Topic: why does mt gox care about one user (Read 5233 times)

I think because the one user was an account set up to move everyone else's bitcoins to it, and they tried to drain all of Mt. Gox's bitcoin wallet from there.  The user probably doesn't exist.

I just want to kiss my hot coins one last time before returning them to mt.gox's personal account

So you're saying that it's only immoral if you knowingly buy stolen goods?

Well you know the coins are stolen now.

Anyone with any decency would be offering to undo the trade voluntarily.

you chose to buy hot electronics out of a shady persons' car

I didn't choose which btc to buy, the market did and because of that I am not liable for anything.

hi lemonginger,

first, thank you for the kind words.

i agree; i think a central problem is that growth occurred too quickly, and bitcoin as a result has likely suffered. hopefully it hasn't suffered in an unrecoverable way.

as to the propriety of a rollback, i think the difficulty here - the root of all disagreement - has to do with differing understandings of the business norms of financial exchanges. i've never seen a consensual broken trade as the result of a theft of funds on one side, and so my instinct is to imply a promise not to break trades in that manner on the part of the exchange. similarly, market manipulation is not usually sufficient to break trades; the typical response to that is legal, not unilateral.

that having been said, i recognise that the issue is not black-and-white, and there is room for reasonable disagreement. and i don't want to overstate my argument, which i might have done in the zeal of discussion. i'm mostly just trying to call for more transparency and disclosure, and less unilateral action. and i'm bristling at the 'trust' given to mt. gox when, realistically, they're a highly compensated oligopolist acting in their own self-interest.

Hi Unk,

I really appreciate your posting history and your philosophy in general on the "state of bitcoin" at the moment as being better thought of as a preliminary experiment with blockchain technologies rather than The Perfect Currency Of The Future.

However, on this, I think you are wrong. First off, every major exchange I'm aware of has a history of rolling back trades for various reasons. I realize your point is that the trades in and of themself weren't a result of a glitch, however this need not be the case. Open market manipulation especially when undertaken by someone who does not actually own the coins involved and when the disruption is large enough the shake the entire market seems to be a clear cut case when it would be best for everyone if the trades were reversed.

I agree with you that exchanges need to move towards more transparency in terms of when/how funds will be frozen, what redress procedures are, when trades will be broken, etc. However, as you have noted numerous times, we are still in the preliminary days and have outgrown ourselves a bit in terms of what we are able to deal with. It's a shame that growth has not occurred in a slower fashion and that suddenly there's very real amounts of money at stake, (especially because, as you mention, it is going to strongly impede a willingness to throw the current block chain out the window and move to something better) but that's where we are at.

that woudln't protect you if you bought a stolen car stereo/tv/whatever else

whether or not you knew the coins were stolen is irrelevant.

Yes; and I bought a Bluray player out of the back of some guy's car that he was offering at a price that I hand picked as acceptable to me.

I'm afraid your willingness to transact doesn't imply the willingness of the other party.  Your repetition that you are pleased with the deal does not change the nature of what you were buying: stolen goods.

Maybe bitbot should go to some other forum to be relevant, because 'his' logic here sure isn't.

If you could possibly think over the dull roar your empty skull contains, you'd realize out in the 'big world' exchanges bust trades that are erroneous all the time. Don't be all maudlin over it, just understand that is how it works.

Or just keep posting rants like a toothless beggar, up to you.

According to the reference I linked to, what you thought you bought has no impact on whether the stolen goods will be confiscated or not (in the jurisdictions covered by the article). The fact that you didn't know means you're not on the hook personally for possession of stolen goods, but it does not mean you get to keep them.

I'd say that, although it will feel unfortunate for some - I had a lowball 'in case it crashes' bid open myself - there is neither moral nor legal standing for keeping the property.

I wasn't  buying stolen goods. I bought goods that the market gave me for the price I hand picked.

> In previous hackings (all minor), Mt. Gox has refused to cover the losses of its users.

This isn't true. He has covered everyone that had a loss due to an exploit in the site.

If you, say, held a gun to someone's head so that they sold you their house for $10, you wouldn't be a financial wizard.

If someone else held a gun to someone's head so that they sold you their house for $10, you wouldn't be a financial wizard.

If someone broke into the bank, stole the deeds to someone's house and sold them to you for $10, you wouldn't be a financial wizard.

It's heartbreaking to see that your silly opportunistic bid of $10 for 1000 bitcoins that you left on Mt.Gox just as a bit of a joke that maybe, maybe one day someone might go mad and want to give away a load of cash, turn out not to be the lottery win you thought it was... BUT YOU WERE BUYING STOLEN GOODS.  Get over it.

