51–60 of 107 posts
Where were these zealous prosecutors during the global financial meltdown in 2008? It would be nice if people went to jail for fraudelently representing mortgages. I'm fine with Gox getting investigated, too, but justice shouldn't depend on who you are.
Bitcoin as a concept would be attacked by governments under even the best of circumstances. I don't know why the major players in it have to be so dumb and/or unscrupulous as to draw this level of negative attention to it. As for Mt. Gox itself, its principle(s) will be aggressively prosecuted and sentenced. The New York US attorney behind the subpoena is Preet Bharara. Preet is responsible for shutting down online p…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The previously confiscated funds were directly related to the Silk Road busts. DHS officials inferred as much in their testimony on Bitcoin before congress. http://thegenesisblock.com/mt-gox-seizures-linked-silk-road-... The article implies this wasn't just issued today, it is just being reported now but it says it was actually issued "this month". You know what else happened in that time frame? Charlie Shrem was arr…
I was talking about what was seized from their accounts with Dowalla. Who seized that?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But I do not understand how a NY prosecutor can subpoena a Japanese business? If you offer services to, or engage in financial transactions with, a person in Jurisdiction A, Jurisdiction A can enforce its laws on you. You should not in any way be surprised by this fact.
That's all well and good, but Mt. Gox likely won't conduct any more business in NY. It gets even more problematic if they don't actually operate any legal entity in the U.S. The U.S. may enforce its laws upon U.S. entities, but it has no authority to do so on e.g. a Japanese one, unless a treaty/agreement exists that facilitates it. This is why China-only companies that engage in IP theft (or vice versa) aren't being…
The U.S. doesn't necessarily have to enforce its laws overseas to go after Mt. Gox. Japan has its own consumer protection laws, and presumably they have something to say about how Mt. Gox has been operating, too. So filing suit in a Japanese court is also a perfectly legitimate option.
Keep in mind this means nothing other than that a crime is being investigated. We know a crime took place. It's a good thing it is being investigated.
What we don't know is what crimes are being investigated and the article doesn't provide any of that information.
Bitcoin as a concept would be attacked by governments under even the best of circumstances. I don't know why the major players in it have to be so dumb and/or unscrupulous as to draw this level of negative attention to it. As for Mt. Gox itself, its principle(s) will be aggressively prosecuted and sentenced. The New York US attorney behind the subpoena is Preet Bharara. Preet is responsible for shutting down online p…
Bitcoin as a concept would be attacked by governments under even the best of circumstances. I don't know why the major players in it have to be so dumb and/or unscrupulous as to draw this level of negative attention to it. As for Mt. Gox itself, its principle(s) will be aggressively prosecuted and sentenced. The New York US attorney behind the subpoena is Preet Bharara. Preet is responsible for shutting down online p…
Where were these zealous prosecutors during the global financial meltdown in 2008? It would be nice if people went to jail for fraudelently representing mortgages. I'm fine with Gox getting investigated, too, but justice shouldn't depend on who you are.
I don't know if you remember, but many heads of banks were brought before congress to answer for the financial crisis. But it just turned out that many of them had not done anything illegal (or at least, not provably so).
Ok, at the risk of sounding completely naive... I've been following this story for a while, and it seems that no one can say for sure if this is embezzlement or gross incompetence. Based on leaked memos it seems to be most people are learning towards the latter, but I'm curious if there's any evidence either way. Based on the claimed transparency of Bitcoin, I would have expected embezzlement on this scale to have be…
Note that it could also be negligence and fraud. For example, they might have discovered the losses early but hushed them up in hopes of making it up later. That's a classic way massive financial issues happen.
However, the transparency of Bitcoin only helps if it's used that way. There have been proposals to develop approaches so that anybody can externally verify an exchange or "bank". But as far as I know, MtGox hasn't released enough information for other people to verify their story.
Ok, at the risk of sounding completely naive... I've been following this story for a while, and it seems that no one can say for sure if this is embezzlement or gross incompetence. Based on leaked memos it seems to be most people are learning towards the latter, but I'm curious if there's any evidence either way. Based on the claimed transparency of Bitcoin, I would have expected embezzlement on this scale to have be…
In the normal course of events I also would expect money disappearing over that long a timescale to have to have been embezzlement by an employee, and I would certainly consider that a plausible hypothesis here. On the other hand, reading the IRC chat transcript where Karpeles talks about how he's been under so much stress that it's ruining his health, it's obvious he made the classic mistake of trying to work so many hours he couldn't think straight.
So I'm guessing either he delegated the accounts to someone with no oversight and it was an inside job... or he refused to delegate, which meant the accounts were in the hands of someone too tired to be capable of coherent thought, which amounted to the same result as nobody looking at them, and an outside job would suffice.
Moral of this story for customers: don't risk money you can't afford to lose.
Moral of this story for founders: don't try to be a hero and do more than one job's worth of work, especially in a domain where a screwup may cause significant harm.