Topic: The Bitcoin Crooks are not Who We Thought They Were - page 2. (Read 5917 times)

no more insurance, you have insurance fraud and stuff.  I like the idea of a free-for-all, everyone being cynical and protect their own interest, that's how capitalism works.

Technically speaking, you'd be considered batsh*t crazy to put all your funds into a 3 year old experiment titled "Bitcoin" with still unknown origins and an unknown future. Considering stability, security and risk vs. reward, you'd even be better off playing Casino Royale on Wall St. with some levered 3rd world subprime mortgage derivates

Of course, that's why you regulate them to death and insure the results. Insurance goes a long way toward solving problems. Centralization isn't a dirty word. Society is centralized. We live together, play together, fuck each other, have babies and start the cycle over again. We don't live in caves 50 miles apart anymore. Even an organization as small as a nuclear family has regulations governing everyone's role in the organization and punitive actions for misbehavior. 

Again, you are focusing on proximate causes not ultimate causes. The ultimate cause for the corruption you perceive in large businesses is exactly the same cause for the corruption seen in governments by others - centralization.

And even when the businesses themselves are not corrupt, the external crooks are attracted to them for the same reason - concentration of wealth and power.

This doesn't make sense. If you used very long passwords, created your paper wallets on offline Linux machines, and kept all your backups encrypted, then why did you put 50% of your Bitcoins on the Bitfloor exchange?


WTF? The only part of your statement that is mildly true is that Mt.Gox was an established exchange. Where were they registered? They had proven BAD security (see 2011 hack), and were obviously inexperienced in accounting (see 2013 withdrawal problems).


As another side note, did MtGox really anything anyone would trust them after they were hacked in 2011? They were dead from the moment that happened.

Oh, wait...


There's also no proof that they didn't falsify volumes (or give some people perpetual free trading to boost volumes).


It's still very early days in Bitcoin. Enron had revenues exceeding $100 billion - with a "B"!

Thank you! It seems like common sense to me but common sense doesn't always prevail.

Really well said.

Ironic thread title.  There is reason to believe that BitFloor is related to the MtGox shutdown, and that they both have a single cause.

You wonder how people who abscond with Bitcoins can post openly as though nothing happened?  Obviously this is not normal behaviour.  That means they are likely protected.  Who do you think the real crooks are?

It amazes me that people don't realize that the crooks in any society or financial arrangement are the business owners not the individuals. Think about all the businesses that have fucked you over in your life. I can name three without giving it much thought (Best Buy, Albertsons and PayPal). Then think of all the individual people that have fucked you over as an adult. I can think of one and he was family (never loan money to family). Businesses by their very design are out to take as much money from you as they can. Bitcoin just gives them an easier way to do that by allowing them to hide behind legal obscurity. Gox is going to do what so many businesses have done in the past and hide behind bankruptcy laws. The reason mainstream financial institutions, like banks, have government protections, like the FDIC, is because their mistakes fuck over so many individuals that people cry for a solution. Libtards forget that those protections are there because people need them, want them and demand them. Pirate@40 fucked over a bunch of people and the first thing they did was run to the government to fix it. I'd like to feel sorry for your loss but that's impossible because you did it to yourself by trusting an unregulated business with your money. Regulations may not always work but at least they provide some incentive to business owners to at least contact you back and try to fix it before you tattle on them.

razick, well written post.

i think the community is now into version 2 of bitcoins. where businesses like mybitcoin, bitfloor, mtgox, inputs.io and similar crooks will be shunned and noone will do business with them. a hard and very expensive lesson to learn but a lesson nonetheless.

now that bitcoins are worth more and their potential is shinning i doubt people will be willing to part with them as easily or trust others as easily as well.

i lost more than i will ever admit to anyone ever but it's been a lesson.
what little i have left i will be 100x more wiser with.

So true. I worry more about IRL thieves these days. I used to protect my BTC with strong passwords and offline wallets. Now I use guns and safe deposit boxes.
Sorry for your loss Razick. That sucks man.

I like Danny Hamilton's approach. "If you do not have sole control of you private keys then you do not own any bitcoins."

This is the logical fallacy that most Bitcoiners fall into, they will PGP 4016 encrypt all their messages, generate the wallet in an offline linux machine etc only to be hit with a 12 dollar wrench on the head until he gives up the password.

Yes, but you even win if you don't diversify *your* holdings; just decentralize your holdings from everyone else's. Mt Gox may have been especially incompetent, but that's just the proximate cause of this disaster - the ultimate cause is far too many bitcoins under the control of far too few people.

It's better to learn now while the price per coin is still reasonable.

There is very easy solution - stop putting all of your money at one place !!

When people will finally understand it. When you keep money at bank and it will go bankrupt you will lose part or all of money that were in this bank. When you invested all of your money in some stocks, you might lose it all if it ends up bad investment. If you even keep all of your money in normal paper united states dollars, it will become just a paper when country collapse or also decide to go bankrupt, not to mention inflation.

You can always keep money in different form and in different places. It is not a new or surprising idea.

Don't assume Mark has done anything other than secreted away the coins to keep them away from you and the Feds.  Plus, he has another 500k coins from his little password heist back in 2011.

bitfunder took my neobeeshares down with them ...

It is very awful what happened. At the same time, you shouldn't leave all of your savings, college funds etc in a very volatile situation.

He lost 90% bitcoin he had. That is too much. I feel your anger and frustration.

I sure am, I'm more angry for other's sake than my own. What if I had my entire college fund in MtGox or Bitfloor? What these people have done is shameful.