HUGE SCAMMER!
Kept my money hostage, wanted me to comply with KYC documents when no one on my legal firm knows who the fuck is Mark Karpeles and why does he need my documents for bitcoin trading.
But the real scam Mr MagicalTux pulls off in front of everybody is this.
MagicalTux has an account in mtgox, He sporadically adds balance to his account by going directly into tje Mysql database and adding the value.
He then generates a Mtgox code and CASHES the code Via AurumXchange or The Other Site.
He effectively pulls off the same exact scam The FED and Bernanke pulls on you and your savings.
Good news, he will soon be arrested.
Maria.
Hmm if this were true, wouldn't that mean that 21,000,000 bitcoins would not be the maximum coins in circulation? All he would have to do is replace fake coins to cover withdrawals but the funds that are sitting storage are funding the replacements unknown to the holder since coins are just sitting. The only way anyone would find out is if 100% of coins were taken out.
(mods might want to make a separate thread on this, since we're OT)
I wondered about this a few days ago. GoxBTC is NOT BTC, but a debt-note. It's effectively a redeemable coupon for the amount of BTC listed. Gox doesn't necessarily need to have the reserves. They could use fractional reserve practices to use the BTC for whatever they please. By issuing debt-notes (GoxBTC or GoxUSD, of course with USD itself being a debt-note), Gox can sometimes seem more like a bank than merely an exchange. Aside perhaps the law, there's no reason Gox couldn't just issue $100k GoxUSD and cash it out on one of the exchanges which automatically accept the vouchers. Gox could then cash out the "AurumUSD" (or whatever) for "real" USD or "real" BTC as Maria suggested.
It's almost "too" powerful for an exchange to be able to issue currency and have it widely trusted and accepted within a community. I'm not sure what kind of safeguards are in place, but it'd be nice to hear more from Mark & team about what kind of systems are in place to prevent Mark from doing exactly what Maria accused. When lending, GoxBTC or GoxUSD was extremely convenient, fast, and free for loan payments. It was preferred over "real" USD or BTC because it was so frequently converted (and because GoxUSD transfers are internationally both free and instant, which is virtually impossible to get anywhere else). It is a superior solution, IMO, to "real" USD, and also has its advantages over "real" BTC. That centralization's more dangerous than an untamed fire-spitting dragon which makes millions of spikes fall randomly from the sky, though. (possibly exaggeration)