New message from Mt. Gox • Hacker News Board

Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#101

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Feb 25, 2014, 5:03 PM UTC

amvp wrote: post #79

bdcravens wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insolvent != no money in the bank

Yeah, but shouldn't they try to pay people back before they spend what's likely tens of thousands of dollars on what amounts to superficial marketing? I mean, it's not even much of a re-brand!

> Yeah, but shouldn't they try to pay people back before they spend what's likely tens of thousands of dollars on what amounts to superficial marketing?

"Should" based on the assumption that they are profit-maximizing entity, or "should" based on the assumption that they are a moral actor? Because, you know, the answers are quite different.

Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#102

Post by kordless » Tue, Feb 25, 2014, 5:04 PM UTC

cylinder wrote: post #78

sneak wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or at the very least they don't give a crap about anything at all They were the market leader, with substantial revenue and lots of cash flow. Why they didn't prioritize hiring some people and securing their platform is still beyond my understanding. It's up there with the $100+ billion in cash Apple is evidently not using to hire enough code reviewers or implement adequate security processes for their most importa…

How do we know they didn't just steal it all themselves?

You don't, but that doesn't make it true if you remove your question mark.

Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#103

Post by ChristianBundy » Tue, Feb 25, 2014, 5:05 PM UTC

jorisw wrote: 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 that either, here's the code I'm seeing: https://gist.github.com/christianbundy/9213200

Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#104

Post by enscr » Tue, Feb 25, 2014, 5:05 PM UTC

Udo wrote: 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…

There was a comment on some forum about a guy who interviewed with them for a job & learnt that they don't have a testing environment. They just push changes to the production code & see how it goes. In my opinion, they were asking for it.

Edit : Here's the link : http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_a...

Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#105

Post by BlackDeath3 » Tue, Feb 25, 2014, 5:06 PM UTC

thrillgore wrote: post #94

AmVess wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh, please. How sensitive can people get? That was hardly a threat.

Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#106

Post by pmorici » Tue, Feb 25, 2014, 5:07 PM UTC

JackFr wrote: post #67

jcampbell1 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably when Mt Gox's bank accounts get seized, whatever money in them will be used to pay off accounts with real currency balances. The people holding bitcoins will get nothing.

That brings up a point of confusion for me. As understand the news, Mt Gox didn't lose a single dollar. They lost 700K BTC. It is neither being pedantic, nor beside the point that this is not the same as $400M. It is the point.

That's not entirely true, about $5 million was seized by and is currently being held by the US government and another $5 million is being held hostage by CoinLab a US company that once had a deal with Gox to handle US customers but things went south along the way and they are not being sued by them instead. So about $10 million is tied up in less than ideal situations.

Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#107

Post by TillE » Tue, Feb 25, 2014, 5:07 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #44

When has the passive voice ever actually worked to calm a lynch mob?

I'm getting a little tired of every (justifiably!) angry group of people being called a "lynch mob" by default on the internet.

You might want to wait for something resembling actual violence before applying such an ugly characterization. A bunch of people saying mean things is not a "lynch mob".

Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#108

Post by TophWells » Tue, Feb 25, 2014, 5:07 PM UTC

amvp wrote: post #79

bdcravens wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insolvent != no money in the bank

Yeah, but shouldn't they try to pay people back before they spend what's likely tens of thousands of dollars on what amounts to superficial marketing? I mean, it's not even much of a re-brand!

It's fertile breeding grounds for conspiracy theories, so I'm not going to post my elaborate speculation here. I'll just summarise it as "there are several people working at Mt. Gox and they're probably not very good at talking to one another".

Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#109

Post by enscr » Tue, Feb 25, 2014, 5:08 PM UTC

donquichotte wrote: post #8

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"

I wish there system was as strongly encrypted as this message.

Re: New message from Mt. Gox

#110

Post by kbenson » Tue, Feb 25, 2014, 5:08 PM UTC

VLM wrote: post #72

kome wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure there are still some anti-fraud regulations that would kick in... I don't know, but I don't think so. For the law you may be trading in monopoly money at your risk.

Intentional misrepresentation of fact for material gain doesn't seem to require currency of any sort. So Kome I'll make you a deal, I've got a ownership title for the Brooklyn Bridge and I'll trade this title to you for a case of beer... deal? Deal. Sucka. Then it goes to court. Assuming you can convince the court I knew the title was fake, and the case of beer is worth more than the fake title (maybe the title has a…

What's the fake in this case? They would be convincing people that bitcoins are worth less due to their actions (and it is worth less during this period, as people have lost much faith), buying at the reduced priced, and then covering their losses and supposedly restoring at least some faith in the market, once again raising prices. Where's the fake title? Where's the lie?