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Hackers Allege Mt. Gox Still Controls "Stolen" Bitcoins
The Verge reports that "Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox lost $400 million worth of bitcoins in February. Its management said the amount was stolen after hackers exploited a transaction bug to divert the funds, but some of Mt. Gox's users are not so sure, suggesting instead that the exchange's owners pocketed the cash. Now, facing silence from those owners about the fate of the money and the methods by which 6 percent of all of the Bitcoin in the world could have been stolen, a group of hackers claims it has broken into the bankrupted Bitcoin exchange's network to get answers. ... Forbes reports that the group gained access to the personal blog and Reddit account of Mark Karpeles, Mt. Gox's CEO. The hackers used the platforms to post a message that claimed Karpeles still had access to some of the bitcoins that he'd reported stolen. In support of the claim, they uploaded a series of files that included a spreadsheet of more than a million trades, Karpeles' home addresses, and a screenshot purportedly confirming the hackers' access to the data." (The Forbes article on which the Verge report is based.)
I tend to think it has to be an inside job, that is being run by the folks pretty high up. Any kind of really really basic accounting and inventory control should have uncovered more coins going out than the transaction register indicates. This transaction malleability issue supposedly went on for months.
Even a badly run business should have detected a problem like the time frame of weeks, whenever their next month end comes up. It would have been impossible to balance the books, unless someone was simply not doing them or cooking them.
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Its obvious that MtGox itself pocketed the bitcoins, has been obvious for a long time. Proof is good, but this is no news.
Given how easily it would be to get away with the theft of anonymous cryptocurrency, I am surprised there aren't far more 'hacks' where exchanges rob all they can from their customers then close up shop. I know it has happened in China on much smaller scales, and I'm sure it will happen many more times, the question is who can you possibly trust with something that can be so easily disappeared.
Reddit users have verified via decompilation that the dump file includes a wallet-stealing executable. The executable attempts to send the wallet to a hard-coded IP address, whose ISP has been notified of this.
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Perhaps the thieves know there has to be a fall guy and it might as well be the CEO?
Anonymous assassination contracts, payable in crypto-currency.
The silly libertarian dream was shattered and their little fetish currency fuck'd. Now let us move with with more important things in life other than talking about little fucks who had no clue about money/transactions.
How does that work? What database dump requires an executable? All the ones I know simply create a very large human readable text file.
Who the fuck would execute an executable from a bunch of hackers who claim to have hacked a financial site related to a whole digital currency with said currency residing on the same machine as the one you are running the exe on.
And I thought people that ran kitten.scr.exe were idiots.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's really that simple. You don't store 250,000 USD in cash in your home. Bitcoins are like cash. I wouldn't hold more than several thousand in USD or any other physical currency. In fact I don't trust my bank with that much cash either beyond what I'd need when I need to spend it. Obviously I do need tens of thousands sometimes. Other than that it's stored in physical assets, like houses, cars, and other things. With insurance.
This happened a few years ago and is why I have nothing to do with Bitcoin - I lost quite a few coins, then decided it was too risky to be involved with until the exchange problem was figured out.
I am not sure why this is not more widely known, but there you go. I am not sure there is a solution to this problem.. without the involvement of traditional government.
..don't panic
I love how people are attacking libertarians over this. Bitcoins are not designed to be a 'safe' currency. It's like cash. There is no reason this should be a problem for those who understand when, where, and how to use it. I wouldn't maintain more in a Bitcoin wallet than I would store in my real wallet. For me that would probably be a few thousand in US currency.
Like cash Bitcoins have a downside. Bitcoins fluctuate in value. US dollars loose value over time. It's also not that easy to steal. Practice good security hygiene and there is little to no risk. Don't walk down back alleys with $2,000 in your pocket and you'll probably be fine. Apply the security updates for your OS and don't run Microsoft Windows / Mac OS X and you'll probably be fine.
Anonymity has value- but Bitcoins isn't totally anonymous. Nobody who gets Bitcoins is claiming it is. It's at best difficult to trace due to the current lack of people or facilities to do this. That doesn't mean it or a derived currency won't eventually have such anonymous or pseudo-anonymous features. Zerocoin is a proposed extension to the Bitcoin payment network that adds anonymity to Bitcoin payments. It's here. It exists. It might need some peer review, some beta testing, and people to formally implement it, but we're not that far off.
Are Bitcoins a libertarians wet dream? Almost... but it's not 100% perfect yet and I'd be skeptical of anybody claiming it is.
