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MtGox.com is offline

mtgox.com

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Re: MtGox.com is offline

#61

Post by dnautics »

edj wrote: post #40

Questions I have now: 1) How likely is a cascade of bank runs on other exchanges? 2) Do other exchanges have security issues or insolvency that make them particularly vulnerable? 3) Will one of the other cryptocurrencies wax as confidence in BTC wanes?

1) unlikely, since cascading bank runs are usually a result of fractional reserve banking. Depositors in a collapsed bank are unable to pay off loans in another bank, causing collateral damage to this other bank.

2) do other exchanges have security issues? Yes. Are they vulnerable? Only time will tell. I would take Mandelbrot's modeling of insurers (banks are "insurers" of sorts) in "the (Mis)behaviour of markets[0]" to heed: Collapses are levy-distributed with fat tails (infinite variance) so they will happen more frequently than you think, especially if you are operating with a model that uses the normal distribution. Best practice is to diversify.

3) I doubt it. ADDENDUM: But in a rational world this incident (might take a bit of time for the market to realize this) should actually INCREASE confidence in BTC, since a large, irresponsible player was knocked out, and the rest of the players on the field have a net higher level of responsibility (for now).

[0]http://www.overstock.com/Books-Movies-Music-Games/The-Mis-Be...

(I'm linking it via overstock so you can buy it with BTC - which is, hilariously, what I did)

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#63

Post by dnautics »

lhnz wrote: post #54
dnautics wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that would be me, maybe? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6867999 Note the date on this... 79 days ago the price of BTC was in the 1.0k range.

What's an "autodraw" by the way?

coinbase has a feature where you can set up recurring draws.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#64

Post by colinbartlett »

dmm wrote: post #37
untog wrote: post #5

Hello, downsides of unregulated currency. Some of the rules are there for a reason.

Businesses fail all the time. Most startups fail. Should we have more startup regulation? Failure is a normal part of the market. What's really scary are the businesses that are never allowed to fail.

There is a reason the SEC mandates you be an "accredited" investor with at least $200k income in the last 2 years or $1M in assets, excluding your house.

How many customers ("investors") would Mt. Gox have if that same regulation was applied to them?

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#66

Post by jfoutz »

ryanobjc wrote: post #55
jfoutz wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jokes like this make me crazy. Seriously HTTP is layer 7. Why would you bother the former senator with anything above 4? tcp/ip is just fine. your buggy code is what's broken, thank you very much.

I believe the proper honorific is to reference the highest office, so it's the Vice President Al Gore.

Ah, indeed. I always feel a little guilty about editing posts, so i'm going to let it stand. This one especially, because it's such a reddit joke. But yes, you are correct.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#67

Post by Shank »

At this point, the timeline of events greatly suggests that Mt. Gox's initial announcement of withdrawal freezing was the point at which they were officially dead. If the insolvency document is true, over 700,000 bitcoin was stolen, due to a bug in their cold storage (likely, it wasn't truly cold, but automated filling a hot wallet).

In the last two weeks, they were probably attempting to see if there was any way to reverse or mitigate the damage. This is the point at which they have determined that there is no 'out.' They have no where near the amount of bitcoin required to even service withdrawals.

Edit: http://support.mtgox.com/ now shows that their Zendesk account has been terminated (a new account can be registered at that address).

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#68

Post by blhack »

It's really easy in all of this to pile a bunch of hatred on Mark Karpeles, but please, everybody remember that he is a human being, with real human emotions, and that those things really do hurt.

--

MtGox was (past tense is probably appropriate here, but for the sake of anybody who had coins there, I hope not) a startup that failed spectacularly, and publicly, and took a TON of peoples' money with it.

The transaction malleability thing was poor programming on the part of gox. Remember that we have ALL fucked up at some point, just luckily for most of us, "fucking up" doesn't mean losing than much of other peoples' money.

Mark, I doubt you read hacker news, but if you do: it's alright, dude. You bastard.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#69

Post by dnautics »

pedalpete wrote: post #25

Slight drop over the last few hours http://bitcoinwisdom.com/ I'm curious if this will create a run on bitcoin or not? All of the funds from MtGox have in theory already been lost. There may be some fear that other networks will follow, but it may be rational that the price would remain level as one failed bank does not equal a failed currency.

until people figure out that permanently lost coins are deflationary...

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#70

Post by anigbrowl »

dnautics wrote: post #50
untog wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, sure. It would be pretty idiotic to suggest that every rule ever thought up was a good idea.

no but there's a pretty bad track record of currency collapse. Diocletian. Confederate States of America. Weimar. Yugoslavia. Argentina. Zimbabwe. Venezuela. Edit: Looking at my list, I should have listed one for every alphabet Letter, instead of going chronologically.

considering the time spans and number of countries, that's not actually that bad. Sure, there have been many other less famous examples, but the thing is that hyperinflation and currency collapse is actually quite rare. A lot of bitcoin boosters seemed to be under the impression that it was both inevitable and frequent. Also, this list is strongly correlated with catastrophic economic/political problems, as opposed to countries that were rolling along just fine until a sudden monetary-policy mistake.
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