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New message from Mt. Gox

mtgox.com

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Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#91
post #57

What are they doing in the page source there? Storing a message in a cookie then refreshing the page to display it? The second time you visit the page, you'll get your cookie-stored statement. Almost seems like they want to be able to change their statement without previous visitors seeing the changes.

I don't see anything like that. Here's the page source for me:

MtGox.com

Dear MtGox Customers,

In the event of recent news reports and the potential repercussions on MtGox's operations and the market, a decision was taken to close all transactions for the time being in order to protect the site and our users. We will be closely monitoring the situation and will react accordingly.

Best regards,
MtGox Team

Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#92

I don't understand why people put their money/BitCoins in MtGox, if you researched them (previous to this incident) you would find a large number of complaints and shady dealings. Personally, I put my coins in BTC-e, Virtuex, and CoinBase (and thank god I did). Even though BTC-e and Virtuex seemed fairly sketchy they still allowed me to withdrawal my coins with no issue.

Why not set up a secure offline wallet and keep your coins there?

Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#93
post #81
post #42

I'm one of those who lost a good amount on MtGox. It wasn't in there because I thought they are a bank, I put it there because I like to speculate from time to time. As such I was prepared to lose most if not all of it anyway. I didn't expect things to go wrong so thoroughly, but still that was the premise of my deposits there. So from that perspective, I'm not really mad about them losing the money. It's unfortunate…

How much did you lose on it?

Enough to feel uncomfortable telling people the amount ;)

Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#94
post #38
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's what people say, yet I haven't seen lots of executives in large companies where scandals have occurred suddenly getting randomly killed by hitmen in the streets. And Madoff's still alive, too.

Well, a gentleman flew all the way from the UK to Japan to have a polite chat with him, so it's not outside of reality for someone to do bad things to him fairly easily. Beyond that, CEO's of large companies are generally under guard when the crap hits the fan, and Madoff was protected by police. I wouldn't be surprised if the "CEO" of Mt. Gox soon finds out what a tire iron tastes like.

Death threats on HN. That's a first.

Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, regulated or not, that would almost certainly qualify as wire fraud, at the very least.

Does "wire fraud" even exist anywhere else in the world besides the good old USofA?

In most of the world it may be just plain fraud; the "wire" distinction is a justification for invoking the interstate commerce clause and, thus, federal jurisdiction in the US.

But its still probably illegal just about everywhere.

Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#97

CONSPIRACY THEORY TIME. What if Mt. Gox didn't really lose a post-Panamax boatload of Bitcoin (just a small amount)? They're just manufacturing a panic so they can buy Bitcoins at fire-sale prices, declare "We have all the BitCoin we need after all, we fixed our bug, everything's fiiiine" and maybe even turn a cash profit on the upside?

Or they're fucking up comms as best they can deliberately in order to drive the price down, so they can buy enough btc to "repay" everyone.

Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#98
post #18

The current message means absolutely nothing: "Dear MtGox Customers, In the event of recent news reports and the potential repercussions on MtGox's operations and the market, a decision was taken to close all transactions for the time being in order to protect the site and our users. We will be closely monitoring the situation and will react accordingly. Best regards, MtGox Team"

Sounds very passive. "Closely monitoring"? "React accordingly"? As if they were not the ones running the site.

The poor grammar in the first sentence suggests someone for whom English is a second language.

That passive voice is maddening!

Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#99
post #10

I would not like to be in the shoes of mtgox CEO... He lost about 400M USD, some of them probably belonging to shady peoples (drug dealer, mobs, etc.)

Thought experiment.

So your biggest crooked customer has a balance of 10% of your net liabilities. And someone steals 1/3 your net worth so you're basically outta business and the biggest crook on the planet just took a 1/3 haircut, which he's not going to be too happy about.

You tell the biggest baddest gangster of a customer, you can more than triple his current balance at the mere cost of guaranteeing your personal safety in perpetuity and having a crony of his and a crony of yours re-enact the 1/3 theft. After all, you just figured out what happened, and its not going to be too hard to arrange for it again two more times.

So that leaves the biggest crook in the world in debt to you, a fat bank account, and lifetime guarantee of protection from said crook.

Do some deals with the crooks competitors to make sure they know he gave you his word, so if he ever goes back on it they'll never trust him again. Or run the same scheme three times and make sure the top three crooks know that the enemies of the guy who kills you off are going to split your fortune if you croak.

Or lets say you make "all" the BTC disappear but you actually have enough control to reimburse every player big enough and criminal enough to actually hurt you, with millions left over for yourself.

Your biggest customer is about to get powned as a money launderer by the DEA/IRS and his only legal hope is to make your records look untrustworthy. Would any court of law trust MtGox's records after today? I guess there's no proof anymore that some bad guy was about to get powned. Well, there's an easy way and a hard way to do that, at least WRT collateral damage to the execs family members. And if you still tangentially somehow have control of the "lost" money, nobody important need actually hold a grudge.

I'm not saying any of this is true or even possible, although it could be the plot of GTA:7 or similar. These are better hollywood movie plots than the formulaic dreck we're forced to endure.

Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#100
post #53
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also mentioned buying back at low prices in one of those leaked documents. What I don't understand is why people would continue selling at any reasonable volumes at firesale prices when other exchanges are doing "fine" (Bitstamp down ~25% vs 2 months ago). Unless I misunderstand it, the malleability bug won't prevent sending btc to other wallets. Is mtgox going to block their users from sending btc and only allo…

That's exactly what happened. No coins were allowed to be withdrawn from MtGox. That's why people panicked and sold at firesale.

Ah ok, thanks for clarifying. I had assumed the freeze starting a few days ago applied to trades as well but clearly not.
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