MtGox Issues Update – Trading To Get Supercharged?

Monday, 05/08/2013 | 08:09 GMT by Ron Finberg

Leading bitcoin exchange, MtGox has issued a ‘Status Update’ today. The exchange has recently been seeing its market share decrease from a commanding 60%+ hold on bitcoin conversions to around 50% recently.

MtGox Issues Update – Trading To Get Supercharged?

Leading Bitcoin exchange, MtGox has issued a ‘Status Update’ today. The exchange has recently been seeing its market share decrease from a commanding 60%+ hold on bitcoin conversions to around 50% recently (bitcoinity stats). The decrease in trading on the exchange has occurred as MtGox announced delays for USD withdrawals, which it has since stated that the firm has resolved. Nonetheless, the delays have caused third parties to look elsewhere for their exchange needs, with Coinbase and Bitfinex moving their transactions to other venues such as BTCE and Bitstamp.

In today’s update, MtGox announced that they continue to make progress on site speed and security, but stated “We're making progress on all fronts, though of course not as fast as we want. “ They also added that their server infrastructure is being supported by Akamai, which provides local servers around the world for customers to connect with.

Low Latency Trading Platform

MtGox provided more details on its upcoming trading engine that the firm is working on. One of the complaints about the exchange has been an inability to handle high trading loads. As such, traders have seen the exchange crash and orders being unfilled. Code named ‘Midas’, MtGox announced that its new trading engine is currently being bench-tested, and has showed results of over 500,000 traders per second. The firm though gave no estimates on when Midas is set go live.

In addition, MtGox updated customers about litecoin integration, by stating that there are more delays “We hate to apologize yet again for the delay in implementing Litecoin, but the fact of the matter is that it depends on a variety of factors, including completing all of the above before we launch. We're looking forward to the rollout, but at this point are reluctant to speculate on when. We are sorry to keep Litecoin enthusiasts hanging. “ As a result, it is apparent that litecoin isn’t on the firm’s immediate radar and seemingly won’t be launched until next year.

Deposits and Withdrawal Update

MtGox also added that the backlog for deposits and withdrawals was being relieved but “still not at the rate we want.” They brought an example that bank deposits are still taking 10 days to process. In our opinion, the issue is part of a systematic issue with bitcoin account deposits as they don’t integrate well with traditional banking. While bank transfers are an efficient, yet slow, method for sending large amounts of funds across the world, when it comes to small sizes, they are more of a hassle. As such, while a bank may have no problems with a $100,000 wire where it collects $20 on the transfer, 100 $1000 transfers is more difficult. Even though a bank may welcome the high fees involved with the transfers, there are still manual procedure involved which limits their ability to deal with high volumes of small sized wires.

MtGox added a final note that “our mission as always is to support the widespread adoption of Bitcoin as much as we can.” On this they stated that “we have a team focused on communicating the beauty of Bitcoin to the world with new websites and ad campaigns aimed at global markets (news on that soon).” Overall, MtGox continues to be battling both a PR war and operations/security war as it aims to reestablish its name as the leader in the bitcoin industry. The question though is with an emergence of new firms coming to compete against MtGox, will they be able to deliver on their promises of faster deposits/withdrawals and trading in time to keep their market share from continuing to shrink.