For all it's faults it's still more transparent then the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, the Peoples Bank of China or the Russian Goznak. "Because when the entire world is a credit-fueled ponzi scheme, these are the kind of numbers that matter". http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-11/matter-stunning-perspective-china-money-creation-blows-us-and-japan-out-water
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
The reporter probably doesn't understand what's going on at all.
1) the leaked data contains not only the mt.gox DB dump (which seems to be legit) but also the TibanneBackOffice.exe binary which is actualy malware which steals bitcoin wallets. So i wouldn't trust the hackers at all, they are scammers. See http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoi... for more details.
2) The article/the hackers claim that the mt.gox database dump shows that mt.gox should be in control of over 900k bitcoins and that it is an evidence that mt.gox is lying. Well it is evidence that the article/hackers don't understand anything. From the start, mt.gox is saying that because of a transaction malevability bug, their ballances in DB and their balances on their actual accounts were ouf of sync. This is the reason they didn't notice sooner. Their DB was showing everything was ok but in reality, their money was silently siphoned out of their accounts.
3) Karpeles (mt.gox owner) is probably staing silent because his lawayers told him so. Nothing unusual here.
Muslims:
They're bad
I admire your art of understatement.
There's something I don't understand. If they 'stole' the coins, they can't really trade them can they? Anyone I mean. As I understand every single transaction is tracked, so you can't really spend them without people knowing so right? Ok so you can hide your identity and whatnot, but wouldn't people know the instant these BTC are back on the market?
I this would have happened ten years ago, things would have been different.
Just sayin'.
I think a more appropriate observation might be "Ponzi schemes, pyramid schemes, everywhere."
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Hackers or the peddler of juvenile trading cards? Who you gonna believe?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The hackers who stole the bitcoins generated fake evidence to show that the owners of MtGOX still control the coins, thus muddying the waters for any investigation.
Really, any "digital evidence" is suspect because it can be digitally generated and/or manipulated.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Yeah, it's clearly all a ponzi scheme and the sky is collapsing around us and humans aren't making any progress and OH GOD SAVE ME FROM THE EVIL.
No, you sophomoric ideologue. Like all systems, the global money system is thoroughly corrupt - but not so corrupt that it isn't working. Bitcoin, on the other hand, is a pure ponzi scheme, because there is nothing of value being created - it's just old investors being paid with the input of new investors. Bitcoin is also extremely insecure, because it is based purely on, well, not telling anyone a secret which is written down somewhere. It's not an extra layer of protection - that's it. As a mathematician, I am embarrassed to see other mathematicians coming out in support of it.
I called it.
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
I reserve the right to call "backsies" if the current story proves false.
This assumes that Mt Gox had a way to verify funds. It turns out from the leaked source code, that the Mt Gox wallet used the same database and PHP code as the site front end, customer management, etc.
This database was their ONLY copy of their accounts, and if it was out of sync with reality, they had no real way of finding out.
Of course, it would have been trivial to deploy a "watch wallet" to monitor their accounts, and it should still be possible to audit the transactions in and out to see if they balance (as the wallet did record incoming/outgoing transactions in the database) - but this will be difficult due to the malleability issue, as their wallet would record a transaction as failed, if a mutated version succeeded.
Banks use fractional reserve banking to make loans, Bitcoin doesn't.
I bet the Anti gov't types would appreciate a justice system now. Too bad that costs money that they're unwilling to contribute.
So?
Bitcoins are completely unregulated, and supposed to be outside of government regulation.
Tough luck tax dodgers.
> "Mt. Gox lost $400 million worth of bitcoins"
"When confronted with the accusation that, in fact, it was he who had stolen the Bitcoins, the owner of Mt. Gox confessed, stating, 'In my defense, that wad was only worth 59 cents at the time.' "
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
People who claim modern currency is baseless don't understand economics. Modern currency is backed by *everything*. Gold, Real Estate, Cars, Businesses. Everything that is used for collateral against a loan becomes backing for our currency. Crypto-currency is based on scarcity like gold was, and thus makes a terrible general purpose currency because it's vulnerable to manipulations, and rigidity that make it easy for bankers and insiders rob everyone. The modern form of debt backed currency is the most flexible and least vulnerable to manipulation there has ever been. Our advanced modern currency has weathered the pressures of the current economic stresses extremely well, and dramatically lessened the impact of the current problems with our economy. If you want to look at what things where like with a scarcity backed currency, look at the economics of the US pre 1913. It's full of horror stories like the panic of 1893 and 1873, and even some events where bankers conspired to not give out loans to anyone to buy up houses cheap and re-sell them for a profit once they all agreed to give out mortgages again.
