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Mt. Gox CEO Returns To Twitter, Enrages Burned Investors
An anonymous reader writes Mark Karpeles doesn't seem to understand how much anger and trouble the $400 million Mt. Gox fiasco caused his customers. According to Wired: "After a long absence, the Mt Gox CEO has returned to Twitter with a bizarre string of tone-deaf tweets that were either written by a Turing test chat bot, or by a man completely oblivious to the economic chaos he has wrought. His first message after losing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoins? 'What would we do without busybox?'—a reference to a slimmed-down Linux operating system used on devices such as routers. He's also Tweeted about a noodle dish called yakisoba and Japanese transportation systems." Andreas Antonopoulos, the CSO with Blockchain says, "He continues to be oblivious about his own failure and the pain he has caused others. He is confirming that he is a self-absorbed narcissist with an inflated sense of self-confidence who has no remorse."
We all know after any wrong doing, a person must offer up at least three goats to the Social Justice Warrior spirits in order to quench their bloodlust.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]
Man who quite obviously ran an elaborate scam and legally (as far as I'm concerned) stole money from a bunch of morons and suckers is a narcissist and sociopath. Are we supposed to be surprised?
This guy is like people who rob little old ladies and see nothing wrong with it.
It's not an operating system.
What did he say about yakisoba? Does he like? Hate it? Get some on his shirt?
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
I mean, first thing I would have though is "that's not actually him".
I have to say, the responses to his tweets are the funniest thing I've read all week.
Jon Eaton @sketchy1poker 20m
@MagicalTux die you fat fuck
Angry Mofo @angrymofo Jun 18
@MagicalTux Where's my Bitcoins you cunt ?
Icecream @Bird8880 Jun 15 :)
@MagicalTux I hope you die in the next earthquake fat ass
OR.....the Twitter account could be compromised, and the attacker is trolling you. I mean, they don't exactly have a stellar security record.
Quoting a guy named "The Arbitrageur (@FiatMoneyEnd)", complaining about how he had lost his money, was a particularly dry touch.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"...he is a self-absorbed narcissist with an inflated sense of self-confidence who has no remorse."
So you're saying he has what it takes to be a Fortune 100 CEO?
I'm pretty sure any sane lawyer in the world would absolutely forbid him from talking publicly about Mt. Gox or anything that happened during the meltdown. Is there not legal action pending? Perhaps we should let the discovery process do work as intended. This article seems to accomplish nothing and I don't think it qualifies as news.
So... He's pretty much like everyone else on Twitter?
"He continues to be oblivious about his own failure and the pain he has caused others. He is confirming that he is a self-absorbed narcissist with an inflated sense of self-confidence who has no remorse." The only question is with qualifications like these does he pursue Wall Street or sub-prime lending?
He's also Tweeted about a noodle dish called yakisoba and Japanese transportation systems. Andreas Antonopoulos, the CSO with Blockchain says, "He continues to be oblivious about his own failure and the pain he has caused others. He is confirming that he is a self-absorbed narcissist with an inflated sense of self-confidence who has no remorse."
Sounds to me like he's just using Twitter the same way everyone else uses Twitter. Why does tweeting about yakisoba make him a remorseless narcissist? He may be that, but regardless Twitter isn't the best venue for heartfelt apologies. I bet he also failed to take responsibility for Mt Gox last time he sent a text or wrote a sticky note.
Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.
-- Publilius Syrus
"Give me your bitcoins, I'll hold onto them for you. They aren't regulated as a currency by the government (and you love that) also they are untraceable (you love that too), they are just data so if I lose them ... well I'll try not to lose them."
Who would have thought anybody with half a brain would actually fall for that, but they did, to the tune of like $400 million worth of the damn things!
Either that or his head is firmly planted in reality and he, unlike many of the Mt Gox users, recognizes that bitcoins are worthless. No one lost a dime. People lost bitcoins ferchrissakes.
