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MtGox Finds 200,000 Bitcoins In Old Wallet

Posted by Soulskill on from the left-it-in-their-other-cryptopants dept.

thesandbender writes: "Today brings news that MtGox has 'found' 200,000 Bitcoins in a 'forgotten' wallet that they thought was empty (PDF). The value of the coins is estimated to be $116 million USD, which happens to cover their $64 million USD in outstanding debts nicely and might offer them the chance to emerge from bankruptcy. There is no explanation yet of why the sneaky thieves that 'stole' the bitcoins used a MtGox wallet to hide them."

8 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Smelling more fishy every day. by mysidia · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Probably... they were 'magically discovered' when it became clear to Mark that the authorities might be contemplating criminal charges against him.

  2. While I expect foul play... by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I could argue that the system probably was setup to save lost bitcoins into a wallet.
    The CEO may not have known about it, as the programmers, probably felt that such an error could happen, so there was a mechanism to deal with it.

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    1. Re:While I expect foul play... by Charliemopps · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, I think there might be merit in your idea. We had a similar thing happen with one of our ticketing systems. Thousands of vanished tickets... They weren't even on the tables anymore! Oh no! Then we found them on some random table (there are thousands in the DB) and apparently, over 10 years ago, someone had conceived of the idea that something could go wrong, and instead of strait up deleting rows the system was throwing the deleted rows onto this "archive" table. The code that broke it was someone on another teams fault, but whomever wrote this way back in the day saved us a hell of a lot of trouble.

      Of course, MtGox could just be a bunch of thieves as well.

  3. Re:Smelling more fishy every day. by Megane · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I would have thought that computers would make it impossible to "lose" such funds

    Except that computers make it possible for idiots to screw up even worse than ever before. And given that the guy apparently cared more about opening a bitcoin restaurant than, say, using a programming language that wasn't crap COUGHPHPCOUGH, I'm just barely willing to believe they lost it. I'm really more surprised that they found that wallet before it got thrown out on a junked hard drive.

    Sure, it's a bit too convenient, especially after all the rumors of hacks that let people double-dip when withdrawing bitcoins, but it's not impossible that they came from a different source. So just how easy is it to look up the transaction records for 200,000 bitcoins, anyhow?

    --
    #naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
  4. Re:Smelling more fishy every day. by beelsebob · · Score: 3, Interesting

    He's referencing a couple that did exactly this in the UK a couple of years ago.

  5. Re:Smelling more fishy every day. by Richard_at_work · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The first half is strikingly close to what happened recently in the UK - John Darwin went missing while canoeing in the North Sea during 2002. His canoe was found, but his body was never recovered and he was declared dead in 2003.

    In 2007 he returned to life, having lived in the intermediate years as John Jones, firstly in the UK (living in a bedsit next door to his old home, then living with his supposed widow wife, before they moved overseas, eventually ending up in Panama. The catalyst for his return was a change in Panamanian visa law, which required British police confirmation of his identity.

    So he came back to the UK, claimed he had amnesia and didn't know what had happened after his disappearance, and his widow wife and children played their part in the fantastic return - but it soon all unravelled when it was discovered that his wife knew all along and had lived with him in Panama for several years.

    They are both now serving jail sentences for insurance fraud.

  6. Re:Smelling more fishy every day. by Tom · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I would have thought that computers would make it impossible to "lose" such funds - even with the most simplistic of accounting programs.

    ROTFL.

    The dark secret of business world-wide: It's all a hodgepodge of hacks and duct-tape. Large corporations regularily misplace money and assets, often in the millions. And yes, despite SOX and all that.

    Computers or not, large corporations are complex beasts, and all the accounting trickery they play for tax purposes doesn't exactly make it easy nor transparent, because it intentionally isn't. For a fast-growing company, most CFOs are pretty happy if their accounting isn't too far off.

    So yeah, losing a hundred million is a rare event, but it's impossible nor unheard of.

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  7. Re:Ooooohhhh theeeeere's your money! by myowntrueself · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They have the lying skills of a twelve year old.

    Do not underestimate the lying skills of children!

    At 10 years old I realised that if I wanted to lie to my mum the best way was to first offer an obvious lie which she would detect and demand 'the truth'. I'd then, unwillingly, offer a more plausible lie. She'd accept the more plausible lie as the truth; she felt like she'd won a victory over me, that she was so much smarter than me and that I was obviously ashamed at having been caught and had admitted the truth.

    --
    In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.