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"
That would be a good analogy if we couldn't transfer money online. But, you know, we can. The whole point of Bitcoin that's been touted in pretty much every thread, hoisted up by Libertarians like a giant flag, is that it's unregulated. And now, they're all discovering why we regulated in the first place.
yes, and regulated banks/exchanges have never been the centre of financial disasters.
It's really easy in all of this to pile a bunch of hatred on Mark Karpeles, but please, everybody remember that he is a human being, with real human emotions, and that those things really do hurt. -- MtGox was (past tense is probably appropriate here, but for the sake of anybody who had coins there, I hope not) a startup that failed spectacularly , and publicly, and took a TON of peoples' money with it. The transacti…
Yes, if I have any schadenfreude here it's not for him. It's for all of the people who smugly told us for years that Bitcoin is superior to our "legacy" fiat managed and regulated monetary system system in every way, and anyone who can't see that is an idiot.
Regulation hasn't stopped massive thefts of fiat, the amounts that bitcoin thieves can only dream of.
1) unlikely, since cascading bank runs are usually a result of fractional reserve banking. Depositors in a collapsed bank are unable to pay off loans in another bank, causing collateral damage to this other bank. 2) do other exchanges have security issues? Yes. Are they vulnerable? Only time will tell. I would take Mandelbrot's modeling of insurers (banks are "insurers" of sorts) in "the (Mis)behaviour of markets[0]"…
Bitcoin exchanges will have a run - they resemble fractional reserve banking, because all exchanges dont have enough USD (or other currency) to cover every bitcoin that people might want to trade thru the exchanges (that could be every single bitcoin in existence). This obviously results in the crash of the exchange rates, and probably a reduction in the usage of the currency as well. Getting paid in something that h…
Bitcoin and USD are not the same thing. Bitcoin exchanges need to have enough BTC to cover any accounts in BTC. They only need to have USD if they also have accounts in USD, which I suspect they don't.
If nobody wants to exchange your BTC for USD, then the value of the coin collapses, but not the exchange.
MtGox had to code custom software to interact with the bitcoin network because of their size. They coded it wrong and allowed a bug that could (and did) wipe them of their money. How is it the bitcoin network's fault?
> How is it the bitcoin network's fault? Because the protocol is broken with regards to tracking transactions and that has been acknowledged. Even the official implementation got it wrong. It needs to be fixed because the workaround just does not scale.
it's not broken at all. tx hashes are essential for looking up txs in the block chain, and can be used as addresses because they immutable once they are in the block chain.
before they are included in the blockchain, malleability aside, they aren't even necessarily valid (they could be double spend attempts, etc)
You guys have any idea on how to proceed if you (allegedly) have a few BTC and USD there? Yeah yeah I know, I read HN often but obviously I missed the "Stay away from Gox" posts :(
Contact a lawyer that knows something about Japan maybe? I'd say you are fucked.
Exactly how does this differ from the regular banking sector? I can demand 'proof' (whatever that might mean in this case) from Barclays that their books are balanced, but it doesn't mean they'll give it to me.
But they will give it to the regulators.
And that is the point. Bitcoin as an open system means we are ALL the regulators. Issue is we cant see their FIAT.
There is no fucking way 700,000 BTC disappears with nobody noticing. This must have been building for a long time. Was there never any attempt to compare BTC in wallets to customer balances? Or did MtGox know about this problem, and hope to cover it up over time? Either case is at least gross negligence if not criminal fraud. Yes, we all fuck up at some point. But I don't pretend to be a surgeon and perforate a patie…
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. Sadly there were plenty of media shill articles when Btc skyrocketed to $1,000 last year who were promoting them as the "Biggest Bitcoin exchange" without pointing people to relevant bitcointalk threads on what a nightmare that site has been over the years. If you read…
What you wrote made me think, "What would anyone in their right mind write on their blog that would make people think something like that?" So I clicked through, and read the first four words, that struck me in the face like a four layer wedding cake: You were right. Then I read the rest of the sentence, and that was like a ton of frosting being poured on the cake from a dump truck. Point well taken, sir!
You're confusing money with legal tender. But in any case, you can just travel to the Utah: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/30/us/30gold.html?pagewanted=...
> You're confusing money with legal tender. I don't think I am. Something can be generally accepted as payment for goods and services without it being legal tender. > But in any case, you can just travel to the Utah That article is about coins produced by the US mint, not lumps of gold. And even so, the article says, "so far, it is hard to find anyone who is using gold or silver to buy anything."
Isn't your argument equivalent to saying that Latin isn't a language, because it's hard to find anyone who uses it to chat?
It's really easy in all of this to pile a bunch of hatred on Mark Karpeles, but please, everybody remember that he is a human being, with real human emotions, and that those things really do hurt. -- MtGox was (past tense is probably appropriate here, but for the sake of anybody who had coins there, I hope not) a startup that failed spectacularly , and publicly, and took a TON of peoples' money with it. The transacti…
What I wonder is this: Were any bitcoins actually lost during the meltdown? I mean in the sense that nobody can get at them any more.
The blockchain should, sooner or later, allow the tracing of some of the coins, right? So if somebody still has access to them, there might be a chance to find out who?