One Year Later, We're No Closer To Finding MtGox's Missing Millions

itwbennett writes: When Mt. Gox collapsed on Feb. 28, 2014, with liabilities of some ¥6.5 billion ($63.6 million), it said it was unable to account for some 850,000 bitcoins. Some 200,000 of them turned up in an old-format bitcoin wallet last March, bringing the tally of missing bitcoins to 650,000 (now worth about $180 million). In January, Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, citing sources close to a Tokyo police probe of the MtGox collapse, reported that only 7,000 of the coins appear to have been taken by hackers, with the remainder stolen through a series of fraudulent transactions. But there's still no explanation of what happened to them, and no clear record of what happened on the exchange.

Comments

Obvious

[nospam007]

Somebody buried it in Second Life.

Re:Obvious

[thebes]

Wallet was hidden in a Mindcraft structure.

Re:Obvious

[allaunjsilverfox2]

Wallet was hidden in a Mindcraft structure.

This would actually be quite fasinating. Something like that would imply a virtual structure acting as a stenographic hiding place. Which leads to some interesting ideas. I know the whole, "They don't need your computer, they just need a wrench" idea applies here. But just imagine, a hostile entity (FBI, Robbers, ex-wife) are attempting to take your bitcoins. So, to make a plausible case that you don't have access to it, you generate a minecraft world. Then make various structures based on the bitcoin string and then destroy the wallet. If anyone decides to look at your world, you can make the claim you were attempting art. Which would be hard to dispute, since art is subjective.

Re:Obvious

[rioki]

Although I find your musing interesting... That is not the issue here. All the information for "finding" the missing Bitcoins is public; it is in the public ledger (block chain). You "wallet" is just a private key; granted you can hide that in Mincraft... But the "coins" are not "hidden". The problem with MtGox is that of all the transactions that MtGox did, which are the legitimate ones and the which the fraudulent ones.

Re:Obvious

[hucker75]

Without the wallet, there are no coins. Ergo the coins are hidden.

Re:Obvious

[rioki]

The to and from bits are all clearly visible...

Re:Obvious

[hucker75]

Do they state where the wallet code is stored? A physical address perhaps? "Under the floorboards of Mr Smiths house"?

Yes, and?

[Minwee]

Wasn't that the whole point behind Bitcoin? That you could fleece investors without leaving a paper trail?

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was so you could purchase illegal contraband without leaving a paper trail. Either way, it's for criminals that are trying to hide activities. That's why I stay away.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was wondering the exact same thing. To me, the whole thing looks shady and about to burst any time.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the best part of Bitcoin is hearing the libertardians whine about being scammed. They should revel in their "anarchic capitalism" and the free market.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitcoins are 100% traceable, but wallets are not, and it wouldn't take much shell game playing for enough plausible deniability to be entered into the system, especially if the coins are taken off the board for several years while the currency rises to quad or five digit values per dollar. (BitCoins are too much in use to ever really go down in value for any length of time now that China is in the game.)

Say a wallet has a hundred coins in it, all "dirty". For example, the blockchain traces show they were all in an exchange's possession/wallet, then stolen. Realistically, the coins could be spent by them being put into wallets (perhaps even printed out on paper currency), and distributed/laundered via that method. A few years later, when the wallets are opened and the coins spent, the coins are owned by completely different people, and tracing the gap from when the coins vanished to when they were put back into the ecosystem becomes almost impossible... like trying to trace a dollar bill.

If tainted coins hit an exchange or other service that trades BTC for other goods (even if they just trade BTC for their own currency and back again), unless that exchange has complete records of every transaction, the trail of stolen coins will stop with them, as it takes only one single broken link in the chain to have a trail be impossible to pursue by normal means.

BTC made a lot of money for the early adopters, but it still has not yet lost momentum as a currency, and only will gain in value over time.

Re:Yes, and?

[bhcompy]

But it does leave a papertrail, the block chain.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's funny to watch the same story play out over and over.

Government is evil! Regulation is evil! The Federal Reserve is evil! Your fiat currency isn't backed up by anything but your military and I should be able to conduct business without it!

Hey, somebody stole my Bitcoins! What the hell! Why can't the government step in and dooooo something to get my money back?

Re:Yes, and?

[jandrese]

Well that may have been true in the past. But this time is totally different. Sign up for the new exchange today!

It is depressing how many times people will fall for the same scam over and over again. Already we have heard of new exchanges "safer than ever" and people are lining up to put their money into them on the faint hope that it isn't a scam yet again.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is depressing how many times people will fall for the same scam over and over again. Already we have heard of new exchanges "safer than ever" and people are lining up to put their money into them on the faint hope that it isn't a scam yet again.

Totally safe! And this claim of security is backed up by.... NOTHING!!!

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was so you could purchase illegal contraband

Illegal contraband is the best kind of contraband of all!

Re:Yes, and?

[kaizendojo]

And the worst part is seeing some anonymous idiot trying to turn every discussion into a political scat fight.

Re:Yes, and?

[gstoddart]

Sounds like it was an overwhelming success, then.

Every time I see stories like this, I think ... gee, so you entrusted millions of dollars with an entity which isn't a bank, isn't regulated as a bank, and who more or less mostly just promised they wouldn't steal your money ... and somehow people are surprised by this.

On what basis, exactly, does handing strangers your money make sense when you have no legal basis to get it back?

It's hard not to see this as a self inflicted problem, and people handed sacks full of money to some guy in an alley with no receipt thinking they were investing.

Sorry, but I'm afraid this was people believing that Bitcoin was somehow magic, and that nobody would ever be a crook.

Re:Yes, and?

[GLMDesigns]

First of all free market != anarchic capitalism.
Second not all libertarians are for "anarchic capitalism."

Re:Yes, and?

[GLMDesigns]

Bitcoin != exchanges.
You needn't and shouldn't keep your money in exchanges.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all free market != anarchic capitalism.

Didn't say they were. The use of the "and" was to create a list of two seperate concepts. Are you new to English grammar?

Second not all libertarians are for "anarchic capitalism."

But most of the buttcoin crowd are for it.

Re:Yes, and?

[slashmydots]

It's so anyone of any age or location could send money without billionaires and the world bank fucking with it. There are more illegal transactions with paper cash than bitcoins so take your stupid stereotypes and inaccurate info somewhere else.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the worst part is supposedly grown and adult individuals using childish terms like "libertard".

Seriously people, nobody thinks you're clever when you use those terms. I'm pretty sure most of us just go "yup, they have nothing of worth to say"

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every time I see a comment like this I wonder if the person has some kind of reading comprehension problem. There was no deficiency in the Bitcoin protocol and no one lost anything as a result of them specifically using Bitcoins. That you conflate the fact that people foolishly left an asset in the hands of someone else and the use of Bitcoins in this case to suggest that Bitcoins are somehow a problem, shows a complete and utter lack of understanding of what is going on. Unless perhaps you are also upset about the use of cash since far more of that is lost every year to fraud.

Re:Yes, and?

[Arancaytar]

BitCoins are too much in use to ever really go down in value for any length of time now that China is in the game.

They've dropped steadily for most of 2014, though. One could argue that that all of that was still correcting the bubble in late 2013, but that correction has lasted well over a year now. There hasn't really been a good time to hold on to Bitcoin since then, with a few short-term exceptions.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does no one simply look at the BitCoin trail? I mean, there is the matter of the "shared public ledger" which should let anyone be able to see exactly how that money flowed. The big problem with BitCoin is that there is no way to "reverse" a fraudulent transaction. You could theoretically toss coins into a tumbler, but ultimately the "shared public ledger" should have a history of any coin that was ever in Mt Gox. It would suck for the person who tumbled with fraudulent transactions as the output of their presumably legal transaction would now have a percentage of taint from the fraudulent ones. Nonetheless, every transaction should be traceable.

Re:Yes, and?

[Marginal Coward]

I thought the whole point of Bitcoin was to provide anonymity to its anonymous creator so that he/she could be the ultimate early adopter, mine lots of Bitcoins when doing so was cheap, then anonymously sell them at any time after the idea caught on. Ain't anonymity wonderful?

