Topic: I bet that Mark lost the private keys and is crying theft out of embarassment (Read 2627 times)

I mean the private key that the cold storage is encrypted with... Maybe Bitcoin 2.0 is going to be trying to "remine" those coins somehow.

If the keys really are lost, what kind of computing power is required?

It depends. If it was "frapachino123" not much.  If it was a truly random 256 bit encryption key we are talking heat death of the universe before that happens.  Then again maybe the cipher will be broken sometime in the next century. 

What kind of hashing power is required to recover keys? :-)

As much as I really really want my GOXIOUBitcoins back and as awesome as it would be to see the FBI's stash ruined this is a slippery slope I hope we don't go down for the good of bitcoin  Man was super hard to say that

They could just destroy the Silkroad coins that were stolen by the US government while they are at it. This would compensate for the lost deflation. Also, many of the thousands of people who lost their savings would quit bitcoin alltogether. It is not in the interest of bitcoiners to alienate other users from bitcoin.

One last thing to consider: If Gox's private keys to 750K BTC has truly been lost forever, then any BTC people have in their own private wallets are now just that bit rarer making them more valuable in the long run.

Human nature being what it is - do you see a majority of people voting for something that devalues the coins they currently hold?

Either that or their backend wallet software was completely messed up, which is not a hard stretch to those who have seen and analyzed some of their code. Once lost, the private keys are almost impossible to recover. However, Mark probably doesn't realize there is a possibility of public recourse for locked up wallets and he will continue not to realize this until he opens candid dialogs with the community. Yes, there should and will be a way to revive dead/lost coins if the magnitude of impact is as large as what's being speculated in this case. If Mark start being honest and communicating he will see the collaborative power of the community. Here is a quick run-down proposals on reviving dead coins:

1. The effort needs to be justified and warranted by the case. The loss must exceed certain threshold (e.g. > 100K) and its recovery must be for the common public interest.
2. The claiming party must produce proof that can indisputably substantiate their claims, such as the address or addresses where the dead coins are sitting at as well as all relevant evidence showing how it happened.
3. There must be a public announcement and advertisement of the revival request for a reasonable amount of time (e.g. 3-6 mo depending on the amount) to prevent potential harm to innocent 3rd parties.
4. There then should be some kind of voting and census process to ensure the majority of the community and the miners won't object to it.
5. After all of these, the request should be made to the core dev team.
6. A revival measure should only be hardcoded in the next public release of the client and the mining software. These are extraordinary measures, and they should be regarded as major historical events leading to the greater maturity of Bitcoin. Thus, leaving these limited "corrections" in the code is well justified and a good refection to Bitcoin's future elegancy.
7. Such measures are deemed to be controversial by some within the community. Idealists may consider such measures flat  violations of Bitcoin's self-governence and zero tolerance of human intervention. Others may view such measures as detrimental to the system's objectivity and thus a stain to Bitcoin network's long-term security and integrity. These people just need to be either persuaded or out voted.