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The good thing about bitcoin is that you can track where the coins went. The id's of all the Mt. Box accounts will all be known when they end up going to court. If they stole money or coins we will know.
Your basic grasp of economics and history has no place here.
CryptoMuslims using cryptography to deal in cryptocurrency is cryptogay
I'm growing tired of the term crypto
I'm growing tired of the term crypto
You must be crypto-surfeited
absolutely NOT. wow - and how long have you been employed by the fed I wonder - bringing out the 'magic of 1913'? is that you janet? modern currency as a fiat currency is not 'backed' by anything other than what it says on the bills - legal tender.. that the currency is acceptable as a means of payment in the eyes of the court system and hence, the structural society in which we live (with the implicit backing of the powers that be within that system). the fact that hard assets are used as collateral to make loans in a given currency in NO way means that said currency is then 'backed by those hard assets'. that is simply a line of recourse to a default on the CREDIT extended - nothing to do with the currency used as a medium of exchange. I could just as easily lend someone bitcoins using their car as collateral. jeez. and to say that debt-backed currency is even relatively immune to manipulation is incredible - especially when we are living in an age where it stares people in the face every day under the guise of 'quantitative easing', rate-rigging, and lawsuits involving currency manipulation. i'm not saying cryptocurrency is a solution, but damn. before you start throwing barbs under the guise of being the one who understands economics, you should make sure you know what you're talking about, and/or put down the propaganda talking points.
You've misunderstood what currency backing means.
A something-backed currency means that there have to be a _fixed_ amount of physical entity somewhere in the possession of whoever decides to give out the currency. This is not the case with the current fiat. Sure it can be exchanged for all those things you mentioned but it's backed by none of them, some central bankers could agree to create ex nihilo enough money to give a billion USD to every bank account in the world. If you then reason that a dollar is backed by cars then either there would be a huge surplus of cars somewhere to allow this to happen, or someone managed to multiply the current global carpool a millionfold overnight.
How about encrypting your wallet and storing them at different locations? It's the same thing you do with backups of sensitive data.
You mean storing copies at different locations I assume.
I agree with you until you say that crypto currency is based on scarcity. _every_ currency is based on scarcity, the difference between fiat, and crypto is that, like you said, fiat is based on everything, while crypto is based on the trust and not much else of those who adopt crypto. A currency based on _everything_ has many more moving parts and thus is less prone to fluctuation.
The simplest explanation is that the MtGox executive stole the bitcoin.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
And special thanks to your mom for last night!
Taxes aren't legal theft. Unless you really think that road you drive on to your coffee shop is free.
That's not totally incorrect, but it doesn't translate into a currency. Government issued currencies are backed by the threat that if you don't pey your taxes (in their currency) they will take your possessions. (Which is why your original statement is partially correct.)
N.B.: I'm not saying that this is either good or bad. It has aspects of both. Which predominates depends upon the fairness of tax policy and tax collection enforcement.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
who the federal reserve is selling
you have quite a lot to learn about economics actually.
If your economics are so convincing, why not make the dollar optional and we'll see how well it competes? I could make anything a "successful" currency if I could force everyone else to use it, and then rely on bailouts to smooth out any resulting economic stresses.
> But it's just data and we're always told about how taking away somebody's exclusive rights to that data is not theft.
> taking away somebody's exclusive rights to that data is not theft.
> exclusive rights to that data
Now, do you see how simply copying is different from this, or do you need more emphasis, and may be dictionary entry for "exclusive"?
yea, bankers never again stopped giving loans to snatch up cheap real estate anymore....cmon all due respect, youll need to do a lot more to convince me bankers (and their counterparts in industry and government) have any less control over the proverbial faucet. Scarcity of access to our currency can be engineered in so many more ways in a debt backed system - you listed most of them - than ever before. I dont think its simply about the currency anymore. ftr, i never liked the idea of bitcoin either
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Imagine that bitcoin applications were coded to emply a blacklist of coins which were not accepted. Not even some mandatory "the people in control demand this" sort of thing, but just a voluntary feature, in that if you yourself have ethical issues with accepting stolen bitcoins, you can enable this feature and your bitcoin software will refuse to accept the coins. The mere fact that this feature exists, and that some people (even if not many) would use it, would make those coins less valuable. Maybe most people would accept them, but there'd be some who wouldn't, which would make them more of a hassle to deal with and so they'd be less valuable than coins without a history of having been stolen. The result of this is that sane people would naturally want to avoid those coins. So more people would activate this feature, which would make the coins even less valulable, and so even more people would activate this feature, until eventually the coins are worthless. Sure, the protocol would consider them just as valid as any other coin, but no one would be willing to accept them unless they were essentially given to them for free.