Bitcoin is the only thing I've ever heard of that could potentially change the world, yet whose creator staunchly desires to remain anonymous. In comparison, Newton, Jefferson, Edison, and Einstein never hesitated to sign their name to their work.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly like cash. Before cash was invented the Romans were all like "Hai gais, how we gonna rip off NYSE with nothing more than knots on a string?!"

And thus cash was born. No other reason whatsoever!

Re:Yes, and?

[Wootery]

Bitcoins are 100% traceable

Not in any meaningful sense of the word 'traceable', no. As you yourself go on to explain. Why lead with an untruth?

and only will gain in value over time.

You sure about that? It's hardly known for its economic stability...

Re:Yes, and?

[Khashishi]

Well, with real property, if you purchased stolen property, you normally have to give it up when it is discovered, whether or not you knew it was stolen. The thief would owe you restitution, but good luck collecting it. I don't see why it would be different in this case. Sure, some bit coins got shuffled around, but if we can easily identify which coins were stolen, we should be able to legally recover them, whether or not the current possessors did the stealing or not.

Re:Yes, and?

[Archangel Michael]

In a free society, one where government has no rights to invade privacy and personal lives of the people, using money is not a crime. The fact that the coins are nearly untraceable is the desired effect, similar to actual cash money. Yes, the side effect is one where people buy illegal contraband (oxymoronic in a free society) using nearly untraceable currency. But the same could be said for CASH, which has nearly all the same risks in a free society.

However, if you want to give up your rights to avoid some messy possibilities, you're going to find that you're not really avoiding anything, and having given up your rights ... are worse off.

Re:Yes, and?

[Archangel Michael]

Actually, I am a Libertarian and you won't find me making those whines. The only people I hear actually whining are those that didn't do their due diligence and put all their eggs in one insecure basket. The ones whining are those that are now calling for government interference where none is really needed, and people like yourself who don't understand libertarian principles and yet feel entitled to mock them.

Trust me, you look like a fool to libertarians like me.

Re:Yes, and?

[Archangel Michael]

AC child, please stop making yourself look like a fool.

I realize that in your circles using terms like "buttcoin" is effective, but around adults it just looks juvenile. Grow up.

Re:Yes, and?

[Archangel Michael]

The drop in value makes it more worthwhile to shed them now, rather than waiting for values to pop back up to where they were once. The ONLY thing that will add value to bitcoin isn't as an investment tool (hence the speculation bubble), but rather when they become common in daily transactions.

But that is the steep incline that we face, especially in light of all the scandals in the bitcoin trading world.

Re:Yes, and?

[firewrought]

I thought it was so you could purchase illegal contraband without leaving a paper trail. Either way, it's for criminals that are trying to hide activities. That's why I stay away.

Every technology initially attracts attention for how it can be abused. With pagers it was drug dealers; with the internet it was child pr0n; with drones it's terrorists/pervy neighbors/drug traffickers/whatever. With bitcoin, it's black markets.

So I'd caution against being close-minded up front. (It's not as if you're contributing anything novel to the conversation by doing so... somebody parrots this talking point on every bitcoin thread.) We have yet to see how bitcoin will play out in the real world. Personally, while I don't think it's a great investment vehicle and it's a dubious means of wealth storage, it does look useful for wealth transfer.

With Credit Cards, you have a few central banks skimming a huge amount of profit from the bulk of commercial activity, basically inflating costs for all of society. With cash, the government (at taxpayer expense) has to continually print more while exchanging/destroying old notes and simultaneously fighting off counterfeiters. Maybe bitcoin can reduce these overhead costs to society while simultaneously making it easy to conduct a long-distance economic transaction.

Re:Yes, and?

[davester666]

Yes. totally found out that legal contraband is basically worthless. you can't sell it for any kind of markup over what you paid for it.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm inclined to agree with this. If you understand bitcoin, you won't get your bitcoins stolen. If you trust _ANYONE_ including some online exchange, to hold your bitcoins for you, you are dumb.

Re:Yes, and?

[Shakrai]

I think the people who look at fools are those investing in an "asset" that has less tangible value than just about anything, including the fiat currencies that many of them condemn. Bitcoin will never be a currency as such, because it will never be accepted for "all debts, public and private." It's an asset, with nothing backing it up, and you'd arguably be better off buying something tangible (real estate, firearms, precious metals, works of art, jewels, and so on) if you're unwilling to store wealth in a fiat currency. There are also intangible assets (blue chip stocks) that are arguably a better bet for storing wealth than bitcoin, unless of course your primary motivation is hiding wealth from the authorities, but even in that instance there are things you can do that are a safer bet than bitcoin.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go easy on him. He only has a liberal arts degree.

Re:Yes, and?

[Archangel Michael]

The notion that cash is available for " "all debts, public and private."" without government oversight is naive at best.

Here is a test, go buy a brand new car with CASH money and that you want the MSO (google it if you want to know what it is). Technically it should be possible, without any government interference. But it isn't.

Here is another test, pay your taxes with coins (real coins) see if the government that issued the money will take the money it issued. Again, good luck.

Re:Yes, and?

[cusco]

The person most frequently pointed at as the likely creator of bitcoin is a CIA contractor, it would not surprise me at all to eventually learn that this was a CIA/DARPA project in experimental economics. What would surprise me is if none of the missing bitcoins showed up in the wallets of the investigators that took down Mt. Gox.

Re:Yes, and?

[goose-incarnated]

The notion that cash is available for " "all debts, public and private."" without government oversight is naive at best.

Here is a test, go buy a brand new car with CASH money and that you want the MSO (google it if you want to know what it is). Technically it should be possible, without any government interference. But it isn't.

Here is another test, pay your taxes with coins (real coins) see if the government that issued the money will take the money it issued. Again, good luck.

I actually did that once - bought a car with notes. You can pay your taxes with notes as well. They accept cash money, which is what the OP claimed. Sure, there are some qualifiers, like you can't pay with a dumptruck filled with coins, but you can pay with cash.

Re:Yes, and?

[gstoddart]

Every time I see a comment like this I wonder if the person has some kind of reading comprehension problem

Funny, when I see comments like this I conclude the poster is an asshole.

There was no deficiency in the Bitcoin protocol

Speaking of reading comprehension, did I fucking suggest it was a failure in the protocol?

The problem with Bitcoin, as I see it, is it seems to bring out the stupid in people. As in people handing over virtual money, to a shady player, who is neither a bank nor operates as a bank, and isn't insured as a bank, and then are surprised to get ripped off.

It's like the people who have drank the kool-aid about bitcoin become irrational idiots who think the unicorn shit which has been smeared all over bitcoin makes it immune to this.

I don't give a crap what you do with your money. But when I see people hand wringing about losing the money they essentially gave to a shady stranger in a dark alley ... I'm forced to conclude it served these people right for being idiots. Yes, the crypto worked beautifully

I don't give a crap about how wonderful the crypto is, or isn't, in bitcoin. But it seems like people using it suffer from either blind optimism, or inherent stupidity.

Which seems to be the case in all speculative markets, and very especially bitcoin, which seems to give widespread encouragement to become an idiot ... either in what you do, or in how much of a drooling idiot you become on the topic.

Re:Yes, and?

[Marginal Coward]

What would surprise me is if none of the missing bitcoins showed up in the wallets of the investigators that took down Mt. Gox.

Maybe Samuel Jackson knows: isn't he the one who's always asking, "What's in your wallet?'

Re:Yes, and?

[Shakrai]

Technically it should be possible, without any government interference. But it isn't.

So you're railing against laws and regulations (I'm guessing the $10,000 reporting requirement?) put in place to combat money laundering? Is that your best argument? You really expect sympathy from me because Uncle Sam wants you to account for large amounts of cash, when there's decades worth of history of violent criminal organizations using laundering techniques to hide ill gotten gains?

