Topic: My communication with Mark and Mt. Gox -- questions on what happened - page 2. (Read 1871 times)

I don't understand the meaning of that wall of text.
Does it add something to the story?

you spoke to a dishonest person, who proved that with his first lie about TM.

then he lied about another technical issue halting the exchange.

then he lied saying that all trades would resume.

then he lied about insolvency.


and you want to give him the benefit of the doubt that he "lost" the coins to negligence?



and you're a lawyer?

Mark is this you?

When the Bitcoin withdrawals were halted I contacted Mark and offered capital and help to fix the exchange.

At the time I assumed it was only a technical and management challenge and the conversation with Gonzague and Mark didn't indicate anything other than that.

They provided me with financial statements and I talked over the need for Mark to step aside and a real and professional management team to step in and fix the PR issues, the outstanding US lawsuit issues and of course the technical issues.

My simplest plan was to see if this could be transported to another exchange in a mass migration effort, entirely scrapping the old Gox programming, fire Mark as CEO and install a real team, immediately settle the lawsuits and immediately go on a road show communicating with customers about the exact status of their accounts.

We figured if we could retain even a third of the customers and build back trust with a new team and brand it would be a win.

I've got a lot of experience in tech and especially finance, brokerage and money management but fixing something as messed up, complex and broken as Gox (even though I didn't realize it was more messed up than I thought) quickly is beyond my skills alone.

I talked to one of the top Bitcoin geniuses who is a large holder to see if he was interested in helping (he said he had too much on his plate) and I talked to a leading VC firm who mulled it over but then figured the logistics of moving from Japan to the US as well as outstanding broken issues combined with over Bitcoin volatility was too much of a mess.   They did put me in touch with another very major Bitcoin player who I spoke with and we agreed, in principle, to try to save Gox if Mark was willing to step aside and not be bull headed about valuation (which we felt was almost nothing now beyond assets)

I talked to Gox again but we didn't really move forward.

A few days ago, when the anonymous memos started surfacing I emailed a few times asking for them to give more clarity to customers.  I got a note from Mark which said "we will have an announcement on Friday".  We now see that.

Like Charlie and others have said, the entire time it did not seem at all that Gox had lost the coins.   Why would they have bothered even talking to me?   Surely they didn't think an investor would cover the coin losses (by the way, sadly, no, no investor would bail out Gox like this, there would be no way of getting an ROI on that investment) --

Part of me is still optimistically hoping that Mark is just being profoundly bad with PR and trying to under-promise and over-deliver and has at least a good chunk of coins and will try to "fix" things.   His behavior and manner and communications were not at all like that of someone who either 1) lost 800,000 coins or 2) was pulling a major con.

I don't get it.  There are many unanswered questions.  How exactly can 800,000 coins disappear?  What manner of thief could do such a thing?  When was this noticed?  By what mechanism?  What exactly did he say in the press conference?  Did he say hack or thief?  Did he simply lose the keys and is covering from embarrassment?  Could someone have threatened him into giving them up?  Could there be some other third party in play here?  (When you talk about hundreds of millions of dollars even grand conspiracies of mafia, terrorists or government are not off the table) 
Why was he trying to program the transaction issue?  Are these Gox wallets people tracked real?
So many questions.   Hopefully we get answers.

I won't give any info on contact for Mark or any Gox employee -- his life could be in danger and I won't be responsible for giving that info, sorry -- he reached me though a response to his regular contact form ....I also won't answer any questions about the other parties because these conversations were private.   Typically I never release any information about any business conversation ever....however this is such an odd case with so much at stake for so many I feel I need to give whatever info I can which could in some tiny way give some insight.

I am really sorry to all who lost coins, I also lost a small amount of coins.  Fortunately not a huge amount for me --

This episode is a sad chapter for Bitcoin-   I feel like my good friend and little buddy Bitcoin has been punched in the head.   It's so sad to see this blow to the reputation of our new technology.

Of course I still completely believe in the tech and this issue doesn't shake my confidence in Bitcoin itself much, but I'm sad to see that thousands had such a bad experience and the inevitable press and other issues which will arise from this.

Good luck to all.

For those of you who lost coins, please keep a big picture view -- it sounds annoying perhaps but every day when I travel I meet people who can never afford even the most basic needs like food.   Whatever hard times you have in life will pass.

I believe that those who lost greatly will in general recover and hopefully stronger and I believe Bitcoin in general will recover and both the currency and technology will change the world and grow beyond most peoples dreams.



Edit/ note:    To be clear they never at any point said there was a problem with cold storage or indicated losses at all, I thought this was clear in the OP.  The reason I am not wildly out calling the liars is because I am giving the benefit of the doubt until we hear more on the off chance that there is a govt gag order, they still have the coins or some other explanation.