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Fraud, Not Hackers, Took Most of Mt. Gox's Missing Bitcoins
itwbennett writes Nearly all of the roughly $370 million in bitcoin that disappeared in the February 2014 collapse of Mt. Gox probably vanished due to fraudulent transactions, with only 1 percent taken by yet-to-be-identified hackers, according to a report in Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, citing sources close to a Tokyo police probe. The disclosure follows months of investigations by police and others into the tangled mess surrounding the disappearance of the 650,000 bit coins.
What do you think those funny little rectangles of material we all carry around with us all the time to exchange for goods and services are inherently worth?
There's nothing subjective about the fact that you could, as some particular time not specified by the summary, exchange those 650,000 bitcoins (not "bit coins" as the summary would have it) for $370m.
Nobody should have lost any money unless you were dumb enough to buy Bitcoins.
Yeah, yeah, we're all bitter about not getting in on the ground floor too. Let it go.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
With bitcoin, the only thing you are trading is the knowledge that somebody wasted a shitload of electricity.
Yeah, yeah, we're all bitter about not getting in on the ground floor too. Let it go.
The most common comment on stock trading forums discussing speculative stocks. And bitcoin has so far behaved very similar to speculative and gamed stock trading.
it's not hacking if you're on the inside and you own the playing field. It's still theft albeit of digital bits.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
There's nothing subjective about the fact that you could, as some particular time not specified by the summary, exchange those 650,000 bitcoins (not "bit coins" as the summary would have it) for $370m.
No, there was never such a time. When MtGox collapsed there was less than 13 million bitcoins total, most of which is being hoarded. Looking at the exchange trade volume there's maybe $5-10 million dollar daily liquidity. In order to sell out without the market crashing you probably couldn't sell more than 10% of that so it'd take years to cash out. And that's assuming you don't overdo it and spook the herd so they all cash out too.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
trading gold is nothing more than trading the energy consumed in mining it.
Gold comes from mines? I always believed it came from pawn shops and elderly relatives.
lucm, indeed.
Yeah, yeah, we're all bitter about not getting in on the ground floor too. Let it go.
The most common comment on stock trading forums discussing speculative stocks. And bitcoin has so far behaved very similar to speculative and gamed stock trading.
Wish I could mod the parent up. Exactly right.
But here's the interesting thing.
Who owns what? According to the hard core of bitcoin fans, it is based on one principle - that the blockchain is the final word on that issue, at least as it concerns bitcoins themselves. If you have the key, the coins are yours.
If you say "those bitcoins aren't yours, they're stolen!" you're implicitly accepting another standard of property - of who owns what - as higher than the blockchain. Then you concede to the messy passions of society to determine who owns what, rather than the mathematical certainties of the block chain.
Bitcoin fans are a bit two-minded on this. On one hand, they demand that money in anonymous accounts belongs to whoever controls the keys, and it's none of your business how they got there. On the other, some do call for blacklisting coins, e.g. the coins FBI seized when Silk Road went under. The technology actually makes that possible, unlike with cash or even conventional digital payments.
I'm all for convicting Karpeles for fraud (and in fact this article is old news to me - despite lots of anonymous accounts trying to pooh-pooh it, investigations of the block chain made a convincing case for fraud in the weeks after MtGox's fall), but I'm also for recognizing the limits of the blockchain, and I'd like BTC fans to realize it can't be a substitute for government, or even government-issued currency.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.