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US Court Freezes Assets of Mt. Gox CEO

Posted by Unknown on from the should-have-stuck-to-magic-cards dept.

jfruh writes "Mt. Gox has managed to enter court-protected bankruptcy in the United States, but Gregory Greene, who lost $25,000 in the bitcoin company's collapse, has convinced a court in Chicago to freeze the assets of Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles and two companies associated with him. 'Money is moving around as we speak, bitcoins are moving around accounts associated with Mt. Gox,' said Greene's lawyer. 'Something is not right so we urgently need to get to the bottom of this quickly.'" The Mt Gox stole the missing bitcoins theory.

13 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting parallel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In Japan, MtGox is not liable because bitcoins aren't money (i.e. nothing real was lost).

    1. Re:Interesting parallel by Lendrick · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It would be a delicious irony if people were able to recover some of their lost value due to government regulations.

    2. Re:Interesting parallel by pla · · Score: 4, Interesting

      In Japan, MtGox is not liable because bitcoins aren't money (i.e. nothing real was lost).

      MtGox tracked account balances in both BTC and USD. Bitcoins may have no legal value, but wouldn't Gox remain on the hook for the dollar-denominated balances in their care?

    3. Re:Interesting parallel by PRMan · · Score: 4, Informative

      And their logo is a chart in the shape of mountains. They have adopted Mt. Gox as their official name long ago.

      --
      Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
    4. Re:Interesting parallel by Bob9113 · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's funny when the financial press mistakes MtGOX (Magic the Gathering Online Exchange, lest we forget) for "Mt. Gox", like it was a mountain or something.

      It's funny when pretentious Slashdot posters trot out some half-understood fact to sound important. Mt. Gox has gone by "Mt. Gox" for quite some time on mtgox.com, on Wikipedia, and on Bitcoin Charts -- as well as in common use in Bitcoin forums.

      --
      Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
    5. Re:Interesting parallel by ackthpt · · Score: 4, Funny

      But in America, if it has value, it can be seized.

      If it has value it can be embezzled.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    6. Re:Interesting parallel by arth1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Slashdot is supposed to be the place where we discuss the tech and ignore the marketing spin. While we maybe don't reach that bar often enough, we can at least make the effort, no? Especially in story submissions.

      Don't you mean " Chips & Dips is supposed to be..."?

  2. Parallels! by Thanshin · · Score: 5, Funny

    So they printed fake money, convinced people it was real, got the people's money, said they lost it, but actually were stealing it, and now they are saying they don't have money while moving money to private accounts?

    If they had a flag they'd be a government.

    1. Re:Parallels! by Sockatume · · Score: 4, Funny

      And if they were a government they'd have collapsed and taken down their entire economy. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
  3. Oh So NOW you want regulation eh? by bobbied · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So, let me get this straight. You want the government to order that the CEO of Mt Gox not have access to his assets? Yea, good luck with that.

    If he was the one who took all the BitCoin from their depositors, what's to keep him from trading them? Nothing, really. Remember that BitCoin is unregulated by design.

    Give it a rest, you lost your money and nobody can prove where it went. Oh the joys of an unregulated currency.

    --
    "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
    1. Re:Oh So NOW you want regulation eh? by Sockatume · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Err, pretty much the only thing the Bitcoin network does is "prove where [bitcoins] went". Outside the network is another matter. The issue isn't unregulated Bitcoin; the issue is unregulated Bitcoin exchanges.

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
  4. A test of the principles by Rinisari · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So this is actually a test of the one of the attractive principles of Bitcoin: no one can separate you from your money, assuming that you control your private keys. Karpeles isn't a complete idiot, so I'm certain the keys to what balance he himself maintains are safely stored somewhere only he knows (brain wallet?). So, assuming that he has substantial holdings in bitcoin, then what good does the asset freeze do? He is free to spend bitcoin, unless the asset freeze also prevents businesses from accepting money of any kind from him.

    Same holds for the two companies, but they are much more likely to have a larger USD balance that is actually affected by the freeze.

    --
    Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
  5. Re:I don't think for a second that Karpelès s by JDG1980 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wake up. Karpeles is a con artist and a sociopath. He'll say anything to string along the suckers for a bit longer. Not a word coming out of his mouth (or from his Twitter feed or whatever) can be believed.

    The U.S. government loves to trumpet its drug/laundering asset seizures. Look at Silk Road. This thing was not done in a corner. Nor was the house arrest of Charlie Shrem for alleged Bitcoin-related money laundering covered up in any way.

    The only way the government would demand everything stay on the q.t. would be if there was still an ongoing investigation. But if that was the case, then the messy public shutdown of Mt. Gox would have already ruined that. If the government was surveilling Mt. Gox customers and wanted Karpeles to keep his mouth shut, they would have told him to carry on business as usual so no one would be alerted, and Mt. Gox would still be running.