Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

bitcoincharts.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 262 posts

Re: 500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

#21

Post by kaffeinecoma »

enki wrote: post #5
crayz wrote: post #3

That's about 7% of the total number of bitcoins in circulation. Anyone have details on how this happened? http://blockexplorer.com/q/totalbc

according to the guy running the exchange: user with 500k bitcoins was hacked (probably password bruteforce or csrf). they'll probably reverse all transactions since then

How do you "reverse" transactions that live in a peer-to-peer network? Or are you saying that MtGox has some kind of buffer of transactions that haven't been "executed" onto the network yet?

Re: 500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

#22

Post by Tichy »

Does anybody have a link to instructions for reading that kind of chart (or the name of the chart type)? I used to know, but it has been many years.

I suppose green bars means the price went up and red down, and the bar extends between the high and low price. But what does the chunk in the middle mean? And where can I see that 500k were traded?

Re: 500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

#23

Post by Osiris »

andypants wrote: post #19
enki wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

according to the guy running the exchange: user with 500k bitcoins was hacked (probably password bruteforce or csrf). they'll probably reverse all transactions since then

Who is 'they'? As far as I understood bitcoin, there is no authority. Nobody can do anything about a user having 500k of his coins hacked, and nobody can do anything about the market crash either.

As long as the money hasn't been withdrawn from the market, the market should be able to reverse all the transactions. The problem would be if the BTC or USD were withdrawn from the market before they shut down trading.

Re: 500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

#24

Post by Macha »

mikemoka wrote: post #17
kiba wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just mean that the market is really small.

do you mean that if the market would be bigger such things won't be done? they could do more of the same unfortunately..

If the market was bigger, 500k would not crash it, as there would be enough buy orders to take someone dumping 500k.

It would still be crashable, but more would be needed if it was bigger.

Re: 500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

#26

Post by lubos »

joezydeco wrote: post #10
lordgilman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone just went to sell a ton of bitcoins at once. Because the market's so small they were able to fill all the buy orders placed all the way down to 1 cent per bitcoin. Some people with long-shot bets made quite a bit of money. About half of the 500k filled the buy orders on the way down and half of them were sold at the 1 cent price.

Which kind of implies someone was doing this with stolen coins, right? You don't sell so cheap if you have USD 8,500,000 on paper and want to get as much possible out of the sale.

unless you are US government trying to destroy alternative currency. right?

Re: 500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

#27

Post by enki »

andypants wrote: post #19
enki wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

according to the guy running the exchange: user with 500k bitcoins was hacked (probably password bruteforce or csrf). they'll probably reverse all transactions since then

Who is 'they'? As far as I understood bitcoin, there is no authority. Nobody can do anything about a user having 500k of his coins hacked, and nobody can do anything about the market crash either.

the exchange is a central authority, and acts like one.

you can do whatever you want with your bitcoins, but currency exchange is liable to laws and regulations.

Re: 500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

#28

Post by seats »

mikemoka wrote: post #17
kiba wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It just mean that the market is really small.

do you mean that if the market would be bigger such things won't be done? they could do more of the same unfortunately..

When the market is really big, then only the really rich people can manipulate it. Comforting thought ;)

Re: 500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

#29

Post by jaekwon »

andypants wrote: post #19
enki wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

according to the guy running the exchange: user with 500k bitcoins was hacked (probably password bruteforce or csrf). they'll probably reverse all transactions since then

Who is 'they'? As far as I understood bitcoin, there is no authority. Nobody can do anything about a user having 500k of his coins hacked, and nobody can do anything about the market crash either.

as far as i know you're right. there is no infrastructure for rollbacks of any kind.

Re: 500k Bitcoins traded in 1h, Mt.Gox market hacked + crash

#30

Post by ch0wn »

kaffeinecoma wrote: post #21
enki wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

according to the guy running the exchange: user with 500k bitcoins was hacked (probably password bruteforce or csrf). they'll probably reverse all transactions since then

How do you "reverse" transactions that live in a peer-to-peer network? Or are you saying that MtGox has some kind of buffer of transactions that haven't been "executed" onto the network yet?

As far as I know bitcoin transfers are issues without any delay, so it would indeed be impossible to reverse the transactions.
Post reply on HN