As long as bitcoins can be exchanged for money, they have value and people who were planning to turn them into cash but lost them effectively lost money. People who planned to sit on them until they hatched are the only ones who lost nothing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm evil incarnate and I'm about to punish myself on behalf of the Twitterverse
Ok... I'm cutting. I'm slicing my wrists right now
That was pretty deep. Blood everywhere. Hard to type
I'm so sorry. Your virtual money went to virtual money heaven and it's all my fault.
Getting dizzy now. cant..... focus
keyboard so sticky
i dndt thk that woold hepeen we tried too stipthem and it
i'm sorry
Bitcoin is not a place one goes to enjoy the protections of traditional state issued currency and state regulated banking. Twitter is not a place one goes to find sincerity. Slashdot is not the place to indulge your fake outrage.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
So basically he's just a Wall Street bankster, but with Bitcoins.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
What is absolutely adorable is the (perennial, for some reason) crop of people who are attracted to bitcoins' interesting mathematical properties; but assume that these properties somehow magically transfer to mere paper that is merely denominated in bitcoins rather than in USD, bushels of wheat, Euros, or whatever.
You put a bitcoin in an account at one of these 'exchanges'? Well kid, I'm afraid I have some bad news: from the perspective of the bitcoin system, the exchange now owns the bitcoin. You just gave it to them. You now own some flavor of promissory note that's probably roughly on par with really shit commercial paper, except that it probably doesn't even offer interest to compensate you for the risk and time value. Good work on that.
If you want to enjoy the properties of bitcoins, You. Must. Hold. Bitcoins. IOUs, however you dress them up, do not have the properties of the currency or commodity in which they are denominated. If you want to bank, try a bank. Yes, they are abhuman scumweasels that enjoy massive regulatory capture in most markets; but unfortunately you don't really have better options.
This reads like it should be an Onion article. He's using Twitter for what it is typically used for -- self-absorbed useless posts. Why is anyone surprised? If they were all about how awesome his new $400 million yacht is, then I could see the issues. This is just that he came back to Twitter, and started using it normally.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
I can't believe twitter re-hired him.
I think you're right. Chewie, turn the ship around!
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
Bitcoins want to be free.
Bitcoin libre!
Down with U$D!
"Guy runs company in the ground. Seen spending money at the supermarket enraging people."
Or when some number in a database at your bank get changed and your balance becomes 0 because your credit card got skimmed.
The news that not every tweet is an insightful font of wisdom is old news.
Not true. I seriously doubt you can find anyone who is/was willing to buy all those bitcoins for $400 million. I also doubt anyone is/was willing to accept all those bitcoins in exchange for $400 million worth of physical goods.
Lets say for example I take a slug of tin and stamp it into many coins of my own making. Nobody is willing to give me anything for the coins except for my best friend, who is willing to pay me $1 for 1 coin. The true value of my coins would still be zero. You can't argue that based on that one exception, the coins I made is each worth $1.
You put a bitcoin in an account at one of these 'exchanges'? Well kid, I'm afraid I have some bad news: from the perspective of the bitcoin system, the exchange now owns the bitcoin. You just gave it to them. You now own some flavor of promissory note that's probably roughly on par with really shit commercial paper, except that it probably doesn't even offer interest to compensate you for the risk and time value. Good work on that.
So, pretty much the same thing as if you put gold or cash in a bank?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
"He continues to be oblivious about his own failure and the pain he has caused others. He is confirming that he is a self-absorbed narcissist with an inflated sense of self-confidence who has no remorse."
Breaking news....
CEO acts like a CEO
Stay tuned for more updates to this continuing story...
So, pretty much the same thing as if you put gold or cash in a bank?
No, I'm not quite sure how this isn't obvious to you but banks are regulated and insured by the government.
Strictly speaking, it is embezzlement
In other jurisdictions, this may be known as misappropriation.
Usually the burden of proof lies on the person you entrusted the property to (especially if it is a paid service) to explain what happened to it. If he can't/won't, you can invite the court to draw an adverse inference against him. Proving where it went is his problem.
This is a riot. Andy Popatopolis, the charred black pot, pointing violently at the kettle? It is to laugh.
