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MtGox.com is offline

mtgox.com

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Re: MtGox.com is offline

#481

Post by gnaritas »

dragonwriter wrote: post #478
gnaritas wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the particular kind of fraud under discussion shares the key features of a Ponzi scheme No it doesn't; the key feature of a Ponzi scheme is intentional fraud using a phony investment that doesn't actually exit. That's what a Ponzi scheme is. Bitcoin has nothing in common with a Ponzi scheme and all you people who keep repeating this non-sense need to go educate yourselves on what a Ponzi scheme actually is.

> No it doesn't; the key feature of a Ponzi scheme is intentional fraud on a phone investment that doesn't actually exit. Assuming the description of this as being a loss that, however unintended when it first started occurring, was known, concealed, and papered over by using other funds, it was an intentional fraud from that point on a phony investment that doesn't actually exist. > Bitcoin has nothing in common wit…

Again still wrong. Exchanges aren't investments; users aren't promised returns, they in fact expect that the chance of loss is high.

Just because fraud occurs does not a Ponzi make. Seriously, just stop repeating this complete nonsense. Ponzi schemes are very specific things and neither the Gox situation nor Bitcoin are Ponzi's in any way.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#482

Post by coldtea »

plesner wrote: post #434
coldtea wrote: post #298

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. And still, even 2 weeks ago, tons of people defended MtGox in HN threads, and said how it's a temporary glitch and they are very good exchange and such. Even when it was pointed to them that it's a service build by a guy with no actual knowledge of exchanges and no p…

I don't know, investors don't seem too put off by this Crazy Bob's name. http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/28/square-cto/

Yes, maybe because they didn't ignore all the context of my email, and did checked that he has serious credentials, like:

"he had been leading the core library development of Android while at Google".

And that he is just but one of the players at Square, including guys like a well known VC and Twitter's cofounder.

If "CrazyBobs" was an unknown in the industry guy and his CV was like "I have done some fun projects, like a PHP mailer" and he was the major person behind the company, no investor would have touched it with a barge pole.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#483

Post by BlackDeath3 »

haberman wrote: post #415
panarky wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were you that guy in 1989? "My schadenfreude is for all of the people who smugly told us for years that ARPANET is superior to our 'legacy' post office and ham radio in every way"

People in 1989 didn't exhibit a nearly religious devotion to ARPANET as perfect in every way, going so far as to say things like "Bitcoin cannot fail, it can only be failed" (do people realize how absurd this sounds?) When every one of Bitcoin's characteristics (deflationary money supply, irreversibility of transactions, completely public record) is touted as an unmitigated advantage, it is irritating to those of us…

I understand a certain irritation with a lot of "Bitcoiners", but don't let contempt of Bitcoin extremists make you an anti-Bitcoin extremist.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#484

Post by dragonwriter »

gnaritas wrote: post #481
dragonwriter wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No it doesn't; the key feature of a Ponzi scheme is intentional fraud on a phone investment that doesn't actually exit. Assuming the description of this as being a loss that, however unintended when it first started occurring, was known, concealed, and papered over by using other funds, it was an intentional fraud from that point on a phony investment that doesn't actually exist. > Bitcoin has nothing in common wit…

Again still wrong. Exchanges aren't investments; users aren't promised returns, they in fact expect that the chance of loss is high. Just because fraud occurs does not a Ponzi make. Seriously, just stop repeating this complete nonsense. Ponzi schemes are very specific things and neither the Gox situation nor Bitcoin are Ponzi's in any way.

> Exchanges aren't investments; users aren't promised returns, they in fact expect that the chance of loss is high.

They expect the chance of trading losses is high, they don't expect that the loss of balances on account is high (in fact, they are generally promised that, except for specified transaction fees, such accounts will retain their value.)

There's a slight difference from what goes on in a traditional Ponzi scheme in that the former promises a positive return which is only met for as long as external funds come in to cover the returns (plus the funds being extracted by the fraudster) where the suggestion about Mt. Gox is that their Bitcoin accounts were promising a zero return, which could only be met for as long as external funds were coming in to cover the BTC being stolen. Which isn't strictly the same thing as a traditional Ponzi scheme, but is a very closely related form of fraud.

