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I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

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Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#221

Post by haakon »

romland wrote: post #42
wiredfool wrote: post #3

So, There's something like 21 million bitcoin possible, and 6 million 'in circulation' now. A sell order comes in for 1/12 of total amount of outstanding bitcoin. And the system processes it, flashcrashes, and. 3) Profit, I guess. or 4) rollback. That's something like what would happen if someone dumped 1 trillion USD onto a bond exchange. There are only a couple entities who could do this. So how did 1/12 of the val…

Or it could, again, be stupidity by MtGox: This was a "test account" that had no real user attached to it. After all, if the trade is internal on MtGox, it's just a double in a database. If that is the case, then hell yes, I can see why MtGox would want this rollback.

> After all, if the trade is internal on MtGox, it's just a double in a database.

Dude, don't use double to represent money.

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#222

Post by _ikke_ »

wmf wrote: post #158
brown9-2 wrote: post #139

Why would anyone keep $8,000,000 USD in an account where you can only (according to the operator's "rules") withdraw $1000 USD a day? It would take 21.9 years to withdraw the full amount of that account.

The $1,000 limit is only for unverified accounts. Also, it's possible that the BTC was transferred into the account months ago when it was worth vastly less. Or the BTC was accrued through trading. Or it wasn't a real account...

According to MtGox they attackers ran into the $1000 limit, so it was not a verified account.

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#223

Post by icebraining »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #209
redthrowaway wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if I get word that Anonymous is planning on doing another blitz trying to create a rumour that Steve Jobs has died, would I be wrong to short Apple? It doesn't matter whether the forces moving the market are legitimate or not; you can't be faulted for playing it. What you're advocating might be moral, but it's not in keeping with the principles of a free market.

According to the misappropriation theory of inside trading, it seems you would be doing something illegal. Or perhaps you could be convicted of acting as an accessory to securities fraud. Whether it's moral or in keeping with the spirit of capitalism I guess depends on your interpretation of those two things. Personally I don't think capitalism has a finders-keepers rule when participants buy stolen goods, but you ma…

There's no inside information, it was all public. That case doesn't apply unless he knew something that only Mt Gox "employees" should know.

And I've never seen him say he should keep the money (he said they didn't even ask him the money back), he just disagrees with the decision of rolling back by force, which affects the whole Bitcoin market, not just himself.

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#224

Post by icebraining »

Tichy wrote: post #133
anigbrowl wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No he didn't. He withdrew them as proof of concept. Right now it's not even clear who he should give them back to. Furthermore, unless he caused the selloff there was nothing wrong with putting in his $0.0101 order. I suspect the bitter people on the bitcoin forum are the ones who had $0.01 orders in and assumed that fractional values would be rounded down the the nearest cent. They were hoping to make some easy mone…

As a proof of concept he could have withdrawn 0.01 BitCoin, no need to max out on MtGox limits. He writes he was aware that probably the hack is causing this and decided to take advantage of it. He should give the BitCoin back to MtGox, who would then proceed to roll back the transactions. Simple as that.

>no need to max out on MtGox limits.

He didn't. He could have withdrawn it all if he wanted.

>who would then proceed to roll back the transactions.

But that's the thing; as he said, regardless of his money, rolling back all the transactions sets a bad precedent. How can people trust Mt Gox now?

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#225

Post by enneff »

haberman wrote: post #201
haberman wrote: post #131

The community that for months has been preaching the virtues of the currency nobody can control is suddenly arguing that a middleman should roll back a bunch of free-market transactions. I decided a while ago that arguing against the "bitcoin has no problems" crowd was futile: people are too enamored with the idea to see problems like this until they happen.

From the message board: "Folks, in the grown-up world, trades are unwound when the market malfunctions. --Jeff Garzik, bitcoin core dev team" In the grown-up world, currency is controlled by governments, the financial industry is regulated, and money cannot be transferred large distances anonymously. The whole sales pitch of BitCoin is that it is free of all this control. Invoking "the grown-up world" to describe Bit…

This is an exchange issue, not a BitCoin issue. The exchange is entitled to behave however it wants. In fact, if it wants to remain profitable it should behave in a responsible, reliable way. In this case it means appeasing the majority of its users.

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#226

Post by tlack »

spitfire wrote: post #114
nupark2 wrote: post #56

If there is real money in bitcoins, then there should be a real engineering staff running a real, secure trading platform.

Sounds like a market opening there. Who wants to start an exchange? A true exchange, so you wouldn't have to front a dime, except for the virtual server. IE: You're only matching orders and taking a cut, not putting any skin in the game.

Let me know if you go through with this project. A very safe, legally codified, trustworthy middleman seems definitely necessary at this point.

I don't have the requisite knowledge, and probably not the fiduciary responsibility, but I'd like to at least observe your progress. Email in profile.

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#227

Post by Tichy »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #129
Tichy wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that the BTC being sold were stolen. It is a completely different thing from what you describe. If tomorrow it was discovered that the BitCoin protocol has been hacked and BitCoins are worthless, a rollback wouldn't be justified.

> The difference is that the BTC being sold were stolen. First up, who stole the bitcoins from whom? Second, why allow trades that you know that you won't honour and will instead want to roll back? Third, rarely the bank loses, why do they get a do-over just because they lost at playing at forex?

"First up, who stole the bitcoins from whom?"

Allegedly one account with a lot of BTC was hacked. The Bitcoins were stolen from that account.

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#228

Post by icebraining »

haberman wrote: post #201
haberman wrote: post #131

The community that for months has been preaching the virtues of the currency nobody can control is suddenly arguing that a middleman should roll back a bunch of free-market transactions. I decided a while ago that arguing against the "bitcoin has no problems" crowd was futile: people are too enamored with the idea to see problems like this until they happen.

From the message board: "Folks, in the grown-up world, trades are unwound when the market malfunctions. --Jeff Garzik, bitcoin core dev team" In the grown-up world, currency is controlled by governments, the financial industry is regulated, and money cannot be transferred large distances anonymously. The whole sales pitch of BitCoin is that it is free of all this control. Invoking "the grown-up world" to describe Bit…

Where exactly do you live? Many offshore banks offer privacy even against police authorities, and tax evasion reaches billions per year. The crackdown on that is fairly recent (5-10 years) and still very ineffective.

The main reason why Bitcoin can't be considered grown-up is because there aren't guys like Soisson showing up dead.

Re: I'm the guy who bought 259684 Bitcoins for under $3000 yesterday

#230

Post by [deleted] »

olefoo wrote: post #179
haberman wrote: post #131

The community that for months has been preaching the virtues of the currency nobody can control is suddenly arguing that a middleman should roll back a bunch of free-market transactions. I decided a while ago that arguing against the "bitcoin has no problems" crowd was futile: people are too enamored with the idea to see problems like this until they happen.

There appears to be a real market demand for a currency that is not controlled by a national government, especially one that has the features of cash-like transactions. That bitcoin is lacking as an implementation is immaterial, people want it for whatever reason.

[deleted]
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