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I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

forum.bitcoin.org

31–40 of 319 posts

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#31
post #10

The poster makes some good points about the inconsistencies in Mt. Gox's handling of things, but it seems to me that he's ascribing to malice what is well explained by incompetence on the part of the person or people running the site. The security practices are appalling, and their lack of clarity on the counter-party issue is damning. If I were Kevin---or, indeed, any customer of that exchange---I'd take my money an…

you see, majority of bitcoin forum audience are traders themselves. they are in for money and they are jealous.

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#32
post #16

This reminds me of a conversation I was having with a friend a couple of days ago about network affects. Once a system gets too big, the nice people that started it start getting screwed by the people who don't understand (or care about) the founding ideals. The problem with a trading house like Mt. Gox is that some people assume that all of the players are altruistic (these "some people" being "me", somebody with a…

> Then trying to withdraw $5 million USD from Mt. Gox?

He didn't do that. He withdrew $1000, once, and some bitcoins. Then notified the administrators.

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#33
post #19

"If I had to store that much there, even temporarily, I would use a password so long it would make War and Peace look like a Twitter message." - Brilliant

Wouldn't it likely have a hash collision with a much shorter password though?

It would have many collisions with many shorter passwords.

But almost certainly not any collisions with very simple and very short passwords. The hash output space is sufficiently large.

Someone who (given infinite time) found a brute-force collision would likely find one of the shorter preimages first – you aren't really gaining anything by going ever-longer, after your preimage choice has as many bits as the hash output.

But if the attacker truly needed to brute-force it over the entire 160-bit (SHA1) or larger (other hashes) output space, unconstrained by usual simple-password-like limits on what to try as preimages, that's impractical, and you've achieved your goal... even if you overdid it on the input.

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#36
post #27

A thief can't pass good title on stolen goods: If you buy a stolen item, it is not yours, it is still the original owner's. Doesn't matter if it's a bitcoin, a car, or a quarter. The sale was not legit, it should not stand. The rest of the rollback is fuzzier, but on this gentlemans coins, a seizure should occur. http://www.lexisnexis.com/community/corpsec/blogs/bus-law-an...

The exception to this rule is a "bona fide purchaser for value without notice". If someone has no reason to believe that property is stolen and buys it, then it's their property now. So sorry.

I'm still confused about whether or not bitcoin transactions are traceable. If they have deniability, it might be impossible to prove/disprove that you knew the goods were stolen.

Of course, I am neither a lawyer nor a crypto specialist and this isn't legal advice.

(In particular, the rules vary depending on whether the property is realty, on whether you have a Torrens system, whether you have fused equity and what your local courts and legislatures have decided).

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#37
post #16

This reminds me of a conversation I was having with a friend a couple of days ago about network affects. Once a system gets too big, the nice people that started it start getting screwed by the people who don't understand (or care about) the founding ideals. The problem with a trading house like Mt. Gox is that some people assume that all of the players are altruistic (these "some people" being "me", somebody with a…

> Then trying to withdraw $5 million USD from Mt. Gox? He didn't do that. He withdrew $1000, once, and some bitcoins. Then notified the administrators.

It sounded like he probably tried to remove the bitcoins, hit the limit, then contemplated hitting that $1000 limit a bunch of times.

Honestly, this whole forum post reeks of "I know I did something wrong, hopefully posting here will make the pit in my stomach go away."

Same goes for contacting magicaltux (the admin of mtgox) -- I bet he was absolutely losing his mind when the trade went through. I know I would have been.

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#38
post #13

Although I can completely understand why this guy (the sumbitter?) disagrees with MtGox's solution, I thought it seemed perfectly reasonable. Even though MtGox never stated they'd interfere, being hacked is unexpected enough to allow some leeway with follow-up. If the flashcrash happened organically, I doubt MtGox would revert the trades.

It's not that they never stated they'd interfere, it's that they explicitly stated they would never interfere by publicly disclaiming any role as a counter-party.

If they were hacked, it's their responsibility to make things right with the party that was hacked, and not interfere with anyone else's accounts/trades. Anything less does severe damage to faith in the exchange, which tends to lead people to only keep money and BTC in the system for as long as they need to to make a trade, and then pull it out. That's not good for the exchange or the economy.

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#39
post #16

This reminds me of a conversation I was having with a friend a couple of days ago about network affects. Once a system gets too big, the nice people that started it start getting screwed by the people who don't understand (or care about) the founding ideals. The problem with a trading house like Mt. Gox is that some people assume that all of the players are altruistic (these "some people" being "me", somebody with a…

This (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2676336) is why it happened.

  > Then trying to withdraw $5 million USD from Mt. Gox?
He was stating that he could have withdrawn the entire amount, but didn't want to appear shady (especially since doing so would have made him seem even more like a hacker that initiated the sell order).
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