Linux is not a religion. It is a collection of logic. Stop being stupid.
It is Twitter, not the international apology bulletin board.
If you are following this guy hoping he will say sorry and wire you part payments of bitcoins, then you have sadly misunderstood what Twitter is used for.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
time to kill Karpeless and his relatives/family
Yes and no.
Yes in that putting something in a bank turns it into a promise from the bank, whatever it is, assuming the bank will take it.
No in two main senses:
One, purely pragmatically, most countries that issue fiat currencies recognize that banks are de-facto extensions of ordinary currency circulation and regulate accordingly. This is probably all kinds of moral hazard; but it does mean that the IOU you get from a bank deposit has almost exactly the same backing as cash, up to whatever the FDIC's account threshold is. A bitcoin exchange, or any other generic commercial debt is in a distinctly different regulatory category, usually one that involves getting less of your money out when things go south.
The other, architectural, is that bitcoins derive much of their charm (for many, not all, users) from possessing certain interesting inherent properties: no central issuer, known supply, no double-spending or transaction reversal, etc. All enforced either by the protocol or by the cryptography. Very nice, invariant across jurisdictions, apparently well regarded in terms of design. Someone's IOU, whatever it's denominated in, has none of those properties. The fact that they tend to be downright dodgy as well is just a bonus.
I'd hazard a guess that there are plenty of unhappy Mt. Gox accountholders who would have looked at me like I was crazy if I'd asked "Would you like to make a non-diversified, unsecured, investment in a speculative-grade Japanese security?"; but blithly did exactly that, because bitcoins, missing the minor detail that all the bitcoiny goodness disappeared the moment they handed them over.
Suppose copying and using intellectual property is not stealing. Therefore it is okay and legal to pay $0 for intellectual property. Then you should be able to walk into an auto dealership and take possession of a new car for say, $5,000, where the actual retail price is $25,000. This should be legal because the physical raw materials used to build the car cost only $1,000 to $2,000 and the remainder is spent on machinery and labor required to process and form the raw materials into a car.
Since you've paid for the labor + machinery rent + raw materials of the car and since IP price = $0, you've legally paid the duplication cost of the car. And legally, the car manufacturer should give you the car for that price. This analogy can be applied to all physical goods you purchase at a store.
So, please tell us where we can buy all goods for duplication cost only, without considering any kind of design and invention costs? If you can't find such a place, that means all goods carry an IP premium and therefore people who create IP are fully within their rights to charge what they charge right now.
He didn't actually do anything different to what every OTHER banker does every day...
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
It's kind of the purpose of the whole corporate system that companies can keel over and the people behind it can continue living their lives.
If you don't like it, tough luck, it's the world we live in, we wanted it this way.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
An apology footer in each tweet?
bickerdyke
The funny, though rather predictable, thing about the bitcoin faithful is that this did nothing to shake their faith in it. The problem, according to them, wasn't the lack of tracking, regulation, oversight, or any of that, no it was clearly that MtGox "did it wrong" and that this "makes bitcoin stronger" and so on.
They see this an as anomaly, not an inherent risk of their chosen currency. They have a poor understanding of economics. Same reason why they think BTC's built in deflation is a GOOD thing.
Nobody cares if a credit card is skimmed. That's oney belonging the credit card company that's been stolen; You're not liable. They either reclaim the money from the vendor, or they get it covered by insurance.
This is why you should always use a credit card for large purchases, even in part, and when purchasing online. Not only do you have whatever protections you receive from local legislation, you also have the extra protection of the credit card company. It's UK law, but check out Section 75 Consumer Credit Act 1974 There are other protections for fraudulent transactions.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
No. The people who lost bitcoins lost nothing. The people who exchanged bitcoins for actual money took advantage of the other type who thought bitcoins had some value.
Bitcoin is like a check. It represents a transfer of things that have value- i.e. physical products or services and money. The check itself has no value. The people who were piling up bitcoins made the mistake of thinking the "checks" were worth something.
