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Bitcoin Community Gangs Up On "Bad Actor" As Mt.Gox Site (And Feed) Disappears
UPDATE: Mt. Gox website and feed is now offline
Much as we are not surprised, given our previous discussion of the end of major Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, this evening's release by Coinbase must be the final nail in the final coffin of the Tokyo-based firm...
The purpose of this document is to summarize a joint statement to the Bitcoin community regarding Mt.Gox. ... As with any new industry, there are certain bad actors that need to be weeded out, and that is what we are seeing today.
And scene...
The purpose of this document is to summarize a joint statement to the Bitcoin community regarding Mt.Gox.
This tragic violation of the trust of users of Mt.Gox was the result of one company’s actions and does not reflect the resilience or value of bitcoin and the digital currency industry. There are hundreds of trustworthy and responsible companies involved in bitcoin. These companies will continue to build the future of money by making bitcoin more secure and easy to use for consumers and merchants. As with any new industry, there are certain bad actors that need to be weeded out, and that is what we are seeing today.
We are confident, however, that strong Bitcoin companies, led by highly competent teams and backed by credible investors, will continue to thrive, and to fulfill the promise that bitcoin offers as the future of payment in the Internet age.
In order to re-establish the trust squandered by the failings of Mt. Gox, responsible bitcoin exchanges are working together and are committed to the future of bitcoin and the security of all customer funds. As part of the effort to re-assure customers, the following services will be coordinating efforts over the coming days to publicly reassure customers and the general public that all funds continue to be held in a safe and secure manner: Coinbase, Kraken, BitStamp, Circle, and BTC China.
We strongly believe in transparent, thoughtful, and comprehensive consumer protection measures. We pledge to lead the way.
Bitcoin operators, whether they be exchanges, wallet services or payment providers, play a critical custodial role over the bitcoin they hold as assets for their customers. Acting as a custodian should require a high-bar, including appropriate security safeguards that are independently audited and tested on a regular basis, adequate balance sheets and reserves as commercial entities, transparent and accountable customer disclosures, and clear policies to not use customer assets for proprietary trading or for margin loans in leveraged trading.
The following industry leaders stand by this statement:
Fred Ehrsam — Co-founder of Coinbase
Jesse Powell — CEO of Kraken
Nejc Kodric — CEO of Bitstamp.net
Bobby Lee — CEO of BTC China
Nicolas Cary — CEO of Blockchain.info
Jeremy Allaire — CEO of Circle
Interestingly, Coinbase's original title of their post was a little more aggressive...
which contained this line...
This is the first public declaration that the exchange — which has been facing major issues in terms of allowing users to withdraw funds — is insolvent.
which was rapidly removed and replace with this less aggressive one...
We thought this "new logo" for Mt.Gox summed it all up...
MtGox unveils new logo pic.twitter.com/HDvwEmDCuj
— Butt Coin (@ButtCoin) February 25, 2014
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I might actually take BC here over FB.
Gold and Silver Bitchez!
My $4, $5 and $8 silver ounces seem relatively stable sitting there in that cabinet.
It's not outside the realm of possibility that bitcoin was hatched and implemented as a honey pot operation by TPTB.
I realize that we speculate about such tin-foily matters often, and they never turn out to be accurate. /SARC
Some say El Chappa was brought down because he started dabbling in the forbidden blockchain fruit of bitcoin.
ohh fuck forgot this is the land of ZH fools....
To be Mt. Gox'd or not, that is the question.
It seems out of whack somehow that Bitcoin gets all this attention, press and investment when you consider that e-gold(r) was settling the same volume of daily transactions circa 2006 - some days more than 100k Spends - but with payment finality assured in 2 seconds (~1/250th the time a Bitcoin confirmation takes on the average) using hardware that had a total cost of under $250k (<1/400th the replacement cost of the mining rigs now running). The Spend fee for receiving $10 worth of e-gold was a dime and the fee for receiving a Spend of, say, $50,000 worth was 5 gold cents (the max fee)...around $2.50 worth, give or take. Oh, and if everyone had decided to sell their e-gold, they all would have gotten pretty much whatever exchange rate was being quoted, since it was backed by a 100% reserve of physical gold. In fact, when the system did finally get permission to liquidate, it turned out that e-gold had continued to appreciate relative to USD even years after it was prevented from circulating. The worst case was that claimants in e-gold's Value Access Program (VAP) got a double in USD terms and some who hadn't accessed their accounts in a really long time got a 5 bagger, again in USD terms. And those same crappy servers that had been in use in 2006 were still good enough to process the required identity verification protocol for the claims process.
e-gold was centralized and taken down. Bitcoin is decentralized, global, and integrated into the internet -- presenting no target to attack.
The idea that a system can flourish by defying governments to shut it down is not a good strategy. [Besides, as mining difficulty outstrips the ability of ASIC hardware vendors to ship cards affording a positive ROI, mining is becoming more and more concentrated in few (decreasingly profitable) hands.] The better strategy is a system that combines the monetary principles of e-gold with a robust and compliant AML program. The e-gold Founder described this synthesis in an interview with Bill Frezza on realclearradio.org on 2/8.
The outcome of the e-gold case was a ruling that clarified the scope of 18 USC 1960. The court explicitly indicated "there is no reason to shut down e-gold and every reason for them to come into compliance". The Plea Agreement that e-gold and its principals entered into laid out very specific elements that were designed to enable a go forward - FinCEN registration, a rigorous customer identification program similar to what is required of banks, other aspects of an AML and BSA compliance program. The limiting factor was that by pleading guilty the company became ineligible for state licensing (a bit ironic since companies like Coinbase are doing exactly what e-gold was accused of). But the gold was never seized and a groundwork was laid for a much more sophisticated next generation system.
Cool, can't wait to try it out if it ever launches.
Yea, e-gold was great. But they could wack it because it is centralized. Not as easy to do with BTC, but it looks like Gox could have been done intentionally to tarnish bitcoin's reputation and see how low it could be brought. Will be interesting to see what happens next.
Bitcoin is a complete FRAUD!
A bunch of computer programmers get together and issue a currency for writing code ