Topic: Problem with a transaction at Mt Gox (Read 1821 times)

The used address came from an earlier payment I made to him via MT Gox, but old addresses are still usable as I understand.

The 'old' address is not an address where MtGox pays from, but receives funds into.
I am very surprised that you or anyone did not realize this.

I mean, I can claim that I sent those funds.

Clearly, MtGox does not have any liability to return those bitcoins. It is 100% your mistake.

Only Mark Karpeles can resolve these issues when they come up. You need to somehow get escalated to him. He is the only person at MtGox who has the authority to manually credit bitcoins to an account, which is why everyone else is blowing you off even if they understand the situation.

But in this case the user didn't understand the difference between a funding address specific to their account, and an address that bitcoins were stored at prior to MtGox sending them to a withdrawal address in their own wallet.

They could have checked that address a million times on blockchain.info and in their own wallet and still would have thought they had the right address.  The issue wasn't that they didn't double check the address, the issue was that they didn't understand MtGox account funding system.

I don't agree.  Just because it's a MtGox address doesn't mean it's the correct one for your account.  I'm pretty sure there is a reason why MtGox gives it's users a wallet on their account to use.  Double checking could have helped to avoid the situation if one checked to see if the address was a wallet address specific to your account.

In this case, any amount of re-checking wouldn't have helped.

The address used IS a MtGox address.  The user intended to send bitcoins to MtGox, and the user sent bitcoins to MtGox.  The issue was that the user didn't understand how a MtGox funding address works.  The user used exactly the address they intended to use, so double and triple checking wouldn't have helped.

So what should a person do in this situation to make sure such mishaps don't happen?

In this case, any amount of re-checking wouldn't have helped.

The address used IS a MtGox address.  The user intended to send bitcoins to MtGox, and the user sent bitcoins to MtGox.  The issue was that the user didn't understand how a MtGox funding address works.  The user used exactly the address they intended to use, so double and triple checking wouldn't have helped.

The moral of this story is always double, nay triple check, the addresses you use for transactions.  The power of Bitcoin is a double edged sword.

Hello,

Thank you for the email. This is a temporary address used only to send BTC's. It cannot be used for receiving them and it is not linked with any wallet. We will not be able to recover the BTC. We apologize for any inconvenience caused to you. For any support assistance get back to us.

Best regards,

Mt.Gox Team

- snip -
Results (or not) will be posted here.

Cheers, Hans

Hold on.  I think I see the problem.  It looks like their is a miscommunication, but it looks like part of the problem is you misunderstanding how MtGox works.

First, 1PZmRkTrBv8sSn1mgYtjeVwJLtxwUGEHr5 is not an "account", it's a bitcoin address.  Calling it an account just increases the confusion.

Next, MtGox does not hold everyone's bitcoins in segregated addresses, just like when you deposit cash into a bank they don't mark those specific bills as yours and return them to you when you withdraw.  MtGox provides you in their user interface with an address that you can use to fund your account.  When they see funds arrive at that address, they know that your account should be credited.  Then those funds are swept from that "funding" address to other addresses where they are pooled with all the other bitcoins MtGox has received from everyone else.

When you "withdraw" funds from MtGox, they don't send them to you from your funding address.  They just take a random address from their pooled funds and send you some bitcoins from there.  There is no link created in their database from that address to your account specifically.  Sending funds to an address that you've received funds from is generally a bad idea and with MtGox, it is always a bad idea.

So, you may have to explain your issue to MtGox a bit differently to collect your funds.

Keep in mind that anyone could have accidentally sent funds to the address 1PZmRkTrBv8sSn1mgYtjeVwJLtxwUGEHr5, and since it isn't linked specifically to your account in their database and has never shown up in the user interface as a funding address for you, MtGox has to be careful not to give you bitcoins that belong to someone else.  I could contact them right now and tell them that I accidentally sent to the wrong address, and that those are my bitcoins (as could anyone else who is reading this forum).  They'll want/need to be sure that you actually are the right person to give those bitcoins to before they update your account.

Try contacting them again.  This time explain it something like this:

"I've just realized that I used an incorrect address when attempting to fund (deposit into) my account.  Rather than sending bitcoins to one of the "funding addresses" that MtGox provides, I accidentally sent bitcoins to an address that MtGox used when sending me a withdrawl in the past.  Can you confirm that MtGox owns the address 1PZmRkTrBv8sSn1mgYtjeVwJLtxwUGEHr5?  If so, can you please credit the 3.46700611 bitcoins from transaction 929ef144e5c7e439684d6f1f9ef86b332546794dcbaaaf61b3f365b72b0894b0 to my account: M90407683X.  I apologize for any inconvenience, and will be more careful about funding my account in the future.  I can provide a signature from address  1GwPaTHi6s3XkzaFQe7DwFJNXfmUTbRkiQ to prove that I was the person who sent those bitcoins if necessary."


As I hope you understand now, this is not true.
 

As you can hopefully see now, the problem isn't in their database.  The problem is that with bitcoin you can never assume that an address that you receive bitcoins "from" is a good address to send bitcoins "to".