.com/ , services on https://www.kalyhost.com/
6
Yes, I have successfully transferred 0.00000001 BTC (commonly referred to as a Satoshi) before.
What is possible within the scope of a MtGox withdrawal is another question entirely. MtGox uses a custom client and has a fee structure and other assorted math to contend with that may not allow for such a transfer at present. If your withdrawal has not appeared ...
6
MtGox support is available on https://support.mtgox.com, by email (support AT mtgox.com) and on IRC freenode server channel #mtgox.
You could try to check your spam folder if you are using a bad webmail provider or bad antispam.
6
Mt Gox is large enough to attract regular hackers. I had my account liquidated recently by a thief. Whereas I think some of their extra security apps might be beneficial (e.g. Yubikey) I thought a $25 investment to protect a $50 account was silly. Now I'm $50 lighter, so maybe it was not as unwarranted as I first thought.
Bottom line: Mind your security. My ...
6
Mt. Gox operates a hosted (shared) EWallet. That means that the bitcoin address provided to you for making deposits is not your address, it is instead Mt. Gox's address that they will monitor and credit your account for for any coins received at that address.
But to withdraw, you are entirely at Mt. Gox's mercy.
Their terms of service, shown when you ...
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