If you can actually ACCOUNT for where your pile of cash came from you're not going to have any difficulties paying in cash. If you just show up with a pile of money and can't document where it came from, well, that's a different story.

Here is another test, pay your taxes with coins (real coins) see if the government that issued the money will take the money it issued.

This is a stupid straw man. You know exactly what I meant. United States Dollars are valid for all debts, public and private. Is this your second best argument? That you can't pay your taxes with pennies? If you really insist on this stupid straw man:

Step #1: Travel to your local USPS.
Step #2: Purchase a postal money order using whatever combination of coins you happen to possess.
Step #3: Mail money order to IRS.
Step #4: Pat yourself on the back for sticking it to the man, because, I dunno, a bare chested blue painted Mel Gibson shouting "FREEDOM" at the top of his lungs?

Re:Yes, and?

[Shakrai]

Maybe Samuel Jackson knows: isn't he the one who's always asking, "What's in your wallet Motherfucker?"

Fixed it for you.

Re:Yes, and?

[Archangel Michael]

If you just show up with a pile of money and can't document where it came from, well, that's a different story.

It came from private debts. Just like the note claims ... "all debts, public and private"

ALL is a qualifier, and negates any limitations, including documentation of origin.

Re:Yes, and?

[ShaunC]

The notion that cash is available for "all debts, public and private" without government oversight is naive at best. Here is a test, go buy a brand new car with CASH money and that you want the MSO (google it if you want to know what it is). Technically it should be possible, without any government interference. But it isn't.

McLaren Special Operations? ;) Kidding of course, but any business is well within their rights not to sell you something for cash. Note the word "debt" printed on US currency. If you walk into a dealership and offer to buy a car with stacks of $100 bills, you have no debt to them, so they're under no legal obligation to accept your offer. I'm not so thrilled that large cash transactions must be reported to the government, but that strays off topic.

Have you tried to purchase a car using BTC? If there are dealers somewhere accepting it, that's pretty cool. There are also dealers somewhere who will take cash. So I don't see the difference except for the fact that the BTC price will probably go up and down during the course of a given day, where the cash price will probably remain stable for a week or more at a time.

Here is another test, pay your taxes with coins (real coins) see if the government that issued the money will take the money it issued. Again, good luck.

The coins I have don't say anything about being good for all debts, public, private, or otherwise. Do you have US coins that do carry such a guarantee?

Re:Yes, and?

[Shakrai]

ALL is a qualifier, and negates any limitations, including documentation of origin.

So your chief complaint really is the fact that the Government doesn't make it easy for you to cheat^Wlive outside the system?

Yawn.

I suppose you could try your luck at living off the land in Alaska. They're still doing homesteads up there and you'll find a ton of parcels that can be had for <$10,000. Property taxes are pretty low, albeit a non-zero amount. It's probably as far away from the man as you can get and still be on planet Earth.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice dichotomy you made up. Maybe government can do bad things and so can cops and so can husbands and teenagers and... Mt Gox directors. Maybe it's your right to complain when people do bad things.

So if I complain about some aspect of the government, I am now no longer allowed to ask it to do it's job and help me? You must be so full of yourself.

Re:Yes, and?

[Shakrai]

I'm not so thrilled that large cash transactions must be reported to the government, but that strays off topic.

That's actually his chief complaint if you read between the lines.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. You should never keep money in exchanges. Everyone who owns bitcoins should store them on multiple USB thumb drives in different locations (for security) and never plug those USB drives into a computer. That will fix this whole bitcoin thing.

Re:Yes, and?

[prelelat]

I would say that illegal activity is a large part of it, but I do think it serves an important purpose. If everyday buying of bitcoins wasn't more expensive than using my credit card on a website(try buying bitcoins online it's expensive) I would be all over it. Private transaction without the worry of someone stealing my credit information. Someone online can only fleece me out of what I put in without linking to an account with a credit card of bank account attached. There are other options in this area though. Also while I'm not into illegal activities I don't necessarily want people tracking my every movement online.

Say if I had wanted to donate money to wikileaks back when credit cards were rejected. I'm not doing anything illegal by support that site but my credit card wouldn't be accepted. Paypal will hose you on anything if you aren't careful just look at what happened to Notch when minecraft started pulling in mad cash.

I don't want to be limited just because someone THINKS I'm doing something illegal.

http://rt.com/usa/214007-datac...
http://www.escapistmagazine.co...

Re:Yes, and?

[Archangel Michael]

First off, the whole $10,000 thing is just an arbitrary number, that is easily bypassed. It solves nothing, prevents nothing. It just makes it harder to do legitimate business under the watchful eye of government. Suggesting that it prevents unlawful acts is unproven at best, and woefully naive at worst.

The assumption being, that if I had $10K in cash, I must be a criminal is also insulting.

The number $10,000 used to be a huge sum of money, like the average yearly wage for middle class worker. It isn't any longer, and yet that number remains. Imagine if it hasn't changed in the next 100 years, where it is a daily wage equivalent and see if you still agree that only criminals have that kind of money.

Suffice it to say, your basic premise is wrong, short sighted and just plain ignorant of reality.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clever? Nah. Funny and causes extreme butthurt amongst the target audience? You betcha!

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shall I call the waaahmbulance? I won't stop using it because the butthurt from people like yourself is no end of funny.

BUTTCOIN!
BUTTCOIN!
BUTTCOIN!
BUTTCOIN!
BUTTCOIN!
BUTTCOIN!

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

>I actually did that once - bought a car with notes.

And you received the MSO? The MSO allows you to avoid taxes if your name isn't known, which with a cash transaction it would not be known. I bet you didn't get to do that.

>You can pay your taxes with notes as well

You mean folding money? "pay your taxes with coins (real coins)"

>Sure, there are some qualifiers, like you can't pay with a dumptruck filled with coins, but you can pay with cash.

So you can't pay your taxes with coins. Thanks for wasting my time.

Re:Yes, and?

[geniice]

I think most people would accept that placing limits on knowingly buying stolen goods is allowable within a free society.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good boy. They have you trained well.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

As soon as you form a contract (accept their offer) you have a debt - same as when the rent is due after you strike a contract as a tenant. You're just playing with words - the original intent of legal tender is quite clear.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

Purchasing something with cash is not paying a debt. Never is and never was.

Re:Yes, and?

[Lunix Nutcase]

You're simply wrong because:

1) Legal tender can be refused if the debt didn't exist at the time of the payment (aka the purchasing of a car).
2) The US has something called "invitation to bargain" which allows a shopkeeper to refuse cash. This is backed up by case law that is nearly 150 years old.

So, no, that wasn't the original intent and isn't backed up by any US case law.

Re:Yes, and?

[ShaunC]

I can parse that complaint, and I agree with it. I bought my car for $foo and we worked it out to a monthly payment. I always made that payment via check until I received the title. I'm one of the holdout types who still likes to write checks and put them in an envelope with a stamp, there's some personal empowerment there where I remain the final arbiter over the distribution of my money.

But once a contract was in place, and I was driving the car, I could have shown up with cash, or mailed them such which is an enormous risk. GMAC/Ally would have been obligated to accept that payment. In cash bills. Nothing says that GMAC/Ally is required to accept Bitcoins or Dogecoins or any other made-up "money." But my hundreds, twenties, tens, fives, and even down to $1 bills, my government may do a lot of things wrong but they will guarantee that those pieces of paper will be accepted for any debt.

Is it the government's business what I'm doing with 100 $100 bills? Fuck no. I should make it very clear that I don't approve of reporting requirements. And the idea of civil forfeiture is entirely ridiculous.

I'm not arguing against BTC. I don't own any, don't want any, the whole concept seems messed up. If you have BTC and can cash them out for money, do that! Just don't come around after your BTC "investment" disappears and say you've been screwed.

Re:Yes, and?

[david_thornley]

The assumption is that, if you're conducting $10K transactions in cash, it might be worth taking a look at you, because a lot of people who do that are criminals. Same principle as suspecting the husband if the wife is murdered: it may not be fair to any individual husband, but the husband is involved in enough murders to make it worth checking out.

