Topic: MTGOX Statement *NEW MAR 3RD* - page 2. (Read 9163 times)

I don't have evidence, but some conclusions seem clear:

1) He is lying about the date when the facts happened. It's absurd to believe that so many coins were stolen and also money and he only realized that at the same time. Of course, the withdrawal delays were caused by lack of funds. Probably, the bitcoins were stolen months ago and they tried to cover it up to keep business as usual hoping to pay with fees. The rise of the price of bitcoin was a nightmare to him, making more hard to pay the loss. At some point, he understood he was completely screwed, but probably decided to let things go on, hoping for a miracle. I bet his life hasn't been easy. He told he gained all that weight because of stress. I can believe him.
2) He is lying because if he confessed he knew the bitcoins were stolen many months ago, he would be facing criminal charges. He directed a business on fractional reserve, lying to new customers on the real financial situation. Gox has been bankrupted for long, but he kept accepting new deposits. That breaks many corporate rules.
3) I suspect he is hiding a million or so for the raining days to come, but I don't think this was an inside job. He just lost thousands of bitcoins because of an hack and lied to everyone on that. The lack of fiat was probably caused by the buying of bitcoins on market to keep the bitcoins withdrawals up. He knew the day he stopped bitcoins withdrawals would be the end.

This page is fun:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Lazy_API


Well, lawyers take note: good process and bad process can be found everywhere.

I like how the only entry under "risk" is blockexplorer, haha, not any one person.

One has to wonder how many coins made it into his personal wallets.  Transaction malleability strikes again!   

I don't know which one is worse. To lose 750000 coins in a few weeks? How the fuck can that happen?

Or never, ever doing any accounting at all over years?

NO FUCKING BOOKKEEPING; EVER? Everybody says their accounting is bad but hey, I disagree, they did not have any accounting at all. Or he's the grandmaster of all liars, even for Jewish businessmen that is extraordinary abuse of the truth.

Fatso needs to spend time in a Japanese jail until he coughs up the truth. Where are the cold wallets? Did you ever do any balance sheet since the company was founded, and was there an imbalance then?

This company is like a bizarre comic strip on crack. 

"We will make all efforts to ensure that crimes are punished and damages recovered."

I sure hope so.....

Are you trying to be funny? 

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1z91p8/interview_with_anne_karpeles_french/

http://www.lejsl.com/saone-et-loire/2014/03/01/un-qi-superieur-a-la-moyenne

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1z92dk/karpeles_accused_of_computer_fraud_before_moving/

http://blog.magicaltux.net/2006/01/16/histoire-d-une-garde-a-vue-pas-comme-les-autres/

^^^ Totally agree, and contradictory statements like this are not going to help things at all:


How can continually blaming things on a bug in the bitcoin software help the whole community?

Therein lies the problem. Bitcoin is, at best, confusing to most people and now they have a good reason to avoid it like the plague. The rumors I hear the most from people is that they knew the hype over the Bitcoin price was fake. Nothing is worth that much that fast. It would never be worth that much if someone like that Gox exchange on the news wasn't fixing the price.

Everyone is going to have a serious uphill battle that didn't exist before Karpeles started the "Bitcoin Bug" lie to cover his ass. People that I had on the verge of convinced to use Bitcoin are now avidly against it. One business operator that I convinced to try it is now against it claiming that the news of Bitinstant and Gox is, "too much for me".  

Stop buying clearance at Jokes R Us you cheap fck.

so a gathering of Magicians happened, and the Magicians performed tricks to obtain teh BTC

I wonder if they lost the 750.000 bitcoins instantly or over years.

C'mon don't be silly, things like this happened tons of times since 2011, this is not the first time.

Some damage has been done but "irreparable" is probably an overstatement.  My parents thought we lost everything too.  BitchicksHusband tried to explain to my dad how he would never leave his coins in someone's wallet for any length of time and how we only used Mt.Gox for some trades and have not used them lately.  It was confusing to my dad.  The whole thing is confusing to many people that do not really understand how Bitcoin works.

But I am just waiting for BTC to reach a new ATH in which the news will then say, "Bitcoin's BACK!" or something like that and that will renew confidence and even spark some interest from those that thought Bitcoin had suffered from a fatal blow.  

I'm looking at bitcoin at $610 and a bunch of new bitcoin-related services announced since mtgox suspended withdrawals, and finding it hard to see there has been any irreparable damage.

Why is everyone focusing on the amount of money Gox lost? That's inconsequential compared to the irreparable damage done to Bitcoins reputation. Every one I know is telling me how sorry they are for me and reminding me that they warned me that whole Bitcoin thing was a scam. I tell them that I didn't lose any money and they respond, "Well, you got lucky this time. Better stay away from nonsense like that from now on".

I wrote this back in July 2013 in regards to a poster (OP) claiming that MTGOX must be solvent since they are permitting BTC transfers out. I received some nasty PM's as a result.

