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MtGox.com is offline

mtgox.com

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Re: MtGox.com is offline

#331

Post by Keyframe »

Noxchi wrote: post #243
haberman wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if I have any schadenfreude here it's not for him. It's for all of the people who smugly told us for years that Bitcoin is superior to our "legacy" fiat managed and regulated monetary system system in every way, and anyone who can't see that is an idiot.

MtGox had to code custom software to interact with the bitcoin network because of their size. They coded it wrong and allowed a bug that could (and did) wipe them of their money. How is it the bitcoin network's fault?

Wait, so where are people's bitcoins and cash then? Lost in void?

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#332

Post by chopmo »

hunvreus wrote: post #320
bartkappenburg wrote: post #309

Did anyone have a look at the (html) source? What does this comment mean? Maybe mtgox has been acquired by another party?

Just noticed that as well; that's weird indeed. Would that mean we'd actually see it being acquired?

I think we're being trolled :)

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#333

Post by decode »

icebraining wrote: post #315
cowls wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold is not money... you should say "when I use dollars as money"

Under what definition of money is that? Gold is and has always been money.

Try telling that to the cashier at the local grocery store.

Gold is not generally accepted as payment for goods and services in any culture that I know of (excluding jewelry and metal stores, of course). I'd be genuinely interested to hear about places where you can still take a lump of gold to a store and pay with it.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#334

Post by grey-area »

Lerc wrote: post #324
grey-area wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please read this (written by the owner): http://blog.magicaltux.net/2010/06/27/php-can-do-anything-wh...

There doesn't seem to be any information about trading cards at that link. If you are making the claim that they lacked the technical foundations to generate a major currency exchange, then I daresay you are correct. That does not necessarily follow from formerly being a trading card business. Is it Magic the Gathering specifically that you object to? If they were in the Hanafuda card business would they have had a b…

If you are making the claim that they lacked the technical foundations to generate a major currency exchange, then I daresay you are correct.

Yes.

Is it Magic the Gathering specifically that you object to?

Clearly not.

People are only pointing to the likely incompetence of someone who starts off writing a card exchange (unimportant) and switches to a currency exchange (important and hard), says 'PHP can do anything', and wants to rewrite Bitcoin clients, an SSH server, a DNS server, and mail servers in PHP and then use them in production. That is all.

Content is probably still hosted at kalyhost.com accessible via this SSH server written in PHP, probably with multiple vulnerabilities he doesn't know about.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#335

Post by lmm »

songgao wrote: post #78

I know little about Bitcoin (and its community) so please correct me where I'm wrong: If MtGox can publish all stolen Bitcoin, would it make it impossible for whoever with them to use them? Although Bitcoin is not regulated, stealing them still violates laws right? And since everything is kept track by the entire Bitcoin network, whoever uses it can't keep anonymous.

Stealing them may or may not violate laws - I'm not aware of an explicit precedent for this kind of "virtual property", but courts tend to look at intent, so if people treat them as coins and you treated what you were doing as stealing them that probably counts.

Yes, the community could agree they won't accept the stolen coins. But for most bitcoin people the whole point is to avoid regulation. I mean, the primary use for bitcoin is buying drugs - if you start blacklisting coins that were stolen, why not also blacklist coins that were used to pay for drugs, which is also illegal?

The basic cycle of the bitcoin economy is: drug user buys bitcoins for cash from someone who has them (either a drug dealer or one of the early "miners"), user buys drugs from dealer with bitcoins, dealer sells bitcoins for cash.

Is the user (who's already breaking the law) going to refuse to buy stolen bitcoins? Maybe, but if they're cheaper I'll bet they'll find a buyer; is every user going to check the blockchain history?

Is the dealer, who again is already breaking the law, going to refuse payment in stolen bitcoins. Maybe, but that sets a bad precedent for themselves. Maybe they'll charge a higher price for those bitcoins. But I suspect most of them won't care.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#336

Post by shawabawa3 »

Groxx wrote: post #290
songgao wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Is it mathematically impossible to trace back to source (and intermediate nodes) or is it just harder?

Done correctly, mixing N together means a strict 1/N chance of getting the source correct, and being more certain is impossible. Trivialized example: a friend and I split a single bitcoin each and send half to address A and half to address B, and we each control one address. Who owns A and who owns B? If A is used to buy something, am I the buyer or my friend? Since the private keys are generated offline, the fact th…

Aren't there mixing services that completely sever the connection to you?

i.e. Me and you both want to launder coins, so through this mixing service we essentially swap coins. Now my spends get traced to you and vice versa (obviously this works a lot better with more people involved)

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#337

Post by lmm »

AJ007 wrote: post #154
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) A "bank run" on an exchange should be a non event because all exchanges should have the money they claim to have. 2) I'm skeptical of any exchange I don't know a lot about 3) Is there another cryptocurrency that offers significant additional features over BTC? Right now I don't see it. In the future there is certain to be. Tomorrow Mt Gox's failure should hit the mainstream press. There should be very harsh covera…

> 3) Is there another cryptocurrency that offers significant additional features over BTC? Right now I don't see it. In the future there is certain to be.

I think doge offers more future liquidity (because they're allowing inflation) and a more user-friendly community. Is that enough to matter? I don't know.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#339

Post by smoyer »

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…

That's pretty "touchy-feely".

You can claim people should be nice, but most start-ups that fail spend investor's money and those investors KNOW their money is at risk. Nobody expects that their money is at risk when you put it into a savings account. Crypto-currency exchanges and wallets should be the same way ... perhaps it's not as safe as putting it under your mattress but close.

So in the business world, you have a responsibility to your customers and most sane companies carry E&O insurance to cover the unforeseen mistakes that they might make. It doesn't cover incompetence or negligence in many cases, and I'd classify what happened with Gox as criminal negligence.

Karpeles might in fact be sad, but I guess I just respectfully called him a criminal. Those with more "skin-in-the-game" are going to want to extract as much of their money as possible from him ... I'm afraid he's going to get sadder.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#340

Post by icebraining »

decode wrote: post #333
icebraining wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Under what definition of money is that? Gold is and has always been money.

Try telling that to the cashier at the local grocery store. Gold is not generally accepted as payment for goods and services in any culture that I know of (excluding jewelry and metal stores, of course). I'd be genuinely interested to hear about places where you can still take a lump of gold to a store and pay with it.

You're confusing money with legal tender. But in any case, you can just travel to the Utah: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/us/30gold.html?pagewanted=...
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