Bitcoin is like a check. It represents a transfer of things that have value
The U.S. government officially, legally, and in all other ways disagrees with you. Bitcoin thus has every bit as much value as any fiat currency.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I disagree that it is a currency.
Who are you disagreeing with? Certainly not me.
It is just a work of art:
Works of art have value. Thanks for agreeing with me. You may retire in cowardly shame at this time.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Oh man, you're still going on about that? I said I'm sorry, okay? Now let's drop it and move on."
(More seriously, though, my sympathy with the people who put their life savings into Bitcoin approaches zero.)
This is quite possibly the worst cop out I've heard from piracy supporters. Before music was digitized on CDs, you had to purchase/borrow vinyl records or cassettes to listen to music. Making copies (pirating) of these analog mediums was very lossy, so copying was not worth it because of the huge loss of audio quality. However, once music was digitized on CDs (and later MP3), copies were perfect, with no loss of music quality in the copy.
Similarly, almost all products can be digitized and the design can be fed into a 3D printer of some sort to create the final product just like digital music bits + duplication machine + 10 cent plastic disc = $10 music CD. Car bodies, interiors, engines, transmissions etc. are all derived from digital designs (CAD + simulation) so yes, a car design is very much digital like a music CD / video blu-ray. And like music CDs, just about any product can be digitized.
It is, unless you prove it to be unsound. Just saying "it is logically unsound," doesn't make it so.
Suppose copying and using intellectual property is not stealing.
That would be good, because it's not stealing, it's copyright infringement. That's why we call it copyright infringement, because unauthorized copying infriges on the copyright owner's right to restrict who can make copies of the copyrighted work.
Therefore it is okay and legal to pay $0 for intellectual property.
No more than murder not being called "life theft" makes it legal to murder someone.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
In my experience, that's what it means to be a CEO.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Whether I call it copying without permission or you call it copyright infringement (which, by the way, is far worse than stealing, because it is stealing and optionally redistributing), it does not matter. In any case, you pay $0 for a digital product where the owner of the product is selling it for a price greater than $0. So you get something for nothing, which is usually a crime when related to commercial products.
And my original post was about paying $0 for intellectual property, not what term you call that: theft or copyright infringement.
Let's not play with words, then. Copyright infringement is "IP theft," by definition, with worse-than-theft penalties if you redistribute it to others.
Copyright infringement leads to loss of revenue to the content owner, therefore it is a form of theft.
So, according to you, copyright infringement is a lesser crime than theft, or is not a crime at all? Either way, without using the word theft, according to you and your buddy, not paying for IP is okay, since the owner is not being deprived anything he originally had.
Here's what the uspto has to say about it:
Another is that he's just moving on with his life...
Common Sense (+1)
LOL, and why does the owner want to restrict who can make copies? Because he/she wants to get paid if someone gains access to a copy his work. Unauthorized copying means, the copier very likely won't pay for his copy -- same as stealing, but not according to you and your word games.
This is quite possibly the worst cop out I've heard from piracy supporters.
You must be new to the debate then. I wouldn't have pushed that particular rebuttal because I don't think physical versus virtual is all that different. I still would characterize your original argument as remarkably stupid simply for two reasons. First, you aren't stealing any resources from the owner of the music or intellectual property. There is no analogy to the resources put into making a car. The owner doesn't lose CDs, bits, etc by the act of pirating their property. They lose potential opportunity.
Second, the obvious analogy you should have put forth is pirating the design of the car and making a knock-off. That's something that actually happens in the real world.
Copyright infringement leads to loss of revenue to the content owner, therefore it is a form of theft.
Whoa, let's not jump to conclusions here. The whole point of my original argument was that this was wholly unsubstantiated. I gather, for example, that Microsoft extended its market share (and as a result the network effect value of having more people using their product) due to piracy.
Copyright infringement leads to loss of revenue to the content owner, therefore it is a form of theft.