OP stated: If MTGOX supposedly is having liquidity probs --- Why the fuk are they still allowing bitcoin withdrawals? It doesn't matter whether u withdraw bitcoin or USD, if u do either the money is gone from their account. So I call BS on all this speculation they don't have any money left to run their shit.
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If you do either, the money ISN'T gone from their account. If you transfer a BTC out, then yes, the BTC is no longer on the MTGOX exchange. But, if you sell a BTC and then have funds in your account (or so it says on your MTGOX page) those "funds" aren't leaving MTGOX's account. Prove to yourself that those funds actually exist.

The notion that a lack of liquidity would prevent MTGOX from permitting BTC withdrawals is flawed.  The purchase of BTC's on MTGOX right now is being performed based on funds that are simply listed on your account. It's almost like a demo account with fake money, but the BTC's are real. If you can't get your funds out, how do you know that it actually exists?

Say MTGOX only has 2 customers (A and B). Customer A has 100 BTC's and B has enough USD in their MTGOX account to purchase all of those BTC's. Customer B with USD in GOX can't withdraw, so B buys all of Customer A 's BTC and transfers them to another exchange where B can sell those BTC's and make a withdrawal without an issue.

Customer A now has USD in their GOX account, however it's USD that they can't withdraw and there are no other customers to purchase BTC's from, so A is stuck with his/her USD in GOX and no way to get it out --- No one to buy BTC's from and no way to get the USD out because MTGOX isn't processing the withdrawal.  Now the million dollar question is this: DO THE FUNDS NOW IN CUSTOMER A's ACCOUNT ACTUALLY EXIST? It say's that they have it on their MTGOX account, but does it really exist?

It's not like MTGOX has an independent 3rd party that can audit them to say that they indeed have everyone's funds and are solvent. All we are left with is an account page that says that you have $xxxxxx.00 

You can purchase BTC's with those funds listed there, because for the moment, everyone believes that those funds are real. But can you all withdraw your funds right now?

What's working in the MTGOX's favor right now is the fact that they obviously don't have just 2 customers. Additionally, customers are depositing funds.  What's saving them from a collapse is that the simplified scenario above is being prevented by the thousands of MTGOX customers who aren't heading for the door at once. BUT, if something were to trigger a panic, we'd see the price of BTC's on MTGOX shoot up and those willing to take a lose by purchasing BTC's at panic prices will be able to get their funds out through the transfer of BTC's and those left holding USD will be out of luck. Those left holding USD will have their USD delineated on their MTGOX page, but are those funds really there? Since there wouldn't be anyone to "buy" BTC's from (because they left with the BTC's that you sold them), you could put in a request to withdraw those funds, but when that request doesn't get fulfilled (like the stories that we keep reading on this forum), is your money really in your account?

You can "buy" BTC's with the funds listed on your MTGOX account because everyone believes that those funds really exist and accept them (electronically), even if they can't withdraw those funds.  You can then transfer those BTC's out and it has nothing to do with the liquidity of MTGOX. The acquisition of BTC's and the transfer of BTC's is solely based on the belief that the funds listed on your MTGOX account are real.

If you can prove that those funds in your account actually exist, then your belief that MTGOX is solvent is founded.

However, the fact that BTC's can be transferred out of MTGOX does not prove that MTGOX is solvent.

At first I was thinking "how could all that cash go missing, how could they hack the bank accounts?" and then I realized they might not only have had a "bug" in their withdrawal code, but maybe also with their fiat deposit code. It occurred to me that it's possible someone was somehow making fake fiat deposits at gox, changing them into btc and withdrawing them. That possibility alone could account for "money missing from the bank" and "missing bitcoins". Perhaps the withdrawals were legit, but the deposits weren't... just a thought.

It would only have been a problem if there had been a net flow of BTC out of MtGox which exceeded the number of BTC they actually had left.
It seems perfectly plausible that most of their users fell into one of two camps:
a) Transferring BTC in, selling and withdrawing USD
b) Buying and selling BTC entirely on the exchange itself, which is just internal bookkeeping by MtGox, and never touches the blockchain.

As long as more BTC was being sent to MtGox to be sold than was being withdrawn to external wallets, they would never notice that they didn't actually have the huge pile of BTC that they thought they had.
(Alternatively, As long as more BTC was being sent to MtGox to be sold than was being withdrawn to external wallets, noone would ever find out that they didn't actually have the huge pile of BTC that they claimed they had.)

I said nothing at all about whether I believed their statement, I just explained what their statement actually said.

I don't believe it's possible not to notice 850,000 missing bitcoins for months or years.

Even if Gox didn't notice it, traders making withdrawals would have. That's who really are the eyes and ears of Gox and thats where the red flags would have started. The fact that they didn't makes me sceptical that 850,000 coins have actually gone "missing".

To withdraw funds there needs to be a blockchain transaction. So if there was a steady flow of withdrawals out of Gox up until the point they suspended withdrawals, they would have been coming from cold wallets with positive balances.