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MtGox.com is offline

mtgox.com

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Re: MtGox.com is offline

#401

Post by Lazare »

tlrobinson wrote: post #284
djur wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as money without trust of third parties. Transacting under the auspices of a neutral, trusted third party is what money means. The Fed has the backing of a sovereign power with its own currency and is central to the largest national economy in the world, as well as a great deal of the international economy. If MtGox's earned trust was an apple, you could see the Fed's from space.

"Transacting under the auspices of a neutral, trusted third party is what money means." Can you explain this a little more? How do I need to trust a 3rd party when I use, say, gold as money?

If you're using gold as money, then you are certainly trusting many third parties.

Consider; what does using gold as money mean? Are we trading notional gold? Certificates that claim to represent gold in some vault? Obviously you need to trust the issuer of the certificates. Are you using minted gold coins? Obviously you need to trust the mint and more generally the entire financial system that equates those coins with a certain value. (The history of coin clipping, adulteration of coinage, and the results of having multiple currencies circulating at once[1] should show why this is important.) In fact, the only way that you don't actually need to trust a 3rd part is if...

...you're trading a known quantity of gold to someone else strictly for its value as gold. In which case you are actually trading in gold as a commodity; the technical term is barter. It simply does not fit the definition of money.

[1]: Eg, Gresham's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gresham's_law

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#402

Post by lmm »

jafaku wrote: post #397
lmm wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Please stop spamming your copycoin. Doge offers nothing new other than the picture of a dog. If you think more coins is better (whatever that means, for an infinitely divisible currency), you might as well just used Infinitecoin or whatever.

Nice, anyone who disagrees with you is a spammer? (And it's not "mine"; I'm not involved with or holding any cryptocoin)

It's not about the number of coins, it's about how the number changes over time. I think bitcoin's regressive, pyramidal exponential decay is a very bad thing. I'm much more willing to support a currency that has e.g. a constant mining reward/year. Doge is the only one I'm aware of that departs from the bitcoin model.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#403

Post by esemiss »

chii wrote: post #379
wpietri wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I clicked through and thought you were being too harsh. I mean, it can be fun to make toy implementations of things as an exercise. Doing an SSH server in PHP would be entertaining if you liked PHP. You'd learn something. And then I read that his hacked-together-in-3-days ssh server was for use in production. In a hosting service. Wow. Just wow.

well, is it better to have a hacked MVP released in production, or spend forever making it and never actually releasing it and then missing the window?

Would you want to fly in a hacked together MVP plane released to production? A similarly made bike in a park? Maybe.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#404

Post by saalweachter »

swalsh wrote: post #389
saalweachter wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really, really think this is a Silicon Valley bias. You all have had pivot! pivot! pivot! Nokia used to make tires! drilled into your heads to the point that the very idea of questioning whether a team is up to a challenge has been driven out.

"questioning whether a team is up to a challenge has been driven out." Of course, I assume you personally are up to ANY challenge, but its other people who need not try... they're the ones not talented enough.

By your logic, if I aspire to be a doctor, I should let all men practice medicine upon me. After all, if I am up to the challenge, they surely must be.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#405

Post by victorantos »

Frankly I am surprised so many people in this community were so incredibly stupid and blind about Gox. Months and months ago when I was deciding to get into BTC I researched the exchanges and people were complaining about difficulties withdrawing from Gox. I just had this instinctive feeling that it was a big red flag and I would rather deal with a regulated albeit slow broker (Coinbase) where I can actually get my money back.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#406

Post by ryanSrich »

mcv wrote: post #350
MildlySerious wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's being ignorant about it and tries to blame others for the mess MtGox caused. On a speculative note, he'll propably walk out of this with millions in his pockets, while his customers lost tons of cash due to this mess.

I'm surprised nobody is posting detailed traces of all the Mt. Gox bitcoins. They can be traced through the system, right? It should be possible to figure out how many Mt Gox still had when it went down. It should be detectable when he transfers them to a different account or sells them.

Honestly, Mt. Gox users are not that bright (of course with exception).

Either that or their entire IRC channel is full of trolls because some of the statements being made there are completely insane.

It's almost like they've never done any research about what Bitcoin actually is and just ran to Mt Gox to buy up this magical currency that they were told would make them rich. Just to note; I'm not talking about the Doge trolls either.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#407

Post by Keyframe »

saalweachter wrote: post #376
Keyframe wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Taken by other people. That's the more interesting note, IMO. My understanding of the problem is that some people went to withdraw money and due to transaction malleability MtGox thought the transaction failed and resent repeatedly. But the first transaction didn't actually fail and they received their money multiple times. Whether this happened to a lot of people a little or a few people a lot, and whether they were…

That's what I thought. Something is afoul about it and it's not only incompetence. I think there was intent and malice here. It will be rather interesting to see where this goes.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#408

Post by taejo »

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?

> What happened to the hard drives with the wallet numbers and private keys?

The hard drives are still there, but the wallets are empty. The coins were stolen.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#409

Post by untog »

prewett wrote: post #288
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.

They are insured in the US, but that's a relatively recent development. Before 1934, when your bank failed, you lost your money, which was why there were runs on banks during financial panics (1929, for example). But it is important to note that there is nothing special about a bank that makes it insured. You could set up a bank that is not FDIC insured. Maybe offer people a higher rate of interest the entice them to…

Something that happened in 1934 is a "relatively recent development"? Relative to dinosaurs, sure. Relative to the modern world? No.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#410

Post by abvdasker »

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.

According to Wikipedia, that 65b figure is inflated. It's more likely the total amount was somewhere between 10 and 20 billion[1].

That's obviously still a ton of money.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff

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