Re:Yes, and?

[Archangel Michael]

Assumption of guilt. Good one!

Re:Yes, and?

[rtb61]

A free market is a market where you take what you want for free, literally and literal definition. So the freest market is living as a nomad in the wild as stone age man, watch out for the real predators because running around completely free means not being able to rely on anyone else when it comes to tackling that pride of lions or that pack of wolves or tiny, tiny critters that infect you body and that you would not be able to survive with out any outside cooperative assistance. Freedom can not be shared, as sharing logically places limits on freedom of actions.

Re:Yes, and?

[Shakrai]

Is it the government's business what I'm doing with 100 $100 bills? Fuck no. I should make it very clear that I don't approve of reporting requirements. And the idea of civil forfeiture is entirely ridiculous.

You'll brook no argument from me on civil forfeiture. The reporting requirements are trickier; they were put in place because ongoing criminal enterprises were using cash to launder the proceeds of their ill gotten gains. There's a history there and if you want to drill down deeper into Constitutional Law the reporting requirements pass a strict scrutiny test. The State has a compelling interest in preventing criminals from laundering money and the policy is narrowly tailored. It does not represent a significant burden on or intrusion into your daily life.

I can see the philosophical objection, but in the hierarchy of infringements (real and imagined) on my personal liberty this ranks pretty damned close to the bottom. Such are the tradeoffs you make for being a member of civilization and I doubt that there are many people in the political mainstream (or even within Libertarianism) that think we should make it easier for criminal enterprises to launder money.

Re:Yes, and?

[Shakrai]

Straw man; better one! Bonus points for absolutism.

When you've finished with Atlas Shrugged do yourself a favor and Google "compelling state interest", "strict scrutiny", and "case law." If you're going to rail against the system you might as well understand how it works in the real world.

Re:Yes, and?

[NormalVisual]

Unless you own a pawn shop. Florida (and I'm guessing other states too) effectively makes them immune to action for trading in stolen property, and makes you jump through ridiculous legal hoops to get your stuff back even if you can prove it's yours.

Re:Yes, and?

[farble1670]

Private transaction without the worry of someone stealing my credit information.

that's funny. because with bitcoin, you sure don't have to worry about someone stealing the knowledge that you bought a six pack at the local grocery, but you have to worry about them stealing THE ACTUAL CURRENCY.

credit cards get a bad rap, but for the consumer, it's pretty low risk. it's in the companies' interest for it to be low risk, because they want you to keep spending money with it.

Re:Yes, and?

[farble1670]

BTC made a lot of money for the early adopters, but it still has not yet lost momentum as a currency, and only will gain in value over time.

it's 6-month high is ~484. it's currently ~269. as far as fluctuations go that is massive. using bitcoin for anything other than quick sales (cash -> bitcoin -> transfer) is really not smart.

not to mention, the entire market is in a constant state of algorithmic manipulation (yes, i know, so is the stock market).

Re:Yes, and?

[rubycodez]

people have paid income tax in coin, look it up.
couple friends of mine have paid cash for cars and got title from MSO (ID and insurance is verified of course anyway when you purchase a car), you really have me confused on what isn't supposed to be possible.

Re:Yes, and?

[rubycodez]

Eh, you're confused. You can buy a car with cash, but ID and insurance check will also be done to get title. Cash doesn't mean you won't be known.

You can pay income tax with coins, that's been done look it up. One famous case was trucker who paid in pennies and had court reprimmand IRS dude for not taking it.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

So exactly the same as with cash then. OK.

Re:Yes, and?

[rioki]

The fact that the coins are nearly untraceable is the desired effect

This shows you have NO idea how BT works. The coins are super traceable and that is a feature of BT. Each and every transaction is noted in the public ledger (block chain). You wallet is just a private key (with some meta data). The actual amount in "your possession" is determined by the aggregate of transaction towards your "wallet" (public key). Where pseudonymity comes in to play is associating identities (keys) with real persons, but that has proven time and again to only be relatively thing veil. (Like pseudonyms on the internet in the 90s...)

Re:Yes, and?

[rioki]

With Credit Cards, you have a few central banks skimming a huge amount of profit from the bulk of commercial activity, basically inflating costs for all of society. With cash, the government (at taxpayer expense) has to continually print more while exchanging/destroying old notes and simultaneously fighting off counterfeiters. Maybe bitcoin can reduce these overhead costs to society while simultaneously making it easy to conduct a long-distance economic transaction.

I basically agree with you, crypto currency is an interesting vehicle to transfer wealth. But BT is quite wasteful; if you take the amount of energy required and wasted to authenticate each transaction (mining), the drag on society is not fully removed. I would like a crypto currency that is less wasteful. But that is the Catch 22 of crypto currencies. Make the authentication to simple and you are open to abuse, make the authentication hard and you waste lots of resources.

Re:Yes, and?

[GLMDesigns]

No. That is not the definition. Free markets, as opposed to top-down dirigiste economies have been very clearly defined by many people (see Karl Menger and the Austrian School among many others). No proponent or defender of Free Markets defines it as you just did.

Re:Yes, and?

[GLMDesigns]

Ok. That's being silly. Bitcoins are cash. How much cash do you carry around in your wallet? Long term savings should not be kept in an exchange.

Re:Yes, and?

[prelelat]

You are right, you have to weigh the pro's and con's of it. My point was more on par with that there is a need beyond illegal activities when it comes to online transactions and bitcoin. Most use case scenarios people would still be using credit card or something with similar features. Credit Card companies are awesome at charge backs and fraud cases.

Re:Yes, and?

[farble1670]

My point was more on par with that there is a need beyond illegal activities when it comes to online transactions and bitcoin.

what are those reasons?

Re:Yes, and?

[rtb61]

You do understand the huge difference between public relations and reality, how one is designed to sell stuff and truth has no relation to the sale and the other well, it might not sound nice at all but it more accurately reflects reality. No proponent of the free market generally tells the truth about the free market except to other insiders. The definition of the free market varies according to what proponents of the free market are trying to sell and to whom they are trying to sell it.

Re:Yes, and?

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course you won't be making those whines, since the core of libertarianism is about being a fuck-you-got-mine asshole to your fellow man.

Re:Yes, and?

[donkwich]

There are more illegal transactions with paper cash than bitcoins

No shit sherlock, bitcoin is small compared to the GDP of an entire fucking country. Now wake me up when 7% of ALL DOLLARS is lost to crime and you'll have a more accurate comparison.

Re:Yes, and?

[GLMDesigns]

No. Not really. A free market is that in which the economy is not run by a central authority. A food coop, designed, developed and run without central command, even if each of the individuals involved are socialists themselves is still part of the free market.
Karl Menger was not writing a public relations book; neither was von Mises.

Butt!

[Anonymous Coward]

I shoved them up my butt.

Scam currency goes missing in scam

[Anonymous Coward]

Shocking!

Re:What about the "old wallet"?

[gurps_npc]

RTFS. Note the S, not the A. If you had read the SUMMARY, let alone the article, you would see that 850,000 were missing, 200,000 were found in the wallet, leaving 650,000 unaccounted for.

Re:What about the "old wallet"?

[Holi]

Come on the 200,000 found in a old wallet was a lie. Provably so. "The idea that there were 200,000 or 180,000 bitcoins in a single wallet that they just discovered which had been dormant for years that contained 180,000 bitcoins is undercut by plain evidence on the blockchain," Stephen Woodrow said.

One year later, I'm not closer to caring.

[JaredOfEuropa]

An anonymous currency, that allows you to set up an exchange in any country, and without any oversight whatsoever. The whole thing is trust based. Would you leave your cash with any random stranger in some Thai web cafe for safekeeping? Even if you see others do the same, seemingly without worry? Because leaving any significant amount of BTC in an exchange amounts to the same thing.

Re:One year later, I'm not closer to caring.

[OzPeter]

Would you leave your cash with any random stranger in some Thai web cafe for safekeeping?

