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Mt. Gox Questioned By Employees For At Least 2 Years Before Crisis
Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes "Reuters reports that Mt. Gox employees began to question the handling of funds at least two years ago. Although only CEO Mark Karpeles had full access to financial records, a group of a half-dozen employees began to suspect client funds were being diverted to cover operating costs, which included Karpeles' toys, such as a 'racing version of the Honda Civic imported from Britain.' Employees confronted Karpeles in early 2012, only to be given vague assurances with a 'pay no attention to the man behind the curtain' ring. Unfortunately, since Mt. Gox was not regulated as a financial institution under Japanese law, it is unclear what recourse might be gained in pursuing this question."
Let's see how much Karpeles spent these past few years.
I wouldn't want to be Mark Karpeles at all. He's going to have annoyed a lot of dodgy characters who want their money back. I think he'll be looking over his shoulder for the rest of of his life.
Get your own free personal location tracker
Technically speaking, bitcoins are not financial instruments. Producing a bitcoin is effectively a gamble. So entirely bitcoin system is a gambling institution. And exchanges act as token brokers. In gambling terms, they are the house. I don't think casinos are treated as financial institutions though. And for anyone actually looking to regulate bitcoins, casinos are probably a better model. People can exchange chips among themselves anonymously. But if they want to exchange them at an "established" location, then they have to do it through a cashier acting as a broker. This is what exchanges are.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Now that ex-employees are talking to the press and the cops, we'll find out what was going on.
The Reuters article makes it clear that Karpeles had exclusive personal control over Mt. Gox's cash. That probably means he'll be the one going to jail. I've been writing for months (ever since Mt. Gox suspended US dollar withdrawals last summer) that Mt. Gox was either incompetent, broke, or crooked. Now it looks like all of the above.
Why would Karpeles import a Honda Accord R from the UK to Japan? They're made in Japan.
It was pretty easy to figure out what was going on. It was a big Ponzi scheme. He took all the money and hid it somewhere. Now blame it going missing on evil hackers and live off the hidden stash.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
What's "2-years"?
Anyone knows what really happened with CoinEx.pw?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Never ever work for a company where only the CEO has access to the financial records.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
> Libertarianism is basically about minimal government necessary for society not minimal society. But I guess you don't care.
Or, not understand, and think your comment makes no sense. To these people, society IS government. When they say "we should help people who need it", that in no way suggests that they would EVER consider buying diapers and milk for the struggling young mother in line behind them. To them, "we" means "Washington", so "we should help" means "Washington power brokers should take your money and give it to whomever". They really and truly don't know any distinction between Washington bullying vs. ethical behavior. Personal responsibility does not exist, so society=ruling class, to them.
You know things are really screwy when Japanese cars are being imported from Britain to Japan.
Better known as 318230.
It'll fix itself because the fairy hand of the market provide perfect knowledge to the worthy. The unworthy ones got what they deserved by not seeing in their crystal ball that Gox was an unsafe place to put their bitcoins. Soon, the unworthy ones won't have any more money to lose and only the worthy ones (the ones with irresistible grace) will have bitcoins and since the worthy ones never make any mistakes, only honest bitcoins exchange will remain. Not that stealing unworthy ones that lack irresistible grace is dishonest anyway, after all people without the irresistible grace are not really people.
Technically speaking, bitcoins are not financial instruments. Producing a bitcoin is effectively a gamble. So entirely bitcoin system is a gambling institution. And exchanges act as token brokers. In gambling terms, they are the house. I don't think casinos are treated as financial institutions though. And for anyone actually looking to regulate bitcoins, casinos are probably a better model. People can exchange chips among themselves anonymously. But if they want to exchange them at an "established" location, then they have to do it through a cashier acting as a broker. This is what exchanges are.
Except that they have "accounts" where they hold your money and do whatever they want with it in the meantime. It makes them much more like banks. Of course they go to great lengths to dispel that, since it would mean regulation and oversight.
Sounds an awful lot like Paypal...
You can feed the world with a garbage dump. That sums it up in one big lump!
MTGOX charged 1% fees (.5% from both sides of a trade) and had volumes in the 50 million range for many months. They often had earned a profit in the range of 500,000 every month. That should be close to the amount they were spending on all of this junk plus employees. I still do not see where all of the dough went even with the extravagances shown.
It has also been shown that they did not have large amounts of transaction malleability theft as well. Something else happened. Like the owner keeping the coins.
What the hell is a "racing version" of a Honda Civic.
For many, one with underbody LEDs. :-)
i wonder if us customers can sue and use these laws.
Remember, though, the IRS considers Bitcoin "property" not "money".
So sue/press charges on Mt. Gox for loss/theft of property?
US IRS notices don't have much weight in Japan. :-)
Guess what, drug addicts can't handle money. No surprise.
there are a number of exchanges that pay interest on your holdings on the exchange. They take a percentage of fees the exchange earns and give it to people with coins held there. The rationale is they want your coins sitting on the exchange as it'll encourage you to trade only on that exchange. One exchange, mcxnow, even posts a current interest rate based on the last 6 hour of fees.
If this was happening two years ago it's more likely he spent them when they were worth a fraction of their current value.
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
Japan also considers bitcoin a commodity.
j'ai découvert une démonstration vraiment admirable (de ce théorème général) que cette si
Negreanu got goxed <- As Negreanu says, I wouldn't mind it if someone takes a baseball bat and smashes mark karpeles in the nuts with it.
"It is unclear how Japanese law would treat any such diversion of customer funds as Mt. Gox was not regulated as a financial institution. As a private firm in which Karpeles held an 88 percent stake with no declared debt, Mt. Gox was under no obligation to share any details on its finances."
The lack of regulation means that they cannot prosecute the *lack of disclosure* but the article makes it sound like it implies they cannot prosecute the fund diversion itself. Of course you can, it's embezzlement, there are laws on the book against it, and no you don't need to be "regulated" for these laws to apply.
Financial regulation is something that can make such frauds harder to perpetrate, it's not what makes is illegal. Sheesh.
\u262D = \u5350
He's in fucking JAPAN, not America and thus already had access to models of civic with as big or bigger engines than the euro spec models and usually FAR FAR FAR more highly tuned.
On the other hand for a wanna-be white boy in Japan, importing a Euro-spec car for the expense-factor and to try and look 'leet' with the big boys is a distinct possibility. Exactly the kind that could result in blowing your customer's finances in the expectation the market would continue booming and you could cover it up... Kinda like the bankers in the US did up to '08.