Topic: More proof that savegox.com is a sham. - page 3. (Read 29680 times)

We know about Gonzague, the Sunlot PR guy said it explicitly:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.6511936

I do not know about Mark.  Ostensibly, AFAIK, it would depend on the results of that investigation. I asked the PR guy about it, but he did not answer.  In fact it seems that he stopped posting on that thread at about that time (a thread that he himself created for that purpose).


Maybe, but AFAIK in Japan, as in any coutry, the owners of a failed company have the lowest priority for asset distribution.  They only get what is left after all the other creditors (including employees, and, hopefully depositors) have been fully paid.  In this case, since assets < debts, that is nothing.

Certainly, I am NOT saying the same thing that you are saying. 

If our choices are between liquidation and rehab, then it appears to me that on the surface rehab is better as a whole.  Of course, I do NOT know the details or the extent to which Karpeles or Gonzague would be immunized from liability in a rehab scenario.    However, it does appear that the Japanese system is fairly deferential to corporate leaders - accordingly, it remains quite unclear how extensive or remedial any liquidation plan would be.

The court had already decided to liquidate, so currently, the procedural posture of the case seems to be getting the court to reconsider its decision to liquidate and to accept one of the rehab plans - and maybe the savegox plan is the best one that is currently on the table.

It is one thing to start out with a blank slate and to be able to do whatever you want, but it may be another thing to consider matters in the realities of the possibilities about what it is being proposed and what is being presented in the court system.

NO matter what the outcome, there will be ways to criticize it, of course.

When it comes to MtGox, what worries me a bit is http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Revelation+13&version=NIV coupled with Winklevos index
at http://winkdex.com/#/ notice those 7 heads (exchanges) with a blasphemous name (USD, what USD really means well do a research for yourself) and then
notice "One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound, but the fatal wound had been healed. The whole world was filled with wonder and
followed the beast" and the rest of the revelation. Then add mandatory hand scan with Bitcoin ATMs and few other already fulfilled prophecies ... not good!

Dragon is USA, in case you wonder. So if you see USA "gave the beast his power and his throne and great authority" and MtGox "healed", well, run for hills!  

If the MtGOX thief/embezzler gets out in the end free and gets to keep the half a billion dollars he stole from MtGOX customers, and does so with full support of those customers, then perhaps those TV analysts will be proven right in the end: bitcoin owners may wish to pay to get rid of that cryptographic dunce-cap.

Simplifying all the positive and negative terms, and skipping the intermediate steps, the net result of the MtGOX-Sunlot affair will be: MtGOX customers lose 80-100% of their money, and in return drop all charges against Mark and Gonzague.

My understanding of the GOX rehabilitation plan is that about $10 million would be spent to conduct an investigation presumably to figure out what happened to various GOX assets and to recover any GOX assets, if such assets, such as BTC, are recoverable.  I presume the same would apply to fiat that may have disappeared and other assets or if it appears that some of these assets are in the hands of previous owners.  I agree that the details remain a bit murky.

There have been a few criticisms of such a proposed investigation into Gox:

1) Such an investigation should NOT cost $10 million
- actually, it may be true that such an investigation could be accomplished for less than $10 million, but if a serious investigation without limitations were to take place (which I highly doubt), such an investigation could well be worth $10 million to be carried out properly.


2)  Such GOX investigation may NOT be carried out genuinely b/c either the agreement (court order) may preclude a full investigation by placing limitations on such investigation or the incoming Gox saviors may be coming in with bad intentions.

- it seems very possible that the court may agree to enter into a limited agreement that would set parameters and limitation on the investigation or preclude investigating into certain company heads, such as Karpeles, yet I am NOT sure if there are real meaningful and/or tangible alternatives.  For example, I am NOT sure if the court has the power to hold Karpeles in a cell (to my knowledge, he has NOT been charged with any crime) until he cooperates or if there would be a way to get someone else, who was also high up in Gox to show where the bodies are buried.  I doubt the liquidation process will require or even allow for any meaningful investigation.  It may be practically difficult to get Karpeles or other higher ups in GOX to agree to some meaningful investigation - whether they need to agree seems to be a product of Japanese law, which seems quite deferential to corporate leaders

- I am NOT sure how to decipher bad intents of those coming in to save GOX, but the court should have some powers to set parameters and possibly even to retain some supervisory power over this transition.  Whether they exercise such powers seems doubtful b/c it would seem that the court may just want to figure out one way or another to quickly dispose of the matter (whether by liquidation or by rehab).  Seems that the court would NOT want to continue to be involved, if possible. 


Any thorough and comprehensive investigation should be able to trace a lot more specifics about what happened to the 650K BTC and should be able to inform about whether those BTC are recoverable or NOT.   I really doubt that a thorough and comprehensive investigation is going to take place.   Yet, I believe that the intention of the Save GOX plan is that in the worst case scenario that NONE of the 650K BTC are recoverable, then those 650K BTC would be earned back through the operation of the exchange in the next 10-20 years.

