Topic: The US Govt stole your coins - not MtGox - page 2. (Read 7053 times)

That's quite some logic there.
"If someone can't disprove my theory, it must be right"
On that basis, I have dancing unicorns in my garden. Prove me wrong!

The OP reasoning boils down to :

"Something bad happened, the government must be involved"  

If people DBA government (either US or Japanese or yet some other) did this (stole bitcoins or forced Karpeles to steal bitcoins), then Karpeles will be found dead soon or will never be found. These people leave no witnesses.

Because they were hacked in 2011 and kept their losses silent. Keep in mind in 2011 500K BTC was "only" a few million dollar, and Gox probably thought they could earn that back in trading fees in a few years. Had the price remained roughly where it was, it might even have worked, but as the price rocketed from <$5 to >$500 that few million dollar hole became a quarter of a billion.

I understand that Yakuza are extreme professionals at extorting even large corporations. It could simply be, that the bitcoins were obtained through extortion, and Kerpeles is unable to divulge the fact out of fear of whatever they are using to extort him. Of course, it could just be a government doing the extorting, and using threat of prison time for real or imaginary crimes.

http://people.howstuffworks.com/yakuza2.htm

I lost nothing to gox, but what really pisses me off is all the wishy washy
horse feces we've been fed so far. Weasel words and total lack of any
credible explanation. And when and if the whole story is ever known
I have little faith that all our questions will be answered in the statements.
It will be some half baked drivel carefully concocted to placate the masses
with just enough technical explanation to look good on the surface yet
carefully leave no real information revealed. Just as it has been so far
so shall it continue to be.

Could be. But it's not a stretch by any means. Ruling it out would be irresponsible. Truth is... we just don't know right now...

The government is definitely Public Scum #1 and can't be trusted.
But I'm not really seeing that they did this. Mebbe so but I don't see it.
Let's not over conspiracy this thing. The trooth is prolly much simpler.

Dismissing the OP seems naive. The US government is a criminal organisation that is rife with exactly this kind of thing. Why would the OP be a stretch? It's much more on the side of "likely" than "unlikely".

Mt Gox owners need to devote more time and not let things take their course.

I think the malleability is only part of it.. and that is what led them to discover the rest of the "issues"...

Someone is shaking in their boots, and may attempt to disappear from gox soon.. but I doubt it is K himself.

However, They said only like $8 million in USD was locked-up in assets, through seizure. (That is irrelevant to us anyways, as it is only locked-up for suspicion of being part of laundering.)

Still waiting for the help-lines to open, so we can file our claims. That information was still pending, once the investigation is complete.

No more stories now... It is in the Govt's hands... They are not going to lie. They have no reason to lie for Gox. He is just another business, that got screwed.

Customers still have protections... Even in Japan.

He will most-likely have a chance to earn it all back. That is why they had to do a strategic filing for bankruptcy protection. It is what businesses do, to continue to operate, or sell, or get external investigations for free.

I hope an American business picks it up for a nice discounted sale-price... Bring it closer to home. Would be a nice turn-key operation, once the holes are patched. Throw in some legal regulation and get 40x the customer base, and trade-volume and income. Best return investment ever. Better than buying a bunch of miners to farm, and cheaper.

the only transaction malleability in this whole thing is how the story doesn't fit
and how the story has changed.

Occum's razor may apply in this situation.
Keep it simple. Keep it clean.
Gun to his head or lost keys.

Please DO try to speculate.  There is nothing wrong with a hypothesis that turns out to be incorrect.

The scientific method involves brainstrorming for a wide variety of hypotheses, then knocking out the hypotheses which do not stand to the evidence as it comes in.

Modern science has come very far very fast on the strength of this method of exploration.  Religion and politics have stagnated and look about the same as they have for the past several thousand years because they mainly reject these methods.

Most importantly, do your own thinking.  Most posters here just state some (usually absurd) assertion as though it were fact.  That's because there are a lot of imbeciles and youngsters around these parts.  In Bitcoinland doing your own analysis can make you rich...or at least help you to not get ripped off.

You know... it is like a 1:987654982364832846873287468237648732684692423684683276483268463286 chance to find the pass-phrase to open a wallet...

