And does /that/ one have a license to take deposits? And is it backed by anything more than 4 stars next to someone's nic on the forum?
Bitcoins are a serious investment for some people now. They've put their savings into this. This is not just funny money. It's a lot of fun to play with, and I will keep doing that myself, but the people who are not just playing anymore have an immense potential to get hurt by these exchange swings.
By the way, I am nobody here on HN, but I do know that this is not the forum to post your affiliate links. My friendly advice would be to get rid of that.
If you're putting your savings into that it's your own risk. People know that right now Bitcoin should be regarded as completely volatile financial instrument. If you want to gamble: fine, but don't cry if it doesn't work out the way expected.
You are right in that Tradehill isn't necessarily 'better' or 'more secure' than mtgox. I just wanted to say that there are more exchanges coming up and that the situation will at least ease up in that direction.
As for the 'investment':
Honestly, the people that invested their savings into Bitcoins should be fully aware of the risk they're getting themselves into. As with everything that might give return your investments manyfold, there is a proportionally high risk.
I don't think it's a good idea to make large investments into Bitcoin unless somebody doesn't need the money and thinks the personal joy he gets out of gambling is worth it. I know I have a lot of fun with small amounts :)
As for the link, I'll remove the directly clickable one. But since signing up without a referal will lead to 10% higher fees, I'd at least leave the code for people that are interested. I was kind of uncertain but didn't find anything when skimming the FAQ or guidelines. I hope that is ok. (If not, somebody please respond and I'll kick that one too)
My point is that for something meant to be totally decentralized, bitcoin has become nearly completely centralized instead - virtually every transaction (even that buy-newegg one) has to pass through Mt. Gox, since suppliers have to be paid in dollars, and Mt. Gox is the only place with sufficient volume. I think that's an interesting and non-obvious outcome, and I wish that people would try to do a serious economic analysis of bitcoin, instead of giving us the standard opinions of "it's garbage" or "it's going to take over the world, you'll be poor and I'll be rich".
Even if there are 2 exchanges, or 5, or 10, that doesn't change the basic fact. After all, there are hundreds of central banks, but we don't refer to regular currency as peer-to-peer. My further point, as an aside, is that the shaky nature of the bitcoin exchanges makes this a dangerous investment for anyone who is treating this as more than an experiment. Failure of even one exchange out of several is still very damaging to an economy.
Mt. Gox might be the most popular one, but unless you're going to buy/sell an extremly high amount of Bitcoins, other exchanges are viable too.
Currently I like Bitmarket.eu most: This site acts as an escrow just for the Bitcoin side of the trade - the "real" money is directly transfered between buyer and seller (via bank transfer or Paypal). That's somewhat more distributed than other sites that act as "full gateways" between buyers and sellers.
Numbers are of the essence. That site has less than 1% of the volume of Mt. Gox, and Mt. Gox is considered too thinly traded for business transactions.
I don't see how the existence of that site, and trading over IRC channels, changes the fact that the bitcoin economy has become centered on Mt. Gox, and in the future, maybe, on several other exchanges. I never said that Mt. Gox is ALL there was.
BTW, I see the reasons that a proper exchange is more popular - there are 3 or 4 transactions an hour on bitmarket.eu, the escrow provisions are weak (as you said, it's for the bitcoin side only), the Paypal fees will be high on the small amounts traded, and trading higher amounts will get negative attention from Paypal - they will not let people trade virtual currency over their systems (and they consider bitcoin to be in that category).
Yeah, they take deposits. People have a dollar account and a bitcoin account on Mt. Gox. They may fund the dollar account with bank transfers, and they may fund the bitcoin account with bitcoin transfers. I don't know how long people tend to keep dollars on deposit there, but the total amounts are substantial. Apparently there is more than 470,000 bitcoins on deposit at Mt. Gox. That's $8 million at current prices. I am guessing that the amount of dollars is somewhere in the range of that - they've been doing $1.5 million in transactions a day, and most people probably take a few days to trade and then transfer the money out.
Of course, we can't be /sure/ of what they've got on deposit - it's not like they employ auditors, or publish reports, or submit to regulations regarding deposits. All that old economy stuff is for losers, y'know.
Bitcoins are a serious investment for some people now. They've put their savings into this. This is not just funny money. It's a lot of fun to play with, and I will keep doing that myself, but the people who are not just playing anymore have an immense potential to get hurt by these exchange swings.
By the way, I am nobody here on HN, but I do know that this is not the forum to post your affiliate links. My friendly advice would be to get rid of that.