Topic: My communication with Mark and Mt. Gox -- questions on what happened (Read 1890 times)

Thank you officer.

And oh yes, on my way out the door he handed me this USB key and whispered "Yakuza, CIA, Bruce, make the clients whole it's all on you". 

But the USB just had a bunch of long gobbetly codes on it so I chucked it.....not sure if that was relevant.

*turns off the interrogation lamp*

Alright... i am done for today. You are free to go, but don't leave the city.

Seriously?

Let me hit copy paste--  these were the questions I asked roughly:

Where are the coins?  Do you have them?  Can you provide the exact status?   People want and need clarity, can you explain?  Etc

Stop trying to be a hard guy internet lawyer, it's unproductive.   I did not use the exact wording you used of asking for the Blockchain evidence.

You seem to be missing and not understanding that until LAST NIGHT -- I thought he had the coins and that the leaked documents were phony.  I am in Abu Dhabi -- between evening my time and now no, I have not talked to Mark, I have no reason to believe he will talk to me and I sent him 2-3 emails asking what is going on and for clarity.

sry, but i must be blind, cause i missed that part of your article.

Can you please point to me where you asked mark directly where the coins went to exactly as in showing you the cold storage wallets and the chain of events in the blockchain?

And can you point me to how he answered to that question i cannot find within your article? Or am i to interpret something you said as in you having asked him this directly?

Like I said,  I asked MANY times over the last week by email etc:  Where are the coins?  Do you have them?  Can you provide the exact status?   People want and need clarity, can you explain?

We were going to have a call before Friday but I was traveling.

After Friday I sent emails asking about the status and clarity.  Crickets.

See, this is exactly what puzzles me. You seem well articulated and smart, and it is not about if or not Karpeles WOULD HAVE answered you, but why you did not ask at all.
At the same time, you were keen enough to tell him to step out of his position when as you say this was the first time you met him.

You can be all defensive you want, but i am not buying this.

Umm yeah it does.

Think about it.   Mark and Gox dealt with hundreds of people I am sure.  Them communicating with me on this does not bind them to me for life, I have no special phone that can force people to answer.   I never even communicated with them once in my life until 16 days ago or so.

Do you really think that because someone communicates with someone that it always means they will forever?  Especially in a case like this with one of the most high profile and bafflingly non-transparent events in recent history?

You really think Mark is sitting there saying "Gee, people want to kill me, a million account holders are after me, no one even knows if a half billion dollars is missing or whose control it's under and I've been totally and completely opaque and secretive and unclear about the whole thing, every reporter on earth is calling me and people are stalking me....I know what I'll do!  I'll call that guy Bruce who I never heard of in my life until two weeks ago and I'll tell him everything and clear this whole thing up because otherwise Jeronimus on the chat board will be scratching his head!"

Seriously it's amazing how fast and loose some people on boards like this jump to making ridiculous statements questioning someone's very character and reliability without the tiniest amount of thinking going in to their statement.

hmmm, no special relationship i see....

you told him to step out and all that, offered him financial help. They provided you with financial statements and all this stuff,

but you are not able to ask him a simple question..

sounds legit

Oh, I see.

I don't think he'd talk to me now.

I've reached out for the last week and the only reply I got was on Wed which said there'd be an announcement Friday.

I don't have special access or relationship with him....if I did I drag him by the collar and get him to give some answers.

no, i mean... why don't you just call him on the phone and ask him which the cold storage btc addresses were, since you seem to have the means to contact him and you pretend to be concerned about peoples' lost coins.

It would be worth a shot, wouldn't it, if you were really that concerned. I doubt such a question would step on anyone's toes unless he has something to hide. It's not like anyone can rob the cold storage wallets just by knowing the public addresses.
edit: (we can see all addresses on the rich list anyway, we just don't know exactly which are related to gox)

I can also not see how the US gov if they put him under a gag order would have any issue with him revealing the former cold storage wallets before the supposed theft occurred.
Why would they?

If we had proceeded with discussion end then clearly before any contract was made and certainly any ownership or money changed plans we absolutely positively without question would have made him very clearly show the addresses and control and prove it.

You should have asked him for the cold storage addresses the exchange had before it got robbed, so we can follow the trace from there. See when exactly it happened etc...

Why didn't you?


How could a gag order possibly prevent him from showing us the cold storage wallet addresses the coins got stolen from? There seems no plausible reason for this.

Name a plausible reason why a gag order would prevent him from doing this please.




edit: This is what makes me wonder even more, how is it possible people close to him come up with well written articles, suggesting they are not idiots, yet they seem to forget to ask the most straightforward questions....

I don't feel comfortable releasing them because I'm not authorized to -- now this may seem silly if they turn out to be as fraudulent as they seem to be....but in the sadly unlikely event that there is some reasonable excuse like a seizure, gag order and they still have the coins then I'd be the bad guy to release them and breech trust.    If someone is a fraudster then I have no problem breaching their trust because the premise of all agreements was false and I no longer would consider conversations private....this may be the case with Gox but I wouldn't do so without absolute certainty.

Me?  Not sure how you get that

Can you call him for a minute and ask him to say that in your phone. I just like the sound of hisrecorded voice.

Also posted here http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1z6phy/my_conversation_with_mark_from_mt_gox_my/

The situation has me in awe.

Where do they go from here follow the bitcoin trail and where will the coins end up laundered then traded on another exchange after being stored for years?

Is there an investigation or do the authorities just shrug there shoulders and move on because it is bitcoins?

Wouldn't this have some sort of charge being placed for negligence or mismanagement of client funds?

Is there going to be a detailed explanation as to how the coins were compromised or does everyone just get a sorry about that we were hacked.  

Who benefited? crocodile tears...

Im fairly sure Peter R has the answer to all your questions:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.5397869

TL;DR: the coins were lost many years ago when its dollar valuation was still in the single or low double digits. Ever since Gox has been operating as a fractional reserve bank, trying to recover the lost BTC through trading fees. Which might have been doable when a bitcoin was worth $5 (x ~500K lost BTC is "only" $2.5M)  and but became untenable when its price went ballistic.

Interesting.  Would definitely like to see some answers to all your questions.

Can we see those financial statements they provided you with?

no. he just feels bad for mark.