No I would not. But then again those Thai women in the bars who keep wanting to have a drink with me all seem on the up and up.

Re:One year later, I'm not closer to caring.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those aren't women....

Re:One year later, I'm not closer to caring.

[Shakrai]

No I would not. But then again those Thai women in the bars who keep wanting to have a drink with me all seem on the up and up.

I thought so too, but it turns out they were just gold diggers after the millions of United States Dollars my long lost Uncle smuggled out of Nigeria. :(

Uhhh, coincidence?

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, they're on flight MH370

Re:Uhhh, coincidence?

[Thud457]

Captain Flint buried them in the Templar^H pirate vault on Oak Island. Long John Silver's looking in the wrong damn hemisphere.

I'm Shocked SHOCKED there is gambling goin on here

[bobbied]

Your winnings sir!

Yes, thank you.

If you go swimming in the shark tank with the bookies, expect to loose your money or worse.

Nope!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not under the bed, not behind the toilet, not spent on sports cars, hookers, and blow. Maybe its in my other pants, hang on. I think I'm experiencing a schadenfreude high.

Re:What about the "old wallet"?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you quoting?

Thats a lot of cards

[Bing Tsher E]

$180M is a lot of Magic the Gathering cards.

Haven't they gone down significantly in value in recent years. That's probably enough to own all of them.

"Real" money

[Dan East]

I wonder how much of those bitcoins represented "real" money (as in bitcoins that were purchased via cash), versus bitcoins that had only been mined? If they did not represent actual money that flowed into the system, then perhaps the impetus for tracking them isn't very high?

Re:"Real" money

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how much of those bitcoins represented "real" money (as in bitcoins that were purchased via cash), versus bitcoins that had only been mined? If they did not represent actual money that flowed into the system, then perhaps the impetus for tracking them isn't very high?

You don't understand how this works. All bitcoins have been mined, and there are no money "in the system". There are only potential buyers and sellers, which some times settle on a price and a trade is executed. When someone buys bitcoins they give money to some other person, and unless that person changes his mind they won't be used to buy back any coins.

Re:"Real" money

[Dan East]

Mt Gox is an exchange, and exchanges exchange "real" money for bitcoins, correct? So say I paid $2,000 for bitcoins at Mt Gox, and I left those coins there instead of transferring to my own wallet. Thus if those particular coins went missing, I would have been out exactly the $2,000 I paid for them. Now on the other hand, say I mined bitcoins and transferred to Mt Gox for them to be sold, and those coins went missing. They never had any "real" value attached to them - only whatever resources I claimed to have consumed in generating them. See the difference?

Re:"Real" money

[Anonymous Coward]

Mt Gox is an exchange, and exchanges exchange "real" money for bitcoins, correct? So say I paid $2,000 for bitcoins at Mt Gox, and I left those coins there instead of transferring to my own wallet. Thus if those particular coins went missing, I would have been out exactly the $2,000 I paid for them. Now on the other hand, say I mined bitcoins and transferred to Mt Gox for them to be sold, and those coins went missing. They never had any "real" value attached to them - only whatever resources I claimed to have consumed in generating them. See the difference?

I understand what you are thinking, but it's all in your head. There is no difference. Bitcoins are bitcoins, and they have the same value no matter how the current owner obtained them.

Re:"Real" money

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, someone actually spent a point to vote down rational thinking.

Re: "Real" money

[whopis]

The problem with that logic is that they have the same value regardless of how you obtained them. If I get your point, you are saying that the person who mined a bitcoin will value it less because mining it was easier and took less money than the person who paid $2k for a bitcoin someone else mined.

I guess if you feel that way, there are likely others that do as well. However, it doesn't make much sense because either of those bitcoins could be exchanged for $2k at any time.

Re:"Real" money

[david_thornley]

There's lots of things I can either buy or find/create/grow myself. Potatoes I buy in a store are neither more nor less potatoey than potatoes I grow.

Anybody actually looking?

[jandrese]

Is there anybody with real authority actually looking for this? As far as the government is concerned someone might as well have stolen all of the WoW Gold or Eve ISK. Pretty much everybody else doesn't have the means or expertise to actually do the real world search. Somebody has a huge fat wallet that they're going to tumble over the months and eventually cash out and unless they screw something up there's not much chance of being caught.

Re:Anybody actually looking?

[drinkypoo]

If there's missing millions then there's missing fraction-of-millions in taxes. So there's a motivation to go looking for it right there. And then, also, once it's in their hot little hands they can always decide to keep it. Even if all they do is sit on it for a while and then eventually cough it up, it can make them money.

Somebody has a huge fat wallet that they're going to tumble over the months and eventually cash out and unless they screw something up there's not much chance of being caught.

No rush.

Re:Anybody actually looking?

[slashmydots]

It's bigger than some countries' entire currency, Amazon and Newegg both take it as a form of payment, it's approved as a security backing now by the SEC and FINRA, and all serious investors take it seriously. So come back out of 2010 and join us in 2015 please and stop calling it a pretend currency.

Re:Anybody actually looking?

[Tailhook]

Is there anybody with real authority actually looking for this?

Who knows. What I remember is that the thieves actually exploited MtGox's system, as opposed to Bitcoin proper. Their system reconciled transactions independently from the public block chain for performance reasons. So it doesn't surprise me that there is no public record that can be investigated.

Re:Anybody actually looking?

[jandrese]

It's like they set the system up to allow the Bitcoins to be stolen. There is a bit of Poe's law here where you can never tell if a Bitcoin site operator is merely incompetent or actually a scammer. That and there is always a better scammer out there preying on the scammers. Even Ross Ulbrict got scammed for more than a million dollars worth of Bitcoins.

Re:Anybody actually looking?

[jandrese]

Oh yes, I forgot that everybody pays taxes on their Bitcoin transactions. They must be self reporting them just because they're so honest.

Re:Anybody actually looking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yes, I forgot that everybody pays taxes on their Bitcoin transactions. They must be self reporting them just because they're so honest.

You know, somehow income taxes worked before the IRS and the rest of the federal government collaborated to create a panopticon police state.

To put it another way, fraudsters gonna fraud.

Is the threat of FPMITA prison the only thing that keeps you from tax fraud? From theft? From murder?

Re:Anybody actually looking?

[Holi]

And a currency that has such great potential. I mean it has only lost $1000 in value over the past year, and no real sign of it rising anytime soon.

Re:Anybody actually looking?

[drinkypoo]

Is the threat of FPMITA prison the only thing that keeps you from tax fraud? From theft? From murder?

Yes, no, and no, in order.

With proper representation, taxation would not be so odious. But the will of the people is being soundly ignored at every possible turn...

Re:Anybody actually looking?

[goose-incarnated]

It's bigger than some countries' entire currency, Amazon and Newegg both take it as a form of payment,

No, they don't. They point you to an exchange because they only take real money. They absolutely will not let a single BTC touch their system. They do not accept it as a form of payment. They do, however, point you to an exchange at time of sale.

it's approved as a security backing now by the SEC and FINRA,

So are CDS, houses, stocks, commodities, etc. That don't make any of them a currency, or money.

and all serious investors take it seriously.

Name three.

So come back out of 2010 and join us in 2015 please and stop calling it a pretend currency.

On this you're absolutely correct. It is not even a pretend currency.

Re:Anybody actually looking?

[Shakrai]

It's a pretend asset. :)

Re:Anybody actually looking?

[slashmydots]

Newegg absolutely does take BTC directly from a customer's point of view. Name three investors? The Winklevoss twins and the owner of BIT. Oh and that doesn't make bitcoins money? I made a lot of money on them. Does that make them money? Everyone who knows what they're talking about will tell you BTC will never, ever collapse. That gives is inherent value. It is superior to most other currencies in a majority of ways.

Re:Anybody actually looking?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, I don't see that Amazon accepts Bitcoin? I see you can buy Amazon gift cards with bitcoin from a 3rd party, or auction off your amazon wish list using a 3rd party site that converts their bitcoin into an amazon payment. But there is no "pay with Bitcoin" option in the amazon checkout process.