Similarly, the comments about "mixing services" wouldn't seem to apply. If you're rejecting coins based on moral issues, those issues aren't going to go away just because someone split the coin in half then joined it with two halves of a clean coin. Instead you're going to consider both of the new coins "tainted" and avoid them both.
Such a system might make large-scale thefts such as this essentially pointless since, while you might get the coins, you wouldn't get anything of value.
The prices of cars and houses are set at the limit of what people's credit ratings can support. It's all about whether you can afford the monthly payments, rather than the purchase price.
Without access to credit, the price of these things would have to fall. We might all be better off without the bankers taking their cut.
"Tokyo-based Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox lost $400 million worth of bitcoins in February."
The $400M is the same sort of BS number that the software anti pirating people use to generate interest in their cause (example: AutoCAD is widely pirated and costs several thousand dollars- every time it is pirated they count it as a loss of several thousand dollars business, except that most of the pirating is done by people who would never have purchased the software in the first place, so there is no loss of business). The only way there would be $400M worth of bitcoins is if the conversion of dollars to bitcoins minus the bitcoins to dollars conversion left $400M of real money tied up in bitcoins. I don't believe that has ever happened.
The $400M that is quoted is simply based on exchanging all the MtGox bitcoins for real money on the day they went missing, at whatever that exchange rate was. Of course, if someone had tried to convert all those bitcoins to real money in one day the exchange rate would plummet and they'd be lucky to get a tiny fraction of that $400M the press likes to throw around.
Bitcoins are as worthless, maybe more so than beany babies. At least beany babies can keep little kids and pets happy for a little while.
> For all it's faults
For all its* faults
it's = it is
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
... would mean we all either pay rent to the government or some rich landowner who owns all the housing stock ...
Heads-up: The vast majority of foreclosed homes were sold to "investors." We are already well on the way to a feudal-serf society, our housing owned by a lord and required to perform labor for a mega-corporation (patents being one of many ways that working for yourself is being abolished.) Cryptocurrency won't fix that..
This is itself a misunderstanding. Requiring you to pay you taxes in a given currency is a good way to *establish* that currency - but if that's the only value it has it won't be worth much, people will just collect X amount of monopoly money over the year and hand it over come tax season. It may even be a good investment medium since the value will predictably increase as tax day approaches, and then fall dramatically. It needs to take on a life of it's own before it becomes a "real" currency. The tax thing gives it a leg up over competing currencies in the region - so long as your currency is otherwise comparable to the others in circulation then the fact that you can't use the others come tax day makes them moderately less appealing. If you like to play inflationary games on the other hand, then more stable currencies will tend to dominate, and people will just buy "tax tokens" with the more common currencies as tax day approaches in order to minimize the loss of savings to inflation.
And the threat certainly doesn't count as "backing" in any financial sense - there's nowhere you can trade in your cash for some good old fashioned government violence. Nor is there even a bunch of violence locked away in a warehouse somewhere that must be increased when you print more money.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
You need to read up more on economics. Maybe swing by a local college and audit some economics courses.
No, most (all?) of the current in use today is backed by nothing. Well, nothing more than the idea that it's worth something.
I have a $20 bill in my pocket. It's not worth anything. There is a perceived value of it, so I can exchange that piece of paper for goods and services.
If it were backed by anything, there would be an obligation by the issuing party to exchange it for the commodity it was backed by. You can't go to the federal reserve and say "I want to exchange my $20 note for $20 worth of gold". Best case, you'd get a smile, pat on the head, and be sent on your way.
We effectively work with a bartering system. The perceived value of one service or object, for another. You can barter drugs, ammunition, or sex. That doesn't make any of them a currency, even though they'd each be good examples in your description. Actually, I think I like my examples better than the ugly paper in my pocket.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
"A something-backed currency means that there have to be a _fixed_ amount of physical entity somewhere in the possession of whoever decides to give out the currency."
Uh.... no, it doesn't. There never was a _fixed_ quantity of gold to back currency, since more was constantly being mined.
That's not what he was saying... pay attention.
damn, that was pretty intense , thanks for the info
Nothing qualifies for your definition.
> some central bankers could agree to create ex nihilo enough money to give a billion USD to every bank account in the world.
This shows that you don't understand how our banking or money system works. This is possible with fiat currency, but not ours.
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