Surely, there are quite a few puzzles, including the fact that it is NOT clear about whether investors are going to be paid back in fiat or BTC ... which causes additional disputes regarding the pay back, if any, could be prolonged over several years.

In spite of these many uncertainties in the direction of the Rehab, if it were to occur, it seems to me that rehab (as opposed to liquidation) would be a much better course of action for the customers of GOX and for bitcoin as a whole.

Gox can't be saved.

Bitcoin_is_here_ sez
Phinnaeus Gage sezAccording to Google, the meanings for "lost" are
* unable to find one's way; not knowing one's whereabouts
* denoting something that has been taken away or cannot be recovered.
but, the meaning of "disappeared" is either
* cease to be visible
* cause to disappear, as by consumption
While I realize there is a fine line of distinction between these two words, it makes a world of difference so far as the disposition of the vanished bitcoins. The former implies a hopeless condition beyond one's control, whereas the latter connotes volition, and that the bitcoins may have been made to go away, and could just as easily be returned.

The popular belief has been that the bitcoins were stolen by hackers through a transaction malleability bug in Mt. Gox's software. This contention has been more or less thoroughly debunked <http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/27/experts-found-that-mt-gox-lost-a-mere-386-bitcoin-due-to-transaction-malleability/>, despite claims to the contrary in the supposedly-leaked Mt. Gox Crisis Strategy Draft <http://www.scribd.com/doc/209050732/MtGox-Situation-Crisis-Strategy-Draft>.

There is also $27 million in bank deposits missing which could not be on account of any software bug. If you heard on the evening news that the local bank had been robbed of that much money, the authorities would be all over it. Research by the Swiss investigative firm, CCI AG, supports the notion that Mt. Gox's banks have been implicated in manipulating information about this cash <http://www.mtgoxinvestigation.com/updates.html#/blog/2014/03/25/banks-knowledge-regarding-mt-gox/>.

It makes sense that the Japanese banking regulators such as the Financial Services Agency <http://www.fsa.go.jp/en/faq/index.html> must be looking into the activities of Mt. Gox's bank, Mizuho Bank Ltd., second largest Japanese bank. Someone in that organization probably knows exactly what happened to the "disappeared" $27 million.

When the Japanese regulators and financial authorities deal with the disappearance of cash from Mt. Gox in an affirmative way, it will go a long ways towards reassuring investors that Japan welcomes direct foreign investment, and that it is more than willing to meet and exceed foreign investor's expectations for safety and transparency. Helping to undisappear the the 650K still-missing BTC would turn them into heroes to investors around the globe.

Simple. They can't! Especially if the reported amount of BTC on Mt Gox wasn't there in the first place. For instance, with my real 1,132 BTC claim on InstaWallet aside, I could claim to the insurance company that I had $1M USD worth of other people's barn wood stored in that barn that burned down. BTW, while I'm waiting for the insurance company to pay me, I'm in negotiations to sell the ashes - pennies on the dollar - to some pedophile investors out to make a quick buck on my lost. During the same time, I'll champion one lucky dude to fill an empty board seat on The Barn Wood Foundation.

I could not find anywhere the details of the proposal - but how can they recover 650,000 BTC lost?

Just to clarify this last point:
* What a company promises or "explains" on a forum or on TV is totally irrelevant, only contracts and legally binding documents matter.
* If a contract leaves any point optional or unspecified, one should assume the alternative that will maximize the money pocketed by the management.
* In particular, a contract must be carefully examined for loopholes like "after subtracting expenses" or "as determined by a future audit" or "at the discretion of management" etc.
* The  contract is worthless if the company is constituted, located, or registered in such a way that the management cannot be prosecuted for violating it.

Well, as I keep saying, the matter is in the hands of the Japanese court to weigh the various risks and likelihood of various outcomes.

As my current impression, I think that some form of rehabilitation of GOX would be better than liquidation, but if the rehabilitation proposals do NOT appear to be legit, then liquidation may be the better course of action.  I certainly do NOT have enough facts to make such a judgement, even though from what i read there are some pretty decent rehabilitation proposals out there that I believe have been proposed to the japanese court.. 

Some things that should be obvious to anyone who has lived for a while in the real world:
* Once you find that someone told a flat out lie (such as "MtGOX is solvent and all your coins are safe"), you should not give ANY weight to absolutely ANYTHING he has said or will say, by voice or in writing. Ditto for any digital data that he may produce.
* Any digital document or database may have been altered or faked.  Yes, even cryptographically signed ones..
* An anonymous leak may have been leaked by ANYONE. Yes, even by that guy.  Or that other guy.
* When a huge pile of money disappears from inside a company, the first suspects are its top executives, then other staff, then outsiders, then the cat, then time-traveling lizards from an antimatter galaxy, and only lastly errors/bugs/accidents etc..
* Scammers ALWAYS sound and look honest, competent, reliable, etc.  If they didn't, they wouldn't be scammers.
* Someone who made a pile of money with a scam, and walked away free with it, is strongly motivated to do it again.
* If someone can pocket a large pile of money without any risk of concrete punishment, he most surely will.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-video-brock-pierce-of-sunlot-hopes-you-never-see-594826

A lot of work was put into the video I linked, and I'm sure that those behind it didn't do it because they felt like trolling. They were echoing the sentiment based on facts as they became available to the ever going audience at the time.