"Loss of revenue" is not a recognized crime and for good reason, if it were, you could charge a reviewer with "theft" if he didn't give you a "good enough" review. You could charge your competitors for "stealing" your customers with their lower prices. You could charge window shoppers with "theft" for not buying what they're looking at... I could go on, but if you've got half a brain you should already understand the problem.
Either way, without using the word theft, according to you and your buddy, not paying for IP is okay, since the owner is not being deprived anything he originally had.
Neither of us said anything of the sort. You are creating strawmen. What we said is that copyright infringement is not theft, because nothing has been taken. Copyright infringement is violating the copyright holder's right to restrict who can make copies of the protected work. Notably, in most juridisction, copyright applies regardless of whether you are selling copies of the work or not. So for instance, a diary is no less protected simply because the author had no intention of publishing it, and copyright can be infringed in other ways that just copying. For instance, the copyright owner's moral rights prevent unathorized modifications to the work.
The original point was that the loss of bitcoins at Mt. Gox could actually theft because the bitcoins have been taken from the owner without permission, as long as we consider bitcoins to actually be property. Adn yes, theft is a more serious crime than copyright infringement because in theft the owner has been deprived of their actual property, where as copyright infringement may potentially deprive the copyright owner of hypothetical profits that they might have otherwise earned.
Neither of us have said anything about whether "not paying for IP is okay" because that is a completely different and multi-faceted issue. Effectively you're like the guy who's yelling that his computer doesn't work because "the CPU is full of RAMs and Gigs", you have very effectively demonstrated that you know next to nothing about what you're writing about.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
You are reducing potential profit by pirating -- pirating in mass quantities has the same effect as stealing.
If it's okay to pay nothing to duplicate intellectual property in a movie or a song, then it must be okay to pay nothing to duplicate intellectual property in a car. After all,
I just don't want to pay for the car IP.
Ahh, but the CDs cost nothing compared to the final price. And you benefited from a commercial product without benefiting its owner. That's considered theft.
And why do they want to restrict copying? Don't intentionally act like an idiot.
pirating in mass quantities has the same effect as stealing.
Unless one consequence is that it increases demand for the legitimate product. That actually can happen such as when the product can take advantage of the network effect (increased value from more widespread adoption by pirates).
Personally, I welcome a new editor overlord to Slashdot.
Have gnu, will travel.
If you don't want to play with words, stop doing so. Copyright infringement is not "IP theft", since no one's losing anything. Constant copyright extensions, however, are robbing the public domain of IP that should had long since fallen to it. They are also a cautionary demonstration of what happens when law becomes for sale to the highest bidder: it loses all respectability, thus all respect, and becomes utterly irrelevant.
Pity about those authors who become collateral damage in the copyright wars. But they should blame Disney for its Mickey Mouse Protection Acts, not the public for refusing to surrender the very concept of culture to the altar of corporate profit.
Opening a retail store leads to loss of revenue to other nearby retail stores, therefore it's a form of theft in your world.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
There are other ways to reduce potential product. Somebody might produce a better digital good, drawing market share away. Somebody else might give the music a bad review. A third person might come up with something unsavory about the musicians, causing fewer people to buy the music. All of these are legal.
Nor am I particularly bothered by copying the car's IP. If you bring your own duplicator, materials, and power supply, and simply duplicate the car at the dealership, that's effectively the same as making an unauthorized copy of a song.
And, no, theft is depriving somebody of something. Benefiting from a commercial product is not theft.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
But if you take a bus or train ride without paying for a ticket, you can get fined hundreds of dollars even though the owners of the bus/train are not losing anything by some occasional freeloader -- same as an IP pirate.
Also, try looking it another way: a man enters a grocery store and shoplifts a $1 candy bar. The man gained something without spending anything, which is theft, just like a pirate, who gained enjoyment from his pirated movie/song without paying anything to the owners of the content, so that also is theft.
So, it's theft if someone gains benefits of a paid product/service without paying, regardless of what it costs the owner to create it or whether he lost nothing by some unauthorized user. That's the correct definition.
Is this "half a brain" shared by all individuals that lost their BitCoins in the Mt Gox fiasco? Could explain something...