Note that I'm not saying this is what happened at Gox -- I have no way of knowing that. But what has been suggested is very much like a Ponzi scheme.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#485

Post by meowface »

dfc wrote: post #400
meowface wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet you leave descriptive commit messages.

How is this related to my comment?

Your advice for specifying that he give an explanation for his edit generally goes above what most people do when they edit posts.

So I am assuming you are probably someone who applies that same sensitibility to writing descriptive commit messages, because similarly to people editing Internet posts/comments without specifying what they changed, many people leave very vague or meaningless commit messages.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#486

Post by gnaritas »

dragonwriter wrote: post #484
gnaritas wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again still wrong. Exchanges aren't investments; users aren't promised returns, they in fact expect that the chance of loss is high. Just because fraud occurs does not a Ponzi make. Seriously, just stop repeating this complete nonsense. Ponzi schemes are very specific things and neither the Gox situation nor Bitcoin are Ponzi's in any way.

> Exchanges aren't investments; users aren't promised returns, they in fact expect that the chance of loss is high. They expect the chance of trading losses is high, they don't expect that the loss of balances on account is high (in fact, they are generally promised that, except for specified transaction fees, such accounts will retain their value.) There's a slight difference from what goes on in a traditional Ponzi…

That's not a slight difference, that's a fundamental difference. Lacking a promise of a positive return and lacking a fake investment opportunity, no fraud can be classified as a Ponzi; it's simply fraud or theft. There's absolutely nothing Ponzi like about this Gox situation; nothing. Ponzi's require both of those elements, they are the definition of what a Ponzi is.

From Google:

Ponzi Scheme: a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise (the definition) is fostered(i.e. the mechanism) by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.

Many valid things use the mechanism of new money paying out earlier investors; that alone is meaningless and not a defining trait of Ponzi's. All insurance also does this. A ponzi is literally "a form of fraud carried out by the belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise"; that's it.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#487

Post by spacehome »

eldavido wrote: post #446
wpietri wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting on my Lean Startup hat for a sec, I would even say that the M could allow for losing money. If it's early on and your customers are all in the 2 1/2% of innovators, they will put up with a little of that. Certainly if you make them whole, but probably even without. That said, "flawless accounting" would be very high up on my feature list. I think the failure here isn't launching without perfection; it's opera…

I've been wondering whether the "M" in "MVP" is for minimum quality, or minimum feature scope. I think minimum feature scope doesn't necessitate poor-quality software, just solutions that don't do everything for everybody. It's much better to ship a small feature set with very high quality, IMO, than a big feature set with low quality.

Minimum viability?

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#488

Post by goldilox »

jafaku wrote: post #479
lmm wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fro…

> Doge is the only one I'm aware of that departs from the bitcoin model. It's not. Maybe you should try to get informed a bit before sharing your opinions based on whatever meme you saw on reddit.

Maybe try and add something to the conversation or educate him instead of trying to show how big your dick is because you shit on reddit/dogecoin.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#489

Post by ultramancool »

danielweber wrote: post #418
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.

The part of "running a SSH server that you wrote in PHP in production" that is scary is not the "in PHP" part. It's the "that you wrote" part. No matter what language you write it in, you are going to mess something up. The OpenSSH guys have messed up working a lot smarter and more diligently and with more time than you have.

This is so very true, OpenSSH is probably one of the most secure pieces of software around. It has extremely high value to attackers, yet has had extremely few remote security holes in its lifetime.

They've invested years and many talented people in developing such a piece of software.

If you want to write your own ssh server in php, you should probably consider your motivation and how you can re-use their code or operate through it instead if your purpose if anything other than experimentation.

Re: MtGox.com is offline

#490

Post by whatever1029 »

Everyone on this thread is being way too nice about this guy. He deserves to go to jail for a very long time. He knowingly took money from people even after problems were discovered, and said nothing about it. And after the implosion he has still not fessed up to the truth! He deserves what he gets. I'm sure a movie will be made about this debacle st some stage in the future, but this chap doesn't get to become a motivational speaker in the end.
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