I have used bitcoin at Adafruit, and I see that Newegg does accept it directly.

and you never will find the money

[circletimessquare]

people who seek to get a currency away from "evil" government control get exactly what they want: worse. no government, no accountability. no accountability, you get screwed, and the only answer you will ever get is "oh well"

you can't run from government regulation in hatred of it as a great evil, and then expect government to come to rescue you when you inevitably get fucked. you got fucked, because there's no regulations... which you *asked for* and were enthusiastic about, moron

all this episode boils down to is some economically clueless fanboys needed to learn the hard way what the rest of us already know: that a currency backed by a government is obviously better than "free" alternatives

all the evil shit a government can pull (and they do, i'm not defending government, i'm just noting there is far worse out there) is nothing compared to the evil that exists without a government backed currency and government oversight, accountability, and regulations of finance and banking. i'm not in love with government, i just recognize it as the *least worse* evil when it comes to currency mechanisms

you can petition and redress your grievances to government, and get a hearing, and maybe justice (if you actually understand right and wrong and you aren't some deranged crackpot out for "justice")

you can't do that against random assholes whom you trusted with your deposits for some ignorant reason that just basically boils down to uneducated enthusiasm

it's like the people who rant and complain about how evil the police are. and then their car gets broken into... and... drum roll please... they call the police. you want to reform the police, fix the police, fight corruption. not fight their existence. you need the police. without the police, civilization quickly falls. of course there are crooked cops and bad cops. so fight that, the bad apples in the system, rather than fight the entire system. which you need, and want, despite the fact you aren't educated enough to see or understand that far worse problems exist without them. the same with government regulation of finance and banking. it is warped and corrupt and crooked. so fight the corruption. don't fight the whole system. because without the system, far worse shit will befall you

people need to be educated enough on economics and history to know what kind of abuses exist out there without government oversight of banking

Re:and you never will find the money

[drinkypoo]

all this episode boils down to is some economically clueless fanboys needed to learn the hard way what the rest of us already know: that a currency backed by a government is obviously better than "free" alternatives

Sure, theoretically. But is the currency you're getting worth the currency you're getting? And are you actually getting equal protection?

Re:and you never will find the money

[Registered Coward v2]

you can't run from government regulation in hatred of it as a great evil, and then expect government to come to rescue you when you inevitably get fucked. you got fucked, because there's no regulations.

Sure you can. Americans call them Tea Party Republicans.

Re:and you never will find the money

[Anonymous Coward]

But eventually the free market will work all this out.

Re:and you never will find the money

[circletimessquare]

look at the article we are commenting under. there is your answer

without protections, you get fucked

it's kind of like antivaxxers: they have no fucking clue how horrible a world of constant deadly diseases was. so in this bubble of ignorance, created by progress, they only see the tiny "evil" in what we have to do to maintain the advance: get injections. they react to that as the evil that needs to be defeated. as if that's the only evil possible. and when enough of them allow enough attack vectors for a deadly disease to proliferate, people die. so here we have the real evil at work: ignorance

the world is not a choice between unicorns and rainbows versus shit and broken bones

the world is often a choice between various shades of bad situations

wisdom is picking the least bad situation, and comparing it versus the other bad options. rather than ignorantly comparing the least worse bad situation against uneducated perfection fantasy. so government regulations, with all of the corruption and rent seeking and regulatory capture, etc., is better than no government, or weaker government

people need to fight corruption, not government itself. in fact, those who corrupt government are often the ones loudly proclaiming government to be the enemy, rather than the corruption they create. and uneducated fools fall for their lies

another example: the FDC

like antivaxxers, certain paranoid economically illterate wackjobs see great evil in the FDC. and in their abject economic and historical ignorance, they have no clue of the historical suffering that led to the FDC. no, in their mind these controls exist because of vast conspiracies and assorted nutbag fantasy rantings about efforts to control us all, because reality is apparently an episode of scooby doo

why does the FDC actually fucking exist in the first place? study your economics and your history. don't trust the low iq herp derp hysterics of alex jones types to "educate" you

the reasons are mundane and sensible for the FDC. not dark and creepy. a world without them, the world before the FDC, is far, far worse:

every dozen years, there would be a banking panic, and people would lose their life savings

simple history. simple economic fact

that's the real reason why we have the FDC (cue paranoid historically and economically illiterate whining about "freedom")

and here we have bitcoin enthusiasts losing their deposits by entrusting them to random assholes without any government oversight, and guess what?

"oh well"

that's what life is like without "evil" government regulations in finance

Re:and you never will find the money

[drinkypoo]

without protections, you get fucked

Right, and with government "protection", you also get fucked. They take our money and then spend it oppressing us. I don't know that getting secure banking out of it is all that great a trade.

Re: and you never will find the money

[circletimessquare]

You didn't even read what I wrote

Here, I've excerpted for you. Educate yourself, try again:

>the world is not a choice between unicorns and rainbows versus shit and broken bones

>the world is often a choice between various shades of bad situations

>wisdom is picking the least bad situation, and comparing it versus the other bad options. rather than ignorantly comparing the least worse bad situation against uneducated perfection fantasy. so government regulations, with all of the corruption and rent seeking and regulatory capture, etc., is better than no government, or weak government

You don't want to be oppressed? Ever try living in a place with no government or weak government?

FIX it, don't destroy it.

Re: and you never will find the money

[circletimessquare]

I'm pretty sure you're joking, but just to clarify, there are free market fundamentalist morons who actually believe that

Re:and you never will find the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike cash based scams where the money always turns up.

Re:and you never will find the money

[Anonymous Coward]

although government regulation sometimes overreaches, its nice to know that there still is no government regulation requiring us to capitalize the first words of our sentences

or to use periods

thanks for demonstrating that for us

Re:and you never will find the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh look, a government cocksucker.

Next you tell us that income tax is totally cool even though the country survived without it until the mid 1900's, and going off the gold standard "temporarily" is still just something we'll get back to eventually.

You can petition and redress your grievances to government, as long as you have lobbying dollars and SUPERPAC contributions on your side. If not, fuck off, you're a little peasant in a larger game.

But that's what you government cheering dick-lickers always forget, isn't it, that there ISN'T A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD and hasn't been for quite a long while. Go ahead, keep your green toilet paper, I'm sure the Fed will be "looking out" for you and the FDIC will "have your back" when it gets debased to shit in the next round of Quantitative Easing.

What a knob...

Re: and you never will find the money

[circletimessquare]

I stopped reading after your first sentence

This is what I wrote:

>all the evil shit a government can pull (and they do, i'm not defending government, i'm just noting there is far worse out there) is nothing compared to the evil that exists without a government backed currency and government oversight, accountability, and regulations of finance and banking. i'm not in love with government, i just recognize it as the *least worse* evil when it comes to currency mechanisms

Did you try reading what I wrote before launching into the useless insults?

Re:and you never will find the money

[Holi]

>What a knob... Says the person suggesting we return to the gold standard.

Re: and you never will find the money

[Archangel Michael]

Selective memories of how Governments really screw up.

USSR
China
North Korea
Cambodia
Germany (Nazi kind)

These governments killed hundreds of millions of people. You're just lucky you don't live in a place with oppressive government and thus confirmation biased towards government.

The problem isn't what you think it is. Good People doing nothing allows evil to prosper. Be it Somalia or Nazi Germany.

Re: and you never will find the money

[drinkypoo]

You don't want to be oppressed? Ever try living in a place with no government or weak government?

What I actually want is weak central government. I don't know that we need less government (well, in certain areas we certainly do, like military) but what we certainly need is less centralization. Pare the feds back to handling disputes and actually defending the country, making treaties.

I also want representative democracy, and for the people to ratify bills directly. If that makes it harder to pass laws, OK. We have too many already. Let's get rid of some before we make more.

I'm more likely to get my unicorn.

Re: and you never will find the money

[Shakrai]

What I actually want is weak central government.

