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What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

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Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#31
post #9

I think that his points against transaction malleability are invalid: - technical one - Bitcoin clients have a 100 ms delay before they relay messages. An attacker can compile a modified client that doesn't have these limitations and successfully outrun the rest. It was shown once that an attacker managed to successfully modify most of Bitcoin transactions on the network for some time in February - social one - IIRC…

Author here. I think there is some subtlety around the technical point that may be getting lost. Ittay Eyal and I were the ones who discovered an attack against Bitcoin called selfish mining, where we showed how a miner could earn more than his fair share. This attack did not require, but could benefit from, the attacker racing against honest participants on the peer-to-peer network. Some members of the Bitcoin commu…

Thank you for the reply. I don't have any proof for the automatic reissuing on hand at this moment, I've read about it on Bitcointalk forums where several people claimed that they observed this behavior.

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here. I think there is some subtlety around the technical point that may be getting lost. Ittay Eyal and I were the ones who discovered an attack against Bitcoin called selfish mining, where we showed how a miner could earn more than his fair share. This attack did not require, but could benefit from, the attacker racing against honest participants on the peer-to-peer network. Some members of the Bitcoin commu…

Why do you assume that any coins were in cold storage? That's just another unverifiable assertion.

Gox mentions this on a number of occasions, not the least in 2011 when they detailed how their cold storage system worked with split keys.

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#33
post #21
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how you took that last line completely out of context, the author was clearly tongue-in-cheek with that statement, here is the what comes immediately after that sentence: > The community does not take itself seriously. Most importantly, no one pretends that Doge is an investment vehicle, a slayer of Wall Street, or the next Segway. No one would be stupid enough to store their life savings in Dogecoins.

>>No one would be stupid enough to store their life savings in Dogecoins. Author must have missed that Reddit thread on Gox horror stories. There were some really awful decisions people made with their savings. I bet someone is going to make a similar mistake with Doge. We already have folks like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7166318

Where are all these horror stories?

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#34
post #8
post #4

> But elliptic curve crypto is not one of these topics. If the code can generate a handful of Bitcoin account numbers and corresponding keys correctly, there is hardly any reason why it cannot do so for all account numbers and corresponding keys. Not totally true, not every input can yield a valid private key. The very upper ranges of the private key space are limited, as only integers 0x0 through 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF…

It's funny how you took that last line completely out of context, the author was clearly tongue-in-cheek with that statement, here is the what comes immediately after that sentence: > The community does not take itself seriously. Most importantly, no one pretends that Doge is an investment vehicle, a slayer of Wall Street, or the next Segway. No one would be stupid enough to store their life savings in Dogecoins.

>> No one would be stupid enough to store their life savings in Dogecoins.

Yet. No one would do that - yet.

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#35
I would think that insider theft is one of the least damaging outcomes for the Gox depositors.

Unfortunately I don't know that the Japanese government is going to have the technical expertise to properly identify the theft and track where the coins have moved. I can't imagine that the thieves have managed to squander all of the 750k BTC.

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#36
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>No one would be stupid enough to store their life savings in Dogecoins. Author must have missed that Reddit thread on Gox horror stories. There were some really awful decisions people made with their savings. I bet someone is going to make a similar mistake with Doge. We already have folks like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7166318

Where are all these horror stories?

/r/bitcoin probably.

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#37
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>No one would be stupid enough to store their life savings in Dogecoins. Author must have missed that Reddit thread on Gox horror stories. There were some really awful decisions people made with their savings. I bet someone is going to make a similar mistake with Doge. We already have folks like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7166318

Where are all these horror stories?

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1yv26o/gox_horror_s...

Here are some of my "favorite"(anger inducing) comments:

▻ Poor student, all he had... http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1yv26o/gox_horror_s...

▻ Son's college fund wiped out... http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1yv26o/gox_horror_s...

▻ Used many credit cards... http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1yv26o/gox_horror_s...

▻ Holding coins for a friend(even outside of bitcoin, don't hold money for friends. Usually won't work out)... http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1yv26o/gox_horror_s...

▻ Everything he owns is gone, doesn't know how he's going to eat... http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1yv26o/gox_horror_s...

▻ Sold his car, put everything he had into bitcoin... http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1yv26o/gox_horror_s...

▻ This one is probably fake, too dramatic... http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1yv26o/gox_horror_s...

▻ This guy lost $8,550 of his wife's money... http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1yv26o/gox_horror_s... ..and if you read all his comments on that thread, I get the impression he's going back in without his wife's support.

Just keep on reading that whole post. At first you'll feel sorry for them, but quickly that sorrow will turn into anger. "Why the @!#&^%$ did you do that?!" is what you'll be repeating in your mind over and over. But none of them beat this one by a Reddit admin from awhile back:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1c525e/ive_lost_mor... ...just the title alone is epic.

Bitcoin, and all the services around it, are gambles. Never gamble with money you can't afford to lose. Reddit should have a huge red glowing banner at the top of /r/bitcoin reminding their users of that at least weekly.

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#38
post #9

I think that his points against transaction malleability are invalid: - technical one - Bitcoin clients have a 100 ms delay before they relay messages. An attacker can compile a modified client that doesn't have these limitations and successfully outrun the rest. It was shown once that an attacker managed to successfully modify most of Bitcoin transactions on the network for some time in February - social one - IIRC…

Author here. I think there is some subtlety around the technical point that may be getting lost. Ittay Eyal and I were the ones who discovered an attack against Bitcoin called selfish mining, where we showed how a miner could earn more than his fair share. This attack did not require, but could benefit from, the attacker racing against honest participants on the peer-to-peer network. Some members of the Bitcoin commu…

Good article - it's helpful, and for me it adds clarity to the discussion.

Parsing recent industry statements, it's notable how Coinbase and peers have been using a rather loaded term of art, "bad actor", in reference to Mt. Gox, both directly and indirectly.

Yet even after all that has happened, many are still basing their conclusions on Mt. Gox's past public statements.

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#39
post #29

By the way have you seen Mark Karpeles public apology in Tokyo? (20 seconds in) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15IZtzWOzRU So he is French, educated in Paris and living in Japan since 2009? Speaks French, English and Japanese. Sounds interesting, he's no dummy.

Speaking three languages doesn't qualify him as a competent developer.

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#40
post #39
post #29

By the way have you seen Mark Karpeles public apology in Tokyo? (20 seconds in) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15IZtzWOzRU So he is French, educated in Paris and living in Japan since 2009? Speaks French, English and Japanese. Sounds interesting, he's no dummy.

Speaking three languages doesn't qualify him as a competent developer.

Cannot comment on his code. Or how he operates a business.

Just that he seems rather smart in general, or rather not stupid.

I wonder what the motivation to move to Japan was.

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