Gasoline and space in the vehicle. Operating a fleet is an ongoing cost, unlike production of cultural items, which, ones produced, can last pretty much forever.
So breathing is theft, since I gain oxygen without paying anyone anything? And unlike "intellectual property", an oxygen molecule consumed by me is actually unavailable to anyone else.
However, your example certainly demonstrates the worldview of copyright supporters: a world of permanent scarcity, propped up by artificial means if necessary, is the goal. What the heck is wrong with you?
"Gaining a benefit without paying" is not the definition of theft. It is not even remotely like the definition of theft, which is "taking someone else's property without permission". Your attempt to redefine the word simply shows that the real meaning does not cover copyright infringmenet, even in your eyes.
Just because you want me to pay, does not mean I have an obligation to do so.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Maybe I can get in with this before the entire debate falls apart... hah, yeah right. Anyway, here goes:
The Copyright equivalent of stealing a candy bar (or a car from a dealership, to use your earlier analogy) from a grocery store is actually:
The original candy bar is still available for purchase for $1 to the next customer. If the Man in the example were selling his candy bars for profit, he would have effectively created a competing business to the grocery store. If he sells them wholesale to the store, he's competing with their other distributors.
If they are confusingly similar to the original brand, he may be infringing the manufacturer's protected trade marks. If he uses their patented process to put bubbles in chocolate or something, he may be infringing their patent; but legal competition for manufactured goods is specifically not covered by Copyright law.
Back to the car example, manufactured goods may contain Copyright-protected work, i.e. microcode in the car's engine management unit; but if you build a functional equivalent of your own without infringing patented methods, you're good to go.
Keep in mind that a car manufacturer will have registered 'trade marks' like "the distinctive tail light arrangement" that you won't be allowed to produce competing goods 'confusingly similar to', but you can (YMMV, consult a lawyer) build one for your own use.
And yes, for the sake of argument a physical work *can* be subject to protection by Copyright, but would generally need to show substantial creative effort and merit to be enforced; such as a carved statue. In the case of the car example, the Copyright would apply to the manufacturer's plans, CAD/CAM files, and maybe physical prototypes; but almost certainly not the result of the process (again, YMMV, consult a laywer)
One, purely pragmatically, most countries that issue fiat currencies recognize that banks are de-facto extensions of ordinary currency circulation and regulate accordingly. This is probably all kinds of moral hazard; but it does mean that the IOU you get from a bank deposit has almost exactly the same backing as cash, up to whatever the FDIC's account threshold is.
True, but only in the country that issues the currency.
US Dollars are pretty dependable as fiat currencies go. The FDIC is about as good as it gets as far as personal deposit insurance goes. If you deposit your US Dollars in a US Bank you get both.
However, if you deposit your US Dollars into the First Bank of Basra, then you might want to take a look at the headlines, because while those US Dollars are pretty hard to counterfeit, they're pretty easy to haul off in a truck after blowing the door off the vault.
This is quite true; it's also analogous to what I find so baffling about the behavior of some bitcoin-holders.
If you had USD, you'd be nuts to deposit them in First Bank of Basra (without some very compelling reason); and you'd be an idiot if you thought that the good reputation of USD somehow made your account there safer.
If you have bitcoins, putting them in an 'exchange' or 'cloud wallet' is a fairly risky behavior(even if the operation is 100% on the level and based somewhere with rule of law that might be available to you when needed, you've still put the security of those private keys entirely in the hands of a class of entity that gets the door blown off its vault quite frequently, and will have ~0 assets thereafter; and if the operators are shady and/or beyond your legal reach, you are extra screwed); yet people still do it under the impression that bitcoin's structural properties will somehow help them once they've done so.
You have limited options if you are looking to get into, or out of, bitcoin holdings and to or from some currency; but anyone who doesn't treat that operation rather like using PayPal (sometimes you need to; but you put in no more than you must, and get out, everything you can, as fast as you can, before they freeze your account for some spurious reason), baffles me.