Topic: I'm Kevin, here's my side. - page 16. (Read 258515 times)

This.

It is clear now that MtGox has not been trading bitcoins but a representation of bitcoin, storing the real bitcoin off-line from the trading accounts (the one big centralised 500k account).

More centralisation, more fail. It is like the fiat credit crises freeze all over again, the bitcoins weren't really there and when the hackers showed up there was nothing to go around and fill the gaps, even if they took nothing, just shuffled things around and messed it all up.

Lesson learned, move on, decentralise. Get bitcoins in your hand or you got nothing but promises.

EDIT: By storing the MtGox float in one account then they have become a counterparty to all trades by proxy, i.e. a market maker. Not what is claimed up front.

Not going to make an ethical judgment here on the course of action for MtGox, so right to the point:


We were discussing your story in #bitcoin, but weren't able to track down said transfer in the block chain. Could you point it out?

So you feel you have enough information at-hand to reasonably know what happened?  The rollback is a foregone conclusion to me.  It's everything else that matters.  Kevin obviously knows he's not a newly minted millionaire, and has made that clear in multiple posts.  Mtgox rolling back and covering up the extent of their apparent negligence is not "making it right" by my definition.

The problem begins where MtGox's story is fabricated, at least a portion of it which can be independently verified as a fact.  Perhaps this was due to the rush of getting information out ASAP while still uncovering things, etc.  I'd like to believe that vs. them lying directly to our faces?

It is very clear this was not a simple account password breach.  It goes deeper.  I want to know how deep, and I'd have thought the community as a whole would want to know as well.

Ah well, I tried

I don't think I actually said that, though.

I said a forced rollback of the whole thing was bad for the community, and without a lot more transparency what the right solution is is very hard to determine.

They were the best option available for a mass of humanity rushing to pay big $$$'s for BTC. When they re-open they will still be the best current option, IMO.

It is wildly obvious that there was no single guy with a cool half million coins in his account.

It wasn't long ago that everyone was gawping at some 425k coins being moved, presumably offline by the MtGox lot. Then there are 50,000 users they have picked up in the last month. (I was about 11,000 and I signed up on June 1st, there are 60,000 odd on the list now!). They offline most of their funds and just keep a float, hence the maximum withdrawal limit.

All the coins that people see trading are all just numbers in a database. The hacker clearly had much more control than is being let on, I would imagine he ran a SQL script of some sort to dump all of the dbCoins into one account and then put in a sell for next to nothing.

MtGox cannot afford to honour all of the coins. That is all of the coins they have, and everyone else who is daft enough to leave their coins on a public exchange run by beginners. If they honour your claim, there is no more MtGox and everyone and their mother will be up in arms, litigating, leering and generally ousting them from the community they have helped to build.

The bottom line is that you are losing the coins no matter how much you complain. You say you should keep them for the good of the community but if you've got half of the freely traded bitcoins then the market really is gone. Tough luck.

Sorry Kevin, but Mt Gox is making this right, it's just not right for your financial gains.

Although your transaction went through, it happened during a time when the exchange was not under legitimate terms, so of course the only recourse is to roll back any transactions up to the breaking point of legitimacy.   To not do so would destroy the economy to the point of making all those bitcoins you "earned" effectively worthless.

Do you know how I can tell you didn't read the original post?

@toasty:
So, you are Kevin, the guy who bought 259684 of stolen BTC for under $3000. And with your essay you are here to complain that MtGox says you can't keep the stolen value but will get your money back? Tell that face to face to person who got robbed.

And btw, how do we know you are not related to the hacker? Maybe you just wanted to launder the stolen BTC that he(or yourself) sold on MtGox.

This.

Even if the bitcoins were MtGox's to begin with, the trades should be reversed. Kevin did a pretty smart thing in jumping in there to grab those BTC, But the release of the DB shows that it was a hack, whether from an insider or from someone in it for the lulz, and the person (or persons) whose BTC those were should get them back.

The garage owner assured everyone that their cars were secure, even when people borught concerns to his attention. His business operation was dependent on keeping said cars secure, and he ridiculed people who said they werent.

Why would you call that stealing.

I go to art baazaar.
See some painting for just 1 USD and I buy it. This sort of paintings where between 1 usd and 1000 usd in last year I suppose, but I don't even have to know that or be art market expert.

If later it turns out that the painting was brought to the trading place not by lawful owner, but by someone that stolen it from next room, or stolen it weeks ago, or got this painting in exchange for some work that was not done well so it was sort of "stolen" .... then why do I care about this all, exactly?

Haha, completely off topic here.  But for a winter here in Minneapolis, this was essentially the case.  For whatever reason, there was a huge rash of idiots leaving their cars running (while warming up, running in to get groceries, etc.).  It got to the point that the police refused to investigate any reports of stolen cars that were left running - they'd just take a report over the phone and that's that.

Analogies are wonderful because there are so many of them!

Me: "Hey, Ford... This new car I got from you... People are telling me that if they go to a ford dealer they can get new keys to my car made without any proof they actually own my car! I keep a lot of valuable stuff in there, I don't want it to get stolen."

Ford: "There is nothing to worry about, nobody can have new keys to your car made. If you want to have your locks changed, you can do so whenever you want. Your car is safe if it's locked."

Now my car gets stolen because someone did convince Ford to make a new key to my car. Aren't they partially to blame, especially because they were notified that this very thing was happening and reassured me it was safe?

And the owner of the car was told that the garage wasn't secure but he didn't care, until this happened.

People who are making comparisons need to review the actual situation instead of making a straw man argument.

The original victim didnt leave his car running. He left it in a garage that is supposed to be secure.

they "allowed" it to happen...?

okay, so if someone goes to 7-11, runs in for a second to buy something and leaves their car running it's no longer a theft if someone else takes it...? obviously the car is now theirs to sell, right...? they "allowed" their car to get stolen due to their own stupidity, so that's where the situation ends, right...?

If Kevin wanted, and as I'm sure a few other people have done, he could have purchased those coins, withdrawn every single one of them by exploiting the bug he identified, and then stayed quiet. Kevin, who is doing the right thing, will have 250k coins taken off him in the rollback, and would probably return those 600 coins if asked, other shadier people will have got away with some money, will stay quiet about it, and will get to keep it.

I think we're rewarding the wrong people here!