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

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

forum.bitcoin.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 319 posts

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

#261

Post by bobz »

vl wrote: post #180
kwantam wrote: 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…

>fault of the Mt Gox admins Mt Gox is run in such amateurish way, it's appalling. In real life, with many brokers you trade doesn't close in 3 days and as such you can't withdraw proceeds from the trade for 3 days (but you can use the proceeds to continue trading). In this situation Mt Gox is effectively both exchange and the broker. Not to have rule in place to block funds from recent transactions is like people who…

The three day settlement rule applies to the NY equity markets. Other markets, including NY fixed income products, run under different rules, including same day settlement.

And this isn't a fraud prevention measure, it's a legacy of the days when settlement included someone carting a stack of stock certificates from one bank's vault to another.

Lastly, most traders trade on a contractual basis, not a settlement basis, so their trades are considered binding as soon as the agreement is in place.

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

#262

Post by derobert »

nullc wrote: post #177
cpeterso wrote: post #80

> Two months ago we migrated from MD5 hashing to freeBSD MD5 salted hashing. The unsalted user accounts in the wild are ones that haven't been accessed in over 2 months and are considered idle. Once we are back up we will have implemented SHA-512 multi-iteration salted hashing and all users will be required to update to a new strong password. I'm quite surprised that a service with accounts holding millions of dollar…

FreeBSD MD5 is pretty strong— Its randomly salted and runs 1000 iterations of MD5. None of MD5's weaknesses are especially relevant in this context. The most important thing is the how slow it is, and it's likely that if they'd taken defaults bcrypt would actually have been faster. The saddest thing is that many of the people howling about MD5 are proposing weaker alternatives like straight SHA-512 with a static "sal…

I don't think you understand how fast MD5 is. On the order of 10 billion MD5/sec is doable for very cheap. If you're going after millions, getting multiple graphics cards is a no-brainer.

See, for example, http://www.golubev.com/gpuest.htm

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

#263

Post by derobert »

rick888 wrote: post #59

The problems here with Bitcoin come across as the same problems with piracy: Bitcoin are just bits on a computer. Just like piracy, when we copy bits from one place to another, is it really "stealing"? Anyone that says "yes", better double-check their stance on software piracy as well.

Ignoring for a moment the objections of value (which a bunch of other commenters have already pointed out), your two scenarios don't line up at all:

Piracy: A has bits X. A wants to give B copy of X. B wants copy of X. Third party C (record label) objects. [A pirates a copy to/with B]

Bitcoin: A has bits X. A does not want to give B copy of X. B makes one anyway. A objects. Third party C (person who mined coins originally and willingly transferred to A) does not care. [B steals coins from A]

The two scenarios do not line up at all. In fact, if you made a bitcoin scenario that did line up:

Bitcoin': A has wallet X. A wants to give copy of wallet X to B. B wants copy of wallet X. Third party C (original miner of coins) objects. [A wants B to be able to spend his coins for whatever reason]

well, in the Bitcoin' scenario, I think almost everyone would agree that C has no moral authority to object.

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

#264

Post by TylerE »

batterseapower wrote: post #249
haakon wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After all, if the trade is internal on MtGox, it's just a double in a database. Dude, don't use double to represent money.

There are 21 million bitcoins and they divide down to 8dp, so you need 16 decimal digits to represent them exactly. Coincidentally (?) double precision floating point is capable of precisely representing exactly 16 decimal digits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_precision So using double is in fact perfectly OK in this case.

16 digits of precision != 16 digits of accuracy.

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

#265

Post by gte910h »

jacques_chester wrote: post #36
gte910h wrote: 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 s…

An exception in some places. In most places in the US, you are not the owner.

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

#266

Post by gte910h »

DannyBee wrote: post #138
gte910h wrote: 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...

Uh, look at something like "bearer bonds". You are assuming bitcoins are like a negotiable instrument. They aren't, they are much closer to bearer bonds. Whoever holds the wallet owns the bitcoins. There is no other recorded title.

If you steal bearer bonds, then sell them, they will still be returned in most parts of the US if you can prove the theft.

This has nothing to do with what a bitcoin wants to be, but what law in the US is with regards to stolen property.

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

#267

Post by gte910h »

juiceandjuice wrote: post #45
gte910h wrote: 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...

It does matter if it's a bitcoin, a car or a quarter. A bitcoin is completely virtual with no intrinsic value. The legal recourse that would occur in this case is undefined .

A bitcoin is little different than a piece of metal with regards to that. Of courts could do something strange (they often go OH MY COMPUTERS and shake their hands for a few years), but it is clearly a piece of intangible property.

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

#268

Post by gte910h »

Tichy wrote: post #53
jacques_chester wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Uh, is that really so? So I can steal whatever I want, as long as I can sell it off fast enough? Say I am 99 years old and have only one week left to live. What if I go on a car stealing spree and steal Porsche cars for my extended family. Then I sell it to them for a symbolic 1 cent each, claiming that I have collected them over my lifetime and now want my family to benefit.

They're not paying enough so no.

But in most of the US, that scheme doesn't apply.

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

#270

Post by jamesaguilar »

icebraining wrote: post #223
jamesaguilar wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the misappropriation theory of inside trading, it seems you would be doing something illegal. Or perhaps you could be convicted of acting as an accessory to securities fraud. Whether it's moral or in keeping with the spirit of capitalism I guess depends on your interpretation of those two things. Personally I don't think capitalism has a finders-keepers rule when participants buy stolen goods, but you ma…

There's no inside information, it was all public. That case doesn't apply unless he knew something that only Mt Gox "employees" should know. And I've never seen him say he should keep the money (he said they didn't even ask him the money back), he just disagrees with the decision of rolling back by force, which affects the whole Bitcoin market, not just himself.

> There's no inside information

I'm aware, read my last paragraph.

> disagrees with rolling back by force

Of course he does. If his suggestions are implemented, he stands to make a lot of money.

Post reply on HN