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MtGox.com is offline

mtgox.com

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Re: MtGox.com is offline

#221

Post by gst »

blhack wrote: post #68

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 transacti…

People aren't hating Mark Karpeles because he messed up, but because of the completely absurd response to this situation.

Optimal response: A message to the customers as soon as the issue is noticed: "Due to a technical problem we lost X amount of Bitcoins, which means we currently can't cover all of the deposits. Trading has been disabled while this issue is investigated. [Some external financial company] is in charge of coordinating withdrawals of existing customer funds."

Actual response: Blaming the issue on the Bitcoin protocol. Trading stays active althought the price tanks. Customers can still deposit funds although it's clear that they won't be able to withdraw it. Released announcements try to hide information about insolvency and try to give hope to the customers.

I didn't have any deposits at MtGox. As a customer I would probably have forgiven them losing the funds (if it was a technical issue), but I wouldn't have forgiven them they way how they handle public communication. Such a behavior is not acceptable.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#222

Post by dsuth »

aegiso wrote: post #99
blhack wrote: post #68

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 transacti…

If the rumors are true and Gox is tanking, I don't think Karpeles can ever adequately feel the aggregate pain that his incompetence in his role has caused MtGox customers. He deserves much worse than nasty internet comments. There are plenty of entrepreneurs on HN alone who given the resources Gox had could manage to not (unknowingly) lose half a billion dollars due to broken programming in the timespan that Gox did.…

> There are plenty of entrepreneurs on HN alone who given the resources Gox had could manage to not (unknowingly) lose half a billion dollars due to broken programming in the timespan that Gox did.

Easy to say. Nobody sets out to fail.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#223

Post by dobbsbob »

panarky wrote: post #115
blhack wrote: post #68

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 transacti…

There is no fucking way 700,000 BTC disappears with nobody noticing. This must have been building for a long time. Was there never any attempt to compare BTC in wallets to customer balances? Or did MtGox know about this problem, and hope to cover it up over time? Either case is at least gross negligence if not criminal fraud. Yes, we all fuck up at some point. But I don't pretend to be a surgeon and perforate a patie…

Most people who've been around bitcointalk and bitcoin-otc know not to use MtGox since circa 2011 when their stunning incompetence was at it's height. Sadly there were plenty of media shill articles when Btc skyrocketed to $1,000 last year who were promoting them as the "Biggest Bitcoin exchange" without pointing people to relevant bitcointalk threads on what a nightmare that site has been over the years.

If you read MagicalTux's personal blog you'd know to never trust anything he's coded too. http://blog.magicaltux.net/2010/06/27/php-can-do-anything-wh...

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#224

Post by parasight »

jellicle wrote: post #134
jmomo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not aware of any indication that this was a ponzi scheme. Saying that it was, without evidence, is misinformation. The loss of coins was unintentional on the behalf of MtGox. It may have been stupid that basic abc123 auditing would have probably revealed that there was a problem months/years ago, but evil has not been shown at this point in time.

> The loss of coins was unintentional on the behalf of MtGox. Your evidence of that is...

In dubio pro reo.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#225

Post by [deleted] »

erichurkman wrote: post #187
jamesaguilar wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On some level, if you lose many life savings worth of wealth through what I can only assume was gross negligence and incompetence, you should expect the hatred. It's not like you can lose hundreds of millions of dollars -- or even tens, for the pedants who want us to take the integral of the value through the buy side of the order book -- through an honest mistake. He deserves the infamy he's getting.

I dearly hope no one invested their life savings into Bitcoin. That said, I'm sure many did, as they tend to do into any investment that has potentially huge upswings.

[deleted]

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#226

Post by dnautics »

ryanobjc wrote: post #161
dnautics wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]"…

Bitcoin exchanges will have a run - they resemble fractional reserve banking, because all exchanges dont have enough USD (or other currency) to cover every bitcoin that people might want to trade thru the exchanges (that could be every single bitcoin in existence). This obviously results in the crash of the exchange rates, and probably a reduction in the usage of the currency as well. Getting paid in something that h…

1) agreed, but that run doesn't necessarily cascade to another exchange. If the value of btc collapses and people make a run on it, those other exchanges will likely be able to cover the bid/ask spread in any case because by and large they are merely mediating exchanges of $/btc that other people are holding.

3) the 'rational world' was meant to apply to the rate at which bitcoin recovers. In a rational world it would be instantaneous, we're not. It's certainly possible that bitcoin will go to zero as a result of this, but I treat that as a separate case. If you think that bitcoin will survive in the medium-term, my point is the resulting value should be higher than before Mt Gox. In a 'rational world' everyone would figure this out tomorrow, for certain values of irrationality it takes longer for this to suss out, and for extreme values, it goes to zero too fast.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#227

Post by joeblau »

Wow just watched this video of Kolin Burges from London who flew to Tokyo to find out, face to face, if he could withdraw his Bitcoins from Mt Gox. He makes an accurate prediction at the end, but this totally sucks for BTC. I was pretty optimistic about the future of it, but this is a pretty big speed bump.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob9Ak1t09Ao

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#228

Post by leot »

smellelderberry wrote: post #214
landryraccoon wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're talking about banks, they're insured and if the bank fails you still get your money back though.

You mean with that $25B that FDIC has to insure $10T of deposits? That insurance? http://www.occ.gov/topics/capital-markets/financial-markets/...

Depending on the nature of the risk, yes, that might be enough insurance.

Bank deposit insurance is fascinating: it largely exists to prevent bank runs, which are caused by people believing they won't get their money out. Having any insurance means that people have less reason to believe there's a chance they won't get paid back, which decreases the probability of a run on the bank, which decreases the risk associated with the insurance, which decreases the amount of insurance needed.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#229

Post by skyebook »

ars wrote: post #159
newbrict wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the "black bar" treatment

When someone prominent in the hacking community dies HN puts a black bar at the top of the page as a memorial. It's not appropriate here. A human life and money are not comparable no matter how much money.

Thank you for the sanity check, seriously.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#230

Post by ajkjk »

aegiso wrote: post #99
blhack wrote: post #68

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 transacti…

If the rumors are true and Gox is tanking, I don't think Karpeles can ever adequately feel the aggregate pain that his incompetence in his role has caused MtGox customers. He deserves much worse than nasty internet comments. There are plenty of entrepreneurs on HN alone who given the resources Gox had could manage to not (unknowingly) lose half a billion dollars due to broken programming in the timespan that Gox did.…

Well, that's pretty cruel of you.
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