However, that being said...

You can still find it in 1 shot...

However, I do believe the draining was a long-term thing. The only good thing about that, is that there is a record of every transaction that was "resent", since the coins were not drained "accidentally", and it could only have been done if someone purposely altered the txid that Gox was using to confirm the "sent transaction"...

Eg, They know everyone that they re-sent to... because they have double withdraw records. One of each transaction was just "nullified", so it didn't come off that accounts balance. (Even if they didn't have the original Txid, they have the resent txid, and can check the address, and find 2 exact transfers, one after the other.)

Now... hopefully the idiots doing this, (though doubtfully), had verified accounts. (Accounts which had multiple IP's show, were forced to verify. Large transactions were forced to verify. Thus, some verification must exist, as well as a list of IP's or one singular IP for each drained account used.)

If that is actually the case. (Which I honestly doubt.)

I find it more believable that "someone", not K, has drained the wallets. After having somehow gotten access to the wallet and with equal access to the records.

That, or his wallets got "crypted" by that BTC ransom virus... which is uncrackable, and would require the ransom to be paid, to decrypt it. (Until the gov catches that guy, and freely decrypts everyone's locked computers.)

Or...

There was this other "Issue" with wallets... kind of a little known annoyance.

After the first 100 addresses that are created in a wallet.dat file... You can create many more. However, unless you have those saved, knowing the actual created addresses... they can never be "recreated", from an older backup of the wallet. Thus, those funds are essentially "gone", unless you randomly find the randomly created prior addresses, by luck.

That would make them "not gone", but "not accessible", which is a word he used in an interview.

The only solution to resolve that, is to not let the wallet create the addresses, you use a wallet generator, which is external, and can re-create the same random addresses, if given a seed-value. Then you just add those addresses to your wallet.dat file, to use them. (If the wallet becomes corrupt, you can still recreate it, using the external address generator. But not the wallet itself.)

Only sad part of the above... it does not work for "returned change", which will go to a new random address, beyond the 100, and out of the scope of the address generator.

honestly, the wallet needs an overhaul.

There is always simple "espionage"... hidden cameras, invisible tracer-paint on keypads, key loggers, database prying, packet-sniffing... It is not like he hand-built the systems himself. Nor did he have 24/7 security control, with security-watchers watching them, like a casino has.

It is time Gox was purchased by a real trade-market manager, with the security and protections it needs. Including fraud detection, and live audits.

Also.. how the hell did the audits NOT detect this? They had to audit off something real. (That alone says it probably wasn't actually a draining of a wallet.)

Whatever... a real criminal investigation is now underway. The reality will be exposed, then a real auditor will re-evaluate the actual losses... since his estimations were not legally valued like they should have been. 10,000 BTC deposited 4 years ago, was not worth today's prices, if it was never sold. It was worth the value at the time of deposit or of the last trade it had. He estimated all values at today's prices, including his own coins.

Not to mention all the dead accounts that were fake, and not a loss, because the depositors are dead, or in prison, or can never legally verify. (Thieves will not be going through the verification process to get laundered money that they stole, and now have to claim, for fear of being caught. Those have to come off the top of the "losses" also, and have to go to "unclaimed funds", which will just become, "unclaimed losses".)

Please try not to speculate.
Its just a post.

the likelihood its a lie or misinformed is 50/50

the likelihood its the truth or misinformed is 50/50

Truth is perception, in the end. Unless you do
your homework.

I saw a post on reddit making the argument that Mark is under a gag order, and all the BTC were seized by US gov because of different investigations

Honestly I'm starting to think this is the most likely theory.

Sets a dangerous precedent that they can just seize ALL the coins though, considering most of Gox customers were not doing anything illegal.

A gun to his head is what makes the most sense to me.
That would make anyone hand over the keys.

Who would be behind the gun, though?
NSA?
The israelis ?
Yakuza?
Common tokyo street criminal?

Who cares if the Easter Bunny took them? They are gone.

err...

1)  GOX is the big fish in the tank, so it attracts the feds and/or organised crime

2) What makes you think they aren't linked with the others ? 

3)  Are you so naive as to not understand that organisations like the CIA (for example) have their hands in major dealings the world over, and have done so for decades?