11–20 of 62 posts
FTA: He also questioned the fundamental workings of the currency, saying that its emphasis on anonymity and decentralised nature meant there was little recourse for users when things go wrong So just like... Cash?
Cash is actually numbered so you can for example trace bills payed as ransom
Citation needed. Are there any stats on where BitCoin are being spent? Everybody says BitCoin could be useful for criminals, but how big is the adoption so far? How much business did Silk Road generate?
FTA: He also questioned the fundamental workings of the currency, saying that its emphasis on anonymity and decentralised nature meant there was little recourse for users when things go wrong So just like... Cash?
Bitcoins are less anonymous than cash, since all transactions are visible. Anonymous identities may be inferred from known identities in a step-by-step process.
The other thing is that MtGox did not suspend trading once market moved 20%. I think if it had such failsafe it could have prevented this fiasco. (Should shut down the marketplace once market moves 20% in any direction to reassess the situation and check if there is technical error or panic, or similar event that requires additional intervention. Any mature market requires such failsafe.)
I really wonder who is the person whose coins were being sold off. I mean, that's the real story here: somebody had many tens of thousands of BTC that were stolen from his MtGox account and were sold off at a very low price. (The story that people were buying BTC at very low prices is a distraction, the real story is that somebody was SELLING at this low price.) The other thing is that MtGox did not suspend trading o…
I really wonder who is the person whose coins were being sold off. I mean, that's the real story here: somebody had many tens of thousands of BTC that were stolen from his MtGox account and were sold off at a very low price. (The story that people were buying BTC at very low prices is a distraction, the real story is that somebody was SELLING at this low price.) The other thing is that MtGox did not suspend trading o…
Why should a panic require intervention? If somebody wants to sell his Bitcoins way below the market price - why stop him?
Safest action in that case is to halt the market temporarily (as well as delay withdraws) and investigate.
Only a small percentage of BTC users were using Tradehill, a competitive BTC exchange. People have rushed to create accounts there, however it takes a few days to transfer money in, so right now there are more sellers than buyers, causing prices to go lower. In addition, apparently some people have their money tied up in unreachable MtGox accounts so are unable to trade.
MtGox has some serious issues to deal with. Finally yesterday, on the 3rd day after the exchange was brought down, they instituted an account recovery page, where you can provide information about your account and try to prove it is yours. Their support people are manually reviewing account information and will give you access when they feel you have sufficiently verified the info.
It looks very fishy, like MtGox is intentionally delaying access to people's accounts in order to prevent a run on the exchange. We don't know exactly how much money or coins were actually stolen from MtGox, but it is entirely possible that someone figured out a way to transfer a large amount of coins or real currency out of there. It might be possible that MtGox cannot make all investors whole again, so they are reenabling accounts just a few at a time and hoping that not everyone withdraws their funds at once.
Personally, I never kept a balance of either USD or BTC in MtGox. Their site looked too amateur to trust with money. I would sell my coins and transfer them to Dwolla immediately. Right now, all of the exchanges look sketchy. I would not trust a single VPS running MySQL at all with what could be millions of dollars.
I really wonder who is the person whose coins were being sold off. I mean, that's the real story here: somebody had many tens of thousands of BTC that were stolen from his MtGox account and were sold off at a very low price. (The story that people were buying BTC at very low prices is a distraction, the real story is that somebody was SELLING at this low price.) The other thing is that MtGox did not suspend trading o…
Why should a panic require intervention? If somebody wants to sell his Bitcoins way below the market price - why stop him?
I really wonder who is the person whose coins were being sold off. I mean, that's the real story here: somebody had many tens of thousands of BTC that were stolen from his MtGox account and were sold off at a very low price. (The story that people were buying BTC at very low prices is a distraction, the real story is that somebody was SELLING at this low price.) The other thing is that MtGox did not suspend trading o…