theft all right. karpeles literally screwed everybody. if you really think hackers managed to get away with 650,000 without even the most incompetent boob noticing something i've got a really amazing bridge for sale!
Agreed. I believe there was a hack, but the hack was performed with inside information about their security protocols or lack thereof. No one is intentionally that incompetent with that much money.
When the SHTF for Mt. Gox towards the end of February, they were torpedoed from several different directions all at once. The way the implosion came together suggests the exchange's financial distress was “engineered.” Elements of the scheme could have included, but were surely not limited to:
- insider infiltrator(s) who could not only have planted the bots, Willy and Markus, but also hidden the company's cold storage bitcoins (200K BTC miraculously found later in the old-format wallet)
- banks who could have created a cash/credit squeeze and frozen up Mt. Gox's bank deposits (the $27 million)
- media manipulation such as the phony, leaked "Crisis Strategy Draft" that implied Mt. Gox's deteriorated condition resulted from management incompetence.
- hacking, including DDoS attacks and exploitation of the supposed "transaction malleability" bug in the bitcoin protocol.
- possible government asset seizure and gagging.
- manipulation of the bankruptcy court.
- If Mt. Gox still held 200,000 BTC (discovered in the old-format wallet after they declared bk), why couldn't the bankruptcy filing either have been called off or else ended early? This number of BTC probably would have been enough for Mt. Gox to continue operating at some level.
- Were this merely a simple case of "massive theft" by hacking, then why no arrests after four months or at least some progress update on how the investigation is going? Also, why can't the movement of large quantities of stolen coins by the hackers be clearly observed in the blockchain?