I also want representative democracy, and for the people to ratify bills directly.

These two desires are incompatible with each other. People tend to vote in favor of benefits from the public treasury. There's a few quotes (some real, some attributed) floating around the internet about this. There's also the very real world example of California to point to.

Re: and you never will find the money

[Shakrai]

misattributed

Re: and you never will find the money

[Shakrai]

Good People doing nothing allows evil to prosper. Be it Somalia or Nazi Germany.

There were plenty of "Good People" (tm) in Nazi Germany. Many of them did a lot more than nothing; resistance ranged from non-violent underground protests (White Rose) to violent attempts at assassination. "Good People" (tm) are no guarantee against tyranny and this entire topic is irrelevant in a discussion about the proper bounds of Government.

Since time immortal Governments have claimed the right to coin and regulate the currency. This is not a new concept that started with the Federal Reserve Act. If you're going to upend a few thousand years of precedent why don't you explain to us why your desired cryptocurrency solution is better than the system you're railing against? Particularly since the Government (or anyone with enough guns really) can still compel you to participate in the system if push comes to shove.

Re: and you never will find the money

[cusco]

Weak central government has been tried hundreds if not thousands of times over the course of civilization. It doesn't work. I'm old enough to have seen the Cuyahoga River burning, from back in the days of weak central government control of environmental issues. Unfortunately Libertarians tend to be the most historically illiterate people around (which is probably why they believe in their central doctrines). Even Adam Smith was in favor of a strong central government to control abuse of the markets.

Re: and you never will find the money

[Anonymous Coward]

so, you're saying, give us oversight, except when it applies to you only...then, leave you alone.

hate to tell ya buddy boy - can't have your cake and eat it too. protections come with costs.

don't want to pay the costs? you don't get protections.

Re: and you never will find the money

[Anonymous Coward]

I think what people don't realize is how much protection the government gives. One learns this quickly on a visit to Mexico, Brazil... and especially in Middle Eastern countries where the value on life is next to nothing.

Take basic things like water. Anywhere in the US, you can open a spigot and take a drink. Try that in Mexico, and you will learn the hard way what dysentery is. People talk about crime in the US, but again, head south.

Or what happens if one is sick and loses the ability to work. All it can take is an auto accident. If that happens in the Middle East, be prepared to starve to death or compete against the screaming hordes of other beggars in the streets between times the police do the "garbage sweeps". Oh, don't think of pickpocketing... they actually do chop hands and feet off there.

Then there comes the legal system. In the US, you generally have a chance to have a wrong redressed, even against some of the bigger entities in the country. Most of the world, unless you are the one with the most firepower or brutality, you will lose, and likely lose a lot, perhaps your life.

I'm always amazed at how people bellyache about the US. No, it isn't perfect, but just visit somewhere outside of Canada, the US, and Europe... and one then realizes that it isn't that bad here. In most areas, you have the freedom to carry a handgun... but you really don't -have- to for your protection.

Re: and you never will find the money

[circletimessquare]

well said

and it's exactly like the antivaccine morons

have them sit down and talk to an old person from when polio was a constant worry, or heck, just look at tombstones in old cemeteries from the 1800s: read the ages of the dead, how many children would routinely die before age 10... sometimes what killed them is listed: pertussis, whooping cough, measles, etc., regularly killed scores of kids every year

there's people with ignorant beliefs created in the bubble that vital modern protections afford them. vital protections that they are so unaware of the need for (out of being stupid and uneducated), they actually believe the protections are the problem

hordes of these stupid loser douchebags, commenting loudly, everywhere

Re: and you never will find the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is the derping idiot when you can't even get the acronym right? It's the FDIC.

Re:and you never will find the money

[31415926535897]

What does the Democratic Front of Cabinda have to do with Bitcoin?

Re:and you never will find the money

[Anonymous Coward]

Like most ADHD Slashdotters, you totally missed the point.

The reference to the gold standard was how it was a "temporary" measure that ended up being pretty much permanent.

Now go back to recompiling your kernel, you knob, while your government zero-days your stupid ass via firmware and OS vulns.

Ownz the quanternet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Mt. Gox is by the NSA? You don't seem to understand how the technology works.

Re:I'm Shocked SHOCKED there is gambling goin on h

[Anonymous Coward]

If you go swimming in the shark tank with the bookies, expect to loose your money or worse.

If you go spelling "lose" like that, expect to get publicly mocked or worse.

Re:What about the "old wallet"?

[Minwee]

What are you quoting?

Hey, let's find out.

Looks like Steven L. Woodrow, a partner at law firm Edelson, quoted in a Reuters story from last year.

It's Silk Road, Duh..

[goombah99]

Has no one noticed that the coins disappeared at almost the same time the FBI seized Silk Road's Assets?

more than bitcoins are missing

[lee n. field]

More than bitcoins are missing. If you sold bitcoins through Mt. Gox, back when they peaked at US$1200, Mt. Gox delayed depositing them into your bank account. And delayed. And delayed. And delayed. And eventually went belly up without every paying.

I had to deal with some of this, with an estate I was at the time administrator of.

Re:What about the "old wallet"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides, how could a single wallet possibly hold that many coins...?

Check the blockchain

[davidwr]

I thought the point of the blockchain was that it recorded every transaction.

I have no idea if it's practical, but in principle, it should be possible to trace the coins from a known point in time, taking into account the "dilution" when they are mixed with other coins.

In other words, if you give me your entire wallet consisting of 1BC that is later determined to be "dirty money" (as declared by the police/a court/whomever) and I put it in my wallet consisting of 9 other BC, my wallet is now "10% contaminated" by the "dirty money."

If I then I give 1BC each to 10 other people who have wallets with 9BC in them, those 10 people each have wallets that are "1% contaminated" by the original "dirty money".

If they each add 90 BC to their wallets, they will each have wallets with 100BC that are now "merely 0.1% contaminated" by the "dirty money."

And so on.

But you will know "where the money went."

As I said, this should be doable in principle. As to whether it is doable in practice I have no idea.

If this kind of tracing is doable in practice, then it can be used to reduce the occurrence of coin theft by reporting thefts to a central authority (or even logging the theft in the block-chain itself) and having people who accept BC as payment treat coins that have been stolen as worthless and treat those that have been co-mingled with stolen coins in "upstream" transactions as having only a "fractional" value based on the "non-dirty" portion of its transaction history.

Yes, there will be thefts but the crook will have to pass the dirty money off on to some innocent/naive party quickly, before the coins are reported stolen. Whoever has the coins or a wallet that was contaminated by having the coins used in an upstream transaction at the time that the theft is reported will typically be stuck with the loss, but from that point on the coins can be used at a "fair" value, based on the value of the non-stolen portion of the money. Depending on the legal frameworks in place and whether the party who gave them the contaminated BC can be identified, they may be totally out of luck or they may be able to recoup the loss from their own counter-party or an insurance company. If they are able t recoup from the counter-party, he will either be stuck with the loss or he may be able to recoup it from the party who gave him contaminated coins or his insurance company, and so on.

Of course, there is the possibility of fraudulently reporting money as stolen. To prevent this, it is doubtful that any reporting system that didn't include some form of accountability for lying would be feasible. I can't think of any way of doing this besides requiring people to reveal their real-life identity and real-world address to the police or other "authority" so that if it turns out they are lying, they can be prosecuted for perjury.

Oh, before you ask, yes, I do realize that this would increase the complexity of handling BC transactions significantly and that alone may make such a system impractical, at least for now.

So...

[davidwr]

So, what if I and everyone else who accepts BC for payment said "before we accept your coin, we need to run its complete history against known coin thefts"?

That wouldn't necessarily stop "off-blockchain" transactions like people who trade whole wallets or who "print coins out on paper" and trade them, but it might slow it down if people knew that they might be the one stuck "holding the dirty money."