Brock also has many years of acting experience and a very questionable past.
I agree he currently puts on a good show.
Somehow I sense this movement is being turned into "controlled opposition".

I agree with you that a person can be a con artist no matter what is the currency or the venue or the venture, and there may be various signs that a person is a con artist or whether the person is being genuine in describing the terms of the deal.

I believe the point that I was suggesting in my earlier post is that Brock seems to be very articulate and knowledgeable about bitcoin with a lot of experiences that seem genuine and that he also seems to be concerned about the prosperity and building of the bitcoin eco-system.  Those are good values, especially in the bitcoin world, b/c the bitcoin ecosystem is struggling for expansion... it's the incoming disruptive competitor that is currently at a disadvantage b/c it does NOT have a historical stake or track record.. like the dollar or like pay pal or like mastercard or like western union. 

Brock does NOT strike me as someone who is just attempting to get rich at the expense of others or that he is being manipulative.

If we all embark on a joint venture, then we may be taking a risk without knowing the outcome.  Some kinds of business ventures put one investor in more risky positions than others.  Most Angel investors, whether by dollar, euro or bitcoin, will structure various deals in such a way that they win no matter what is the outcome.  Structuring a deal to win no matter what is what smart investors due and those investors who have the leveraging power to accomplish such.  Structuring deals to win no matter what does NOT mean that angel investor(s) are tricking anyone or that they are just attempting to siphon money out of the enterprise without adding value.

I am NOT defending unscrupulous or illegal or fraudulent behavior b/c that is a different situation.  I am NOT going to assume some venture is fraudulent  merely based on the fact that the deal is structured in a way that the venture capitalist does NOT risk as much as other participants.  We NEED more facts before we come to a conclusion that some fraud or deception is taking place in the save GOX situation, and likely the Japanese court is in a better position to assess the GOX  deal than we are.. if the court is willing and able to receive and review the positions of various stake holders, then it can come to an informed decision about the best way forward.  In that regard, the court may come to the wrong conclusion if they are NOT sympathetic to account holders, if they are overly sympathetic to Karpeles et al, if they either they are neutral regarding bitcoin or worse if they want to sabotage bitcoin.

Actually, a serial VC would have better luck funneling v-c or c-c, then as each entity falls to the wayside, they could tell the VC's investors "Oops! But, get a load of this new thingy. Comes complete with 100K+ eager beavers."

The track record and reputation of a person are independent of the currency, no?  One cannot be a con artist with euros but honest with dollars, a criminal with rubles but a respectable businessman with pounds.  If a guy has had "serial bad luck" directing money-based companies, why should one expect better success with a bitcoin-based one?

Jorge:  You have a way of tainting and perverting nearly any idea with your anti-bitcoin everything is a scam in bitcoin sentiment.  

Surely, some people can be persuaded by a con job in any currency or investment scheme, whether bitcoin or other scams that exist in many different currencies.  

It is NOT always easy to know whether some bitcoin evangelist is being disingenuous, but we know that if someone is fairly articulate and successful in bitcoin sphere, there are going to be attacks on the person's credibility and also lawsuits to attempt to take some of their money. 

The track record and reputation of persons in the bitcoin sphere can help to demonstrate if any person has a propensity for engaging in fraudulent and/or exploitation-type activities.  If it is true that Brock or any of his past business activities or his associates have engaged in fraudulent activities, then that kind of information should be presented to the japanese court.  Additionally, if it is shown that Brock is a person of low moral character, then that may be relevant (in some ways) to the court, as well.  

If Brock merely likes to fuck young women (of a consenting age), then that may NOT be a big deal, but if he is using stolen money or if he is engaging in some kind of exploitation of non-consenting people or if they are below the age of consent, then those kinds of behaviors may be relevant for the court to consider whether to accept his plan for a GOX "rehabilitation" and to divert assets from what I thought was an already made decision to liquidate GOX assets.

By the way, completely off topic: the standard safety exit for a con man who sets up a scam company is to sell it when the scam begins to unravel.  Then the scammer claims "I don't owe anything, the debts were made by the company and I now have nothing to do with it", while the new owners say "What debts? The sales contract did not mention any debts."

Some examples of this trick can be found in the Bitcoin Stealing Hall of Fame (the BitcoinRain/MercadoBitcoin being one in my country) and other bitcoin sinkholes not listed there, such as this one.  Another interesting example has been reported here

Sorry for the interruption, now back to the threads's topic.

It seems that in Bitcoinland there is only one crime, "not being a fan of bitcoin".  Things that should send people to jail, in any country, are quite OK; badges of honor, even.

And, conversely, anyone who praises bitcoin is, ipso facto, a thoroughly good person; who can be trusted to take money or bitcoins from other bitcoiners, without contracts and outside the reach of the law, and shower them with unmeasurable riches.

Like Danny Brewster...