Hi TBF,
1. You have been doing a great job of giving grants to promising business ideas, e.g.
https://bitcoinfoundation.org/blog/?p=407 that help achievieng your 3 gols of:
- standardizing Bitcoin,
- protecting Bitcoin,
- promoting Bitcoin.
2. You may have heard Gox is dead. Mark Karpeles claims BTC 750,000 of Gox clients and BTC 100,000 of Gox equity coins are unaccounted for:
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/japan-minister-calls-bitcoin-collapse-expected3. Bitcoin received a lot of promotion because of Gox having gone bust - one of your goals is achieved (promotion). Unfortunately, not the way many of us would like. One of the biggest exchanges going into the red does not help to protect bitcoin. We, the users (ordinary people) do our thing - we keep our computers clean, we use tor, we have computers that will never touch internet again for cold storing. It appears bitcoin exchanges (even your members, like Gox) do not do it.
3. There are numerous theories of what happened and why BTC 850,000 are unaccounted for (there can be a mix of the below):
a) lost private keys
b) theft through malleability bug
c) inside job by Mark himself or his employees
d) giving up the coins due to governmental coersion
e) whatever
4. I want you, the Bitcoin Foundation, to give a grant to scientists (goal: protecting Bitcoin) for the following tasks:
a) identifying reasons for unaccounting BTC 850k at Gox (malleability impact inclusive) and understanding the mechanism of this unaccounting,
b) analysing blockchain and other sources to identify where these coins are at the moment and who has them;
BTC 90k may have already been found: http://www.hackingdaily.com/2014/02/mtgox-speculations.htmlc) post research conclusions (protecting Bitcoin): what measures should be taken in the future to prevent from goxing / defrauding ordinary people by other exchanges (daily signing messages with exchanges' addresses, monthly financial statements signed by exchanges' CEOs, etc.) - this would help standardizing Bitcoin's environment's key element: exchanges.
5. Come on, how can Bitcoin be protected if exchanges go bankrupt, one after another. Who is next? - a payment processor? - then Bitcoin is dead and no merchant will ever touch it!
6. Please stop giving grants to business undertakings like online wallets and do something that has long-term value.