There is still the problem that this alone won't prevent people from spending stolen BC before it is reported. In order to fix that, you will need some accepted means of "de-valuing" any money that was ever "co-mingled" with "dirty money." People other than the original thief would be forced to absorb the loss but at least once the loss was reported, I could accept your "partly dirty money" after applying a discount to it to reflect the "non-dirty" portion of its value. I wrote a top-level reply to this article outlining this in more detail.

Re:So...

[Holi]

So wait are you saying that if a wallet has some stolen bitcoins then you get to purchase it at a default, but you still get the whole sum including the tainted bitcoins? That makes absolutely no sense. What would happen to the "dirty" bitcoins at that time. Are they turned over to the police so they can be returned to their owner, like any other stolen property, or, as it seems, are you saying you would get to not only buy them at a discount but get to keep them?

Re:So...

[cusco]

That's called "money laundering" in the real world, and CityCorp, BoA, Credit Suisse/First Boston, etc. make $50-$100 billion dollars a year doing it. It's so profitable that US Treasury Secretaries retire from "public service" to head these companies' "private banking" operations. If you want a way to deal with stolen bitcoins you're going to need to get the big money laundries involved to get the process legalized.

Re:So...

[david_thornley]

You're proposing an awful lot of centralization and regulations for something that's supposed to be decentralized and unregulated.

Re:So...

[Required Snark]

Yes, the banks, aka Wall Street, are corrupt. The people who run Wall Street, and the government regulators who pretend to , are personally corrupt, and always retire with vast personal fortunes.

But get your facts straight. The US government, and all other governments hate money laundering.

HSBC to pay $1.9 billion U.S. fine in money-laundering case

(Reuters) - HSBC Holdings Plc agreed to pay a record $1.92 billion in fines to U.S. authorities for allowing itself to be used to launder a river of drug money flowing out of Mexico and other banking lapses.

Mexico's Sinaloa cartel and Colombia's Norte del Valle cartel between them laundered $881 million through HSBC and a Mexican unit, the U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday.

In a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department, the bank acknowledged it failed to maintain an effective program against money laundering and failed to conduct basic due diligence on some of its account holders.

Under the agreement, which was reported by Reuters last week, the bank agreed to take steps to fix the problems, forfeit $1.256 billion, and retain a compliance monitor. The bank also agreed to pay $665 million in civil penalties to regulators including to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury Department.

Money laundering is required by drug cartels and terrorist organizations, which are both pursued relentlessly by governments, It's illegal corruption.

You are confusing this with legal corruption. Legal corruption is the normal order of events where the rich and powerful are allowed to do things that would be wrong if you did them, along with getting free money from the government that comes out of your pocket. You are a source of wealth for the rich, and the government is the middle man.

An example of inequality under the law is Mitt Romney's 401K. He has somewhere between $21 million and $101 million in a tax free IRA account. Most people have around $42,000 in their IRA according to the article. Until recently you were limited to around $6000 a year contribution account, and it was just increased to $16,500. So, ignoring appreciation in your IRA account, and using the $16,500 amount, it would take you around 60 years to get $1 million.

When this came out his lawyers said it was all legal and he paid all the necessary taxes. I believe that. You, however, have a fixed amount of money that you can save on taxes retirement; it's not based on your income in any way. He lives by one set of rules, you live by a completely different set of rules. Legal corruption.

As for free money from the government, what do you think the TARP bailout was about?

The Senate Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the TARP concluded on January 9, 2009: "In particular, the Panel sees no evidence that the U.S. Treasury has used TARP funds to support the housing market by avoiding preventable foreclosures". The panel also concluded that "Although half the money has not yet been received by the banks, hundreds of billions of dollars have been injected into the marketplace with no demonstrable effects on lending."

Government officials overseeing the bailout have acknowledged difficulties in tracking the money and in measuring the bailout's effectiveness.

During 2008, companies that received $295 billion in bailout money had spent $114 million on lobbying and campaign contributions. Banks that received bailout money had compensated their top executives nearly $1.6 billion in 2007, including salaries, cash bonuses, stock options, and benefits including personal use of company jets and chauffeurs, home security, country club memberships, and professional money management. The Obama administratio

Re:So...

[cusco]

The US government, and all other governments hate money laundering.

That must be why Dick Cheney ($100 million in bribes laundered through NY banks to bribe Nigerian officials while he was CEO of Halliburton), Robert Rubin (folded BanaMex's drug lord clients into his CityCorp 'private banking' division), and Richard Grasso (NYSE CEO who did sales calls to the Colombian jungle offering their services to the FARC, retiring with the largest bonus of any NYSE executive in history) are serving long jail sentences. Oh, that's right, they're **NOT**.

Governments hate money laundering the way DEA agents hate drug lords; with their fingers crossed behind their backs.

Ahh Yes

[Holi]

The Grammar Nazi, the person who has nothing to offer the argument, but feels to need to open their mouth and try and make themselves feel superior. How did it work out for you?

Re:Ahh Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

very well thanks i gave you an opportunity to be a nazi of a different kind you're welcome

Re:Ahh Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

btw i just realized that i wrote that while listening to the soundtrack of schindlers list but thats a totally coincidence i hope it doesnt have any large karmic meaning

Perhaps...

[Kyn]

... they were eaten by a grue?

The Goldfinger Gambit

[Mike Van Pelt]

I wonder if the point wasn't to steal the Mt. Gox Bitcoins, but just to delete them, forever removing them from the system, like the several million dollars worth on that hard drive buried in a landfill somewhere. By removing a bunch from the system, it reduces the supply and raises the price for those who are holding lots of them.

(Fans of 1960s James Bond movies might recall that this was Auric Goldfinger's reason for setting off a nuke in Fort Knox.)

Re:The Goldfinger Gambit

[tehlinux]

Yeah, the price moved pretty far in the opposite direction though...

And the second best part

[publiclurker]

is when libertarians try to use the No True Scotsman defense .

I didn't think it was meant to be clever...

[publiclurker]

rather it is intended to be concise and factual.

New slogan for bitcoin

[Anonymous Coward]

Bitcoin - Reminding libertarians that financial regulations really are necessary.

So there is a point to Litecoins ...

[Anonymous Coward]

If tainted coins hit an exchange or other service that trades BTC for other goods (even if they just trade BTC for their own currency and back again), unless that exchange has complete records of every transaction, the trail of stolen coins will stop with them, as it takes only one single broken link in the chain to have a trail be impossible to pursue by normal means.

So there is a point to Litecoins (LTC), laundering BTC, to break those BTC blockchain links.

MtGox was well regarded ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on, MtGox was not some stranger. They were a well known and trusted Magic the Gathering trading card exchange.

No really, they really were. Seriously, I'm not making this up.

Timeline of Events

[sparkydevil]

For those wishing to catch up, I made a news timeline of the rise and fall of the site

Azeroth

[Anonymous Coward]

It was all funnelled to Azeroth so the Aliance could afford to purchase choppers.

Libertarians Not Affected

[Anonymous Coward]

Ironically, Bitcoin is the most highly and transparently regulated currency ever known to man; related cryptographic technologies and protocols are allowing for such algorithmic regulation and transparency to be put to use in other domains.

Furthermore, there is no regulation greater than the real threat of bankruptcy.

A libertarian is attracted to Bitcoin precisely because he can keep this asset completely within in his control, using any number of technique to secure such data; so, ironically, I bet that the vast majority of people who lost money in MtGox were actually not libertarians at all—they at least ignorant of libertarian philosophy, and probably opposed to it.

I'm surpised

[Anonymous Coward]

folks aren't getting whacked over this. Come on nerds get some cajones.

Mt. Gox API

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone in here use their trading API? Did anyone actually turn a profit?

200,000 have been found .

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite what you all think , nation states and structures like banks have governance - civilisation has taken millennia to create these and people are now doing what they can to make whole creditors. Its not that governments are evil or structures its people and the lack of responsive law. Blockchain technology and infrastructure have a long way to go before adoption even when creditors are made whole the volume of trade will be tiny compared to any real economy and it will be early days ..most people stay away.

follow the money

[EricTheO]

Maybe it's in the same hands as the missing pallets in Iraq?