Seriously, does anyone think they have an actual moral case for having bought these stolen coins?  Trades should be voluntary on both sides, these weren't.  You thought you were going to be instantly rich and it turns out you're not.  It's sad for you, but it's hardly unfair.

You show me a contract you signed saying MtGox can't cancel trades and you might have a point. Otherwise you're building a castle out of air. There are clearly no implied terms saying they cannot - for those terms to be implied there would have to be wide agreement that fraud cancellation cannot happen. And as this thread indicates, there is very little agreement on that.

Edit: I also believe that buyers of stolen goods normally find themselves deprived of the stolen goods by the law. Sometimes the buyers themselves are even convicted of a crime. "In many countries, if an individual has accepted possession of goods or property and knew they were stolen, then it is usually prosecuted as a misdemeanor or felony, depending on value of stolen goods. If the individual didn't know the goods were stolen, then the goods are returned to the owner and the individual is not prosecuted." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_of_stolen_goods

I can prove I'm not an accomplice solely due to the fact that I am a financial wizard

Dealing in stolen property is frowned upon in most civilized countries. The 500,000 bitcoins were stolen property that the hacker was selling on the cheap, and you want to get mad because the exchange can (and is) nullifying those trades? I imagine if someone stole all your stuff then immediately sold it that you wouldn't want the cops to recover it because of all the innocent people the bought your stuff for pennies on the dollar. Can't interfere with those trades.

So, how many $.01 bitcoins did you get?

Judging from the prize movement  24 hrs until the flash dump, very little happened. Whats up with all these claims of lost profits ?
Can YOU prove, you are not an accomplice ?

Your welcome to express your megagreed after the rollback 

For everyone that got a good deal, someone got a bad deal. I see know reason for mt gox to muck around figuring out who need compensation. Most of the trades were not authorized by the owner of the account, just as if a glitch had happened. Roll it back.

Glitches were happening because the network was so swamped with the unusual activity. It simply must be rolled back.

but just to be clear, the gains weren't from a greedy hacker. they were from completing a trade on an exchange where the counterparty happened to be a greedy hacker. if i make money selling fruit at a fruitstand for cash, the fact that the cash is stolen doesn't matter in any modern legal system that i'm aware of. again, that's true even in the united states, which adopts the relatively unusual legal rule that stolen goods can be returned to their prior owners even after an innocent purchase.

that said, i may in the zeal of argument have overstated my point. i don't mean to be accusing mt. gox of 'theft', and i wouldn't want what i said before to be construed that way. i'm really just calling for transparency and accountability, and my point is that mt. gox does not seem to have justified the propriety of a 'rollback' given the information that it has released so far.

if we're just toying around (which, to be fair, is the approach i, more than almost anyone else, take toward the currently prominent block chain, having mined more than ten thousand coins cheaply early on and not having the desire or comfort to sell them yet - or perhaps ever), that's fine, and we can treat whatever mt. gox does today or tomorrow as a mere experiment. but if mt. gox intends to be treated as a prominent, serious currency exchanger providing honest customer service, it should at least consider holding the trade proceeds from yesterday in escrow while turning over the matter to arbitration or at least a third-party financial audit. instead, it has apparently decided to summarily announce a course of action that it intends to take on its own, even while admitting that it won't make certain customers (who may have legitimate complaints) happy.

to put that differently, if i were a serious bitcoin speculator or investor rather than (with respect to bitcoin) a technologist focused on the protocol and the systems issues, i would probably insist that my currency exchange acted more seriously than mt. gox is apparently, from its announcements, intending to act. its disposition in this matter is questionable. its first statement was a heavy-handed one that almost sounded as if it was trying to manipulate the price ('The bitcoin will be back to around 17.5$/BTC after we rollback all trades'). its later statements amount to announcements of its intent without an attempt at justification, ethical considerations, or propriety.

it may be easy for some to dismiss the claims of people who 'made a quick buck' by putting on fortunate trades yesterday. but the point of the argument i'm making is that it is not that easy. the argument may not be persuasive, but at the very least people should think 'yes, he has a point' - and if so, that means that mt. gox's unilaterally announced course of action, canceling a large number of trades, is probably hasty.

i mean this as constructive criticism. i have nothing against mt. gox, even though as i've pointed out many times over the last several months, they have not earned my own personal trust.

You mean you lost your "on paper" value of thousands of bitcoins that you bought for $0.10? No one is going to have any less money then they had earlier that day. Unless you are counting the gains of stolen btc from a greedy hacker.