Topic: MtGox withdrawal delays [Gathering] - page 41. (Read 908602 times)

US$ 6,014,910.00 * 1% = 60,149.10 USD

How do you come up with that no?

(typos OCR)


So, 60,149.10 USD for a wire transfer? Wow.

I think you heard the news right? if not ...

http://mtgox.gr/mtgox-com-reveiced-6-014-910-00-from-okpay-inc

That may be what the lawyers argued, but AFAIK it did not stick.    The concept of money laundering is more general; the money can be  (and often is) converted to non-money merchandise, such as boats, diamonds, real estate, etc.

http://money.howstuffworks.com/money-laundering.htm

According to what I understood of the charges, "dirty" money from Silk Road customers was turned into bitcoins by Charlie and his partner, sent to the SilkRoad merchants, and the bitcoins from SilkRoad's fees were to be converted to (or used as) money by Ross.  This way, they hoped, the source of Ross's wealth would appear to be legitimate (bitcoins, rather than drugs).

EDIT: typo "SilkRoad"

Courts rarely do their own investigations, but rather rely upon information the parties before it present. If the Tokyo court was told 850K btc were missing, but the company only had 220k btc, then their ruling sounds reasonable. However, if the court was hoaxed too, and there were really never 850k btc, but only 220k, then their conclusion may have been unintentionally wrong. However, fractional reserves are not illegal, and as long as depositor's demands for withdrawals are met, then there is no reason to declare bankruptcy nor for the court to compel one.

From what I know, the purpose of bankruptcy (full name: "bankruptcy protection") is to halt all individual lawsuits by employees, creditors and investors against the company, so that a single court (1) gets to evaluate whether the company has a reasonable chance of recovering financially and paying off all its obbligations, or, if not, (2) orders that the company be closed, all its assets be sold or auctioned, and the proceeds be distributed fairly among all claimants.

I had understood that MtGOX was forced to file for bankruptcy protection because many clients were already suing it or were about to do so.  The Japanese court easily concluded that MtGOX could never recover from such big losses, even after Mark found the 220'000  BTC that he had "forgotten about", so it determined liquidation.

There have been discussions long before Mark admit it:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/gox-have-at-least-200k-btc-lost-keys-or-gag-order-most-likely-not-theft-490723
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1z37zw/mt_gox_has_at_least_200k_btc

Only one day later Mark published this statement (so funny to read in retrospect):

"As a result of our internal investigation, we found that a large amount
of bitcoins had disappeared. Although the complete extent is not yet known, we found
that approximately 750,000 bitcoins deposited by users and approximately 100,000 bitcoins belonging to us had disappeared.
We believe that there is a high probability that these bitcoins were
stolen as a result of an abuse of this bug and we have asked an expert to look at the
possibility of a criminal complaint and undertake proper procedures."

https://www.mtgox.com/img/pdf/20140228-announcement_eng.pdf

And at this time we already knew that Gox still must have the 200,000. People went crazy about Mark. So Mark finally had to admit it as he could not deny it any longer without loosing every part of his credibility. And a few weeks later we had to learn that the complete transaction malleability story was a myth, see: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1403.6676v1.pdf

Start with the obvious. Kobayashi admits he now holds 220K Mt. Gox bitcoins worth over $100 million. No company that once had control over $100 million in liquid assets ever needed to declare bankruptcy, especially when it's only been around for three or so years. This bankruptcy is a hoax. It's designed to transfer control of these assets to someone else who has the deviousness and financial wherewithal to manipulate the legal system.

Last year Gregory Maxwell gives a good explanation:

http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/31958583/

But it need not have to been this way. Nobody knows. And from the people who really need to know no one tells us something.  

I've not watched this whole scenario for awhile, but Gox stated publicly they had a cold wallet with an average of 98% of their total Bitcoin holdings in it.  How can someone have stolen these coins?  Even if they had a hacker who stole coins from within the business itself (Karpeles mentioned in one interview that one bit of advice he would give other Bitcoin companies would be hiring full-time security guards) how can they have stolen any of the coins in the cold wallet?  And if the paper wallets were stolen, it would seem there would be some sort of security and/or a limited number of people with access to the coins making it easy to determine who the criminal was.

Finally, and this is just a hunch, but Charlie Shrem was arrested in January 2014 for money laundering (Mt Gox went offline in February 2014) after working with Federal authorities on ways to regulate Bitcoin during which he revealed different "money laundering" services he had performed in the past in the hopes that: 1. The Feds would be lenient because he was helping them learn how to regulate Bitcoin and 2.  Bitcoin was originally not legally considered property so money laundering was technically impossible in the early days of its release.  Seeing that Charlie Shrem was put under house arrest for information he voluntarily gave up, it seems likely that some of the information he released could have implicated Mark Karpeles in a criminal investigation of a similar sort and that could be where the shenanigans began.

This story still makes no sense to me, all I know is that something is very fishy, whether it is coming from Gox or governments, and seeing the track records of governments my bet is that they're fucking with us, though I'm not sure exactly how.

