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

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

#92

Post by vrotaru »

bxc wrote: post #73
gst wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is anarchy? What's burning? Someone sold a huge amount of Bitcoins. The market acted accordingly. Expect a bounce back to the old exchange rate as soon as Mt. Gox is available again. Of course it might be possible that the computer of the person who sold the Bitcoin was cracked. But that's not the fault of Bitcoin - if someone is not capable of taking care of the security of his local computer, it's better not…

> Someone sold a huge amount of Bitcoins. The market acted accordingly. It doesn't seem very free market to rollback the market and cancel all the free market trades that happened.

It's entirely free market for an exchange to have its own set of rules and regulation.

Yes, for some time MtGox was The Exchange. It seems that it just ended.

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

#93

Post by wmf »

danielsoneg wrote: post #87
econgeeker wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right about the anarchy, but I don't see the burning world. I don't see hackers and cheaters "taking over" bitcoin. An account was compromised, and despite there being no government regulation, the exchange stepped in, protected their customer, rolled back the trades and protected the market. That is anarchy exactly! But no burning world. And it is yet another realworld test that has been successfully met by t…

> and despite there being no government regulation, the exchange stepped in, protected their customer, rolled back the trades and protected the market You know that's basically the same thing - central entity with overarching authority exerts its will over the market, canceling transactions it's deemed 'fraudulent' between two independent consenting entities. "Free hand of the market" ain't present here, chief - this…

I would argue that it's not the same thing, since people use Mt.Gox voluntarily. We can expect no-rollback exchanges to appear any day now.

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

#94

Post by sunchild »

weavejester wrote: post #36
eis wrote: post #6

A little bit explanation: Mt.Gox is the biggest bitcoin market place by far. During the last 1h the whole volume of about 500k BTC was traded making the price drop from somewhere around $17 to virtually nothing. Details are not available yet. It could have been a bug or an intrudor. Rumors have it that someone with a huge wallet got hacked. someone with lots of coins did get hacked MagicalTux is working on Mt.Gox Als…

I'm surprised that people with large amounts of bitcoin don't have better security measures. For that amount of money, I'd consider securing the private key in a safety deposit box. Probably several safety deposit boxes, actually.

And therein lies the seed of the eternal cat-and-mouse game that is key management.

Technically, each layer of security you impose is also an impediment to the bitcoin market's liquidity.

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

#95

Post by vrotaru »

danielsoneg wrote: post #87
econgeeker wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right about the anarchy, but I don't see the burning world. I don't see hackers and cheaters "taking over" bitcoin. An account was compromised, and despite there being no government regulation, the exchange stepped in, protected their customer, rolled back the trades and protected the market. That is anarchy exactly! But no burning world. And it is yet another realworld test that has been successfully met by t…

> and despite there being no government regulation, the exchange stepped in, protected their customer, rolled back the trades and protected the market You know that's basically the same thing - central entity with overarching authority exerts its will over the market, canceling transactions it's deemed 'fraudulent' between two independent consenting entities. "Free hand of the market" ain't present here, chief - this…

> central entity with overarching authority exerts its will over the market

MtGox certainly is not central authority. If you stop being their customer, they will have just to live with that.

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

#96

Post by gst »

skrebbel wrote: post #71
gst wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is anarchy? What's burning? Someone sold a huge amount of Bitcoins. The market acted accordingly. Expect a bounce back to the old exchange rate as soon as Mt. Gox is available again. Of course it might be possible that the computer of the person who sold the Bitcoin was cracked. But that's not the fault of Bitcoin - if someone is not capable of taking care of the security of his local computer, it's better not…

> Of course it might be possible that the computer of the person who sold the Bitcoin was cracked. But that's not the fault of Bitcoin. Just like it's not the fault of the dollar if someone mugs you at gunpoint. Except robbing someone typically requires you to take physical risks and (threaten to) use violence. I'll be very curious to see any effective way of tracking down bitcoin thieves. If you have to be a securit…

You don't necessarily have to be a security expert to use Bitcoins, just if you want to run the client by yourself.

If you don't have the required knowledge just pay a little bit to a "Bitcoin bank" that handles the task for you. In the real world you also don't carry your money with you all the time, but store it on a bank.

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

#98

Post by sunchild »

buro9 wrote: post #39

From the mt.gox site: Huge Bitcoin sell off due to a compromised account - rollback The bitcoin will be back to around 17.5$/BTC after we rollback all trades that have happened after the huge Bitcoin sale that happened on June 20th near 3:00am (JST). Service should be back by June 20th 10:00am (JST, 01:00am GMT) with all the trades reversed and accounts available. One account with a lot of coins was compromised and w…

And who gets to decide which trades are rolled back? By what criteria?

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

#99

Post by danielsoneg »

wmf wrote: post #93
danielsoneg wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and despite there being no government regulation, the exchange stepped in, protected their customer, rolled back the trades and protected the market You know that's basically the same thing - central entity with overarching authority exerts its will over the market, canceling transactions it's deemed 'fraudulent' between two independent consenting entities. "Free hand of the market" ain't present here, chief - this…

I would argue that it's not the same thing, since people use Mt.Gox voluntarily. We can expect no-rollback exchanges to appear any day now.

Do they? It's by far the largest BTC exchange - by a factor of ~50 or so. If you want to exchange more than a couple hundred BTC, they're the only game in town right now.
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