It's extremely trivial. Banks and currency exchanges do it on massive scales everyday. You're trying to come up with this bizarre "convenience" argument to route around any and all legal precedent. Tell it to the bankruptcy courts. Good luck.
Efficiency and expedience are not characteristic of court systems. An emphasis on legal compliance is. The entire purpose of bankruptcy is to repay value pro rata to creditors -- not to "return whatever currency an account holder had at the time of bk." That is insane. Can you find me any historical examples, precedents where this would indicate payment in anything other than legal tender? These are state court proceedings, not the bitcoin wild west.
I'm not sure how i let this discussion devolve into a legal one around bankruptcy proceedings. IANAL and i don't have any bk experience fortunately. i have thought about what you said in regards to liquidation to legal fiat and i believe it is a reasonable assumption. a link to that legal requirement would be appreciated for my edification. but i still disagree with your assumed timing of that liquidation for practical reasons from the perspective of the trustee. said trustee is likely to be very unfamiliar with Bitcoin and not know how to properly liquidate to attain maximum fiat value. i'm sure it would take months of consultation and discussion as to how and what to do with the goxbtc. if they decided to liquidate to fiat like you suggest, and if they decide on Peter's suggestion of an auction, that would take significant time as well. in the meantime, the price of btc could very well be much higher.
but all this misses my original point of 2d ago and that was coming not from a legal perspective but from one of a speculator.
When I revived this thread 2d ago, goxbtc was <$100. the point i was trying to make was that anyone who was in goxusd should consider converting into goxbtc at bargain prices of <$100, and that if one was still in goxbtc, stay there. assuming bk happened today, i believe any goxbtc-->goxusd liquidation would come months, perhaps years later as i've argued above, but at most likely much higher btc prices (hopefully $10,000
). even a month could make a huge difference. auction bidders would probably be bidding much higher for those goxbtc, which hopefully would be real btc, thus maximizing any usd returned from the creditor process which would satisfy the trustees mandate. in fact, if we've bottomed and the prices start escalating now, as we may have already done, the pressure on the trustee to immediately liquidate to preserve value would be alleviated and give him time to liquidate in a safe and orderly manner. selling alot of goxbtc at once would not be an easy matter to preserve value for his creditors as you've argued. the kind of liquidation we're talking about with gox could severely tank the price. there's a conundrum there btwn quick liquidation and that mandate.
2d ago i was arguing that if one failed to sell their goxbtc @ $900 goxusd and rode it down to <$100, that would not have been the time to sell out for goxusd. they'd be stuck at that severely reduced value. and if someone had the foresight to sell @ $900 goxusd, they should re-buy goxbtc @ <$100 and potentially pick up 9x their original goxbtc. the upside potential of that play is enormous coupled with the above scenario i've outlined about the liquidation process above. in fact, we're beginning to see this. if we see any further restoration of goxbtc, and goxusd withdrawals (no bk), we will surely send the value of goxbtc rocketing upwards. there was a thread on Reddit and apparently the short interest on btc is near record highs right now. this could result in the ultimate squeeze which is why i necro'd this thread.
the risk benefit ratio is low, imo.