You might be completely right about me barking up the wrong tree. I only meant the circumstances of this situation are quite unusual, and there is a need to think outside-the-box. I'm not sure you'll get that from a typical M&A firm. A quick google search for this company yields lots of links about mergers, etc. As Maslow once said, "if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail".

I'm not sure Mt. Gox should have even declared bankruptcy. Although it allegedly once held 850,000 btc, as now 220,000 have been admitted found, then the company could have continued operating on a fractional reserve basis like a bank. If the real reason for the bankruptcy was a freeze placed on their fiat bank accounts, and not "disappeared" bitcoins, then that issue should have been negotiated with Mizuho Bank before declaring bk. Mt. Gox may have been the recipient of very poor legal advice, and it would make more sense now to somehow roll back the bankruptcy proceeding instead of proposing a sale of assets.

NO&T are one of the "big four" law firms in japan, with hundreds of lawyers - they cannot really be said to specialise in anything. In addition, Nobuaki Kobayashi specializes in bankruptcy and restructuring as well as M&A.

http://www.noandt.com/en/lawyers/nbk.php

Methinks you are barking up the wrong tree.  Several people have been desperately trying to stop the bankruptcy process, since before it was filed, including many big clients and former MtGOX management.  There are plenty of possible explanations for their despair.  Sunlot has succeeded in stopping the US lawsuit, and all those people must now be pestering Kobayashi with proposals to let them take control.  Sunlot has already promised immunity to Gay-Bouchery and Jed Mccaleb, and would not answer when asked what they would do about Mark. 

Where did you get that from?  Mark himself claimed that he found the 220'000 BTC in an old-format wallet, after filing for bankruptcy.  Whether he had really forgotten about them is an open question, but AFAIK it was him who "found" them and told the court about them.  Kobayashi had them transferred to an address that he controls (it says so in the papers given out at the last meeting). 

It's perhaps significant that Kobayashi works for Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu, a high end Japanese law firm specializing in mergers and acquisitions. At the recent creditor's meeting in Japan, he mentioned his plans to meet with potential purchasers of the bankrupt exchange's assets. This suggests the idea from the beginning may have been to sell Mt. Gox off to a company such as Sunlot or Bitocean Japan. If so, then the liquidation could be more or less Kabuki theater until such time as Kobayashi and company have finalized an acquisition. He presents himself as merely a neutral party representing the interests of creditors, yet in fact may have an agenda for what kind of outcome he wants to see.

I do not blame anyone. But Gox had half a year to give some evidence of the stolen coins. I can understand that there is a big chaos. But I do not understand that all coins disappear from Goxs sight. There are no clear statements from Kobayashi about the 600,000 coins . And the Tokyo Police Launch Investigation just a month ago. What the hell they have done in the meantime? And than they told that they suspect roughly 27,000 BTC were stolen from the website. Sorry, but WTF? 27,000 BTC? What about the others?

If these 600,000 really never exist, why is Mark not be prosecuted because of delayed filing of insolvency and running a ponzi? Mark already has a new company on a similar field. He even wants again to accept Bitcoins. How crazy is that? This is so as if Bernard Madoff would have directly launched a new company in the financial sector.

Someone have to explain this. But I have given up hope that Mr. Kobayashi will somehow help us in the matter. I would love to redlist the 600,000 Coins. But of course no one will tell us where they are or whether they have ever exist. We only have 200,000 and that's only because the community have found them. Kobayashi has no idea and does nothing in this point.  I'm sure, if people does not have reveal the cause, the 200,000 would have been "disappeared" too.

Let's not give Mizuho a pass. There's still that missing $27 million in fiat bank deposits.
http://thediplomat.com/2014/03/japans-mizuho-bank-the-latest-defendant-in-mt-gox-bitcoin-suit/

I don't see anything exceptional about him.  Bankruptcy proceedings are always v e r y  s l o w things.  From the papers given out at the recent meeting, he has done quite a bit of work actually.  The basic idea may seem simple (collect the remaining assets, collect claims, etc.) but there are lots of details that do not show up in the report.  For instance, MtGOX used several banks through its life, had branches and dealings in other countries, etc.. Also, a bankruptcy case was opened against MtGOX in the US, and it was not long ago that the US judge finally recognized the precedence of the Japanese courts.

Furthermore, Kobayashi had to learn enough about bitcoin to avoid mistakes that could cost him millions in lawsuits.  We don't know whether  those 220'000 BTC were really "lost and found", but the episode suggests that MtGOX's accounting must be a frightening mess.   I bet that Kobayashi still hasn't decided how he will handle the claims -- hence the postponement.

It's been six months since the collapse. The parties unknown behind the Mt Gox take-down have consistently been underestimated. If not, they would already have been brought to justice. Using guerrilla tactics would only be playing into their hands. They want to claim bitcoin is only used by renegades and hackers, needs some kind of very strong regulation, and exchanges should only be managed by "professionals" (namely, them).

Kobayashi is really an enigma, and sometimes I wonder if he is not another collective pseudonym  like Satoshi Nakamoto. Call him an international man of mystery.