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MtGox.com is offline

mtgox.com

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Re: MtGox.com is offline

#251

Post by joeblau »

jotux wrote: post #158
jellicle wrote: post #130

So Mt. Gox has defrauded its users of half a BILLION dollars in value. And, they've put out enough misinformation that those users believe "it wuz a hax0r that did it". So no cops, no jail sentences. I believe this will go down in history as the largest fraud ever committed. If you've been following this closely and you aren't writing the book already, you're missing out.

>I believe this will go down in history as the largest fraud ever committed. Madoff was estimated at ~$65b, the Enron settlement was $7.1b, Lehmen folded with $600b in assets, Comp-u-card overstated income and costed investors $14b, etc. etc.

Exactly. This is just warmup exercise compared to the pros.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#252

Post by baddox »

djur wrote: post #216
baddox wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're saying that having rules (as opposed to having no rules) is a good idea, but only if there is some mechanism that makes good rules more likely than bad rules.

That mechanism is called "liberal democracy". It's been fairly effective so far.

I don't think it has been that great.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#254

Post by gatehouse »

FireBeyond wrote: post #171
panarky wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Barings, Leeson was trading futures contracts and he was also responsible for accounting for his own positions. There was no segregation of duties, no mark-to-market. At MtGox, it should be much simpler to (1) add up all customer balances, (2) add up all BTC in hot and cold wallets, and (3) compare those two numbers. If the numbers differ by more than timing differences, shut it down, debug it, and prevent a small…

Which is just another aspect of the travesty - that someone responsible for routinely trading tens of millions of dollars per transaction should feel the need to cover up a $20,000 loss.

Leeson tried to cover it up because he wasn't supposed to be trading at all, he was supposed to a broker and he decided to try to make some extra money.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#255

Post by camus2 »

EGreg wrote: post #238
camus2 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gox coins are gone,along with all the customer fiat.

What do you mean gone? What happened to the hard drives with the wallet numbers and private keys? How hard is it to transfer them via the blockchain transactions to their owners?

Let me put this clearly : Gox customers were robbed,either by Gox itself or by a third party. There is no "transfer to the owners".

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#256

Post by dobbsbob »

panarky wrote: post #165
sheetjs wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no fucking way 700,000 BTC disappears with nobody noticing. The history of Barings Bank is interesting, primarily because the main trader Nick Leeson was in the position to mask hundreds of millions of pounds of losses. In that case, no one noticed the roughly $1.3B loss because he was in a position where the internal controls didn't apply

At Barings, Leeson was trading futures contracts and he was also responsible for accounting for his own positions. There was no segregation of duties, no mark-to-market. At MtGox, it should be much simpler to (1) add up all customer balances, (2) add up all BTC in hot and cold wallets, and (3) compare those two numbers. If the numbers differ by more than timing differences, shut it down, debug it, and prevent a small…

>At MtGox, it should be much simpler to (1) add up all customer balances, (2) add up all BTC in hot and cold wallets, and (3) compare those two numbers.

Yes, considering Gox only had 2 bank accounts (and now are down to just 1 in Japan) I don't see how hard it is to compare balances and notice 744,000 coins are missing.

They claim that over time the cold wallet was cleaned out. If this is true then the first few customers would've complained hey I never got my coins, and he could've seen shenanigans happening due to his php wallet implementation and halted all trading. Then thousands more customers. I find it hard to believe 744,000 worth of coins disappeared over months and nobody noticed until recently

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#257

Post by VMG »

haberman wrote: post #139
panarky wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't equate Bitcoin the protocol with dodgy websites. Unlike cash, radical transparency is entirely possible with Bitcoin. Bitcoin the protocol is as strong as ever, but customers of other sites should demand proof that their exchanges and online wallets actually control 100% of the BTC they claim to have in their custody.

Yes, I think my schadenfreude is for you.

Generally not a good trait to have, particularly not with something that has a tendency to bounce back.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/10/bitcoin-implodes-...

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#258

Post by hindsightbias »

djur wrote: post #211
jmpeax wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting the 3 trillion the US government stole from its citizens and gave to the banks.

TARP was only about 250 billion and it's been repaid with interest. It was neither stolen nor given. If you're including various stabilization programs the Fed put into place, that money was neither stolen nor given either. It was created using sovereign authority that is granted to the Federal Reserve by law. The citizens of the US would be immensely poorer today if the world financial system had collapsed into a se…

Economics is supposed to be a morality play. Except when it comes to Bitcoin.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#259

Post by VMG »

imperialdrive wrote: post #236
dobbsbob wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've been around. What is bitcoin?, and who cares about whatever the hell 'Mount Gox' is?? Can we all get back to work on something meaningful to the future, family, or nature... someone we don't know about made up a currency, and some other company we also don't know about made up an 'exchange' of this 'currency' and now we still don't know what's going on and some 'bitcoins' are missing... the most it's all worth i…

> I've been around. What is bitcoin?

From https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf‎:

Abstract. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending.

Of course, the coins are only yours if you hold the private keys. A promise of some Japanese exchange to send you an amount of Bitcoin in the future is not the same as owning a Bitcoin.

It's pretty interesting, you should read it.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#260

Post by logicchains »

smellelderberry wrote: post #199
baddox wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would any existing regulated system handle a similar situation to this? Or are you suggesting that bad things like this never happen in regulated systems?

Bailouts.

So instead of the the people who knowingly took a risk in investing in a risky prospect suffering, taxpayers who took no such risks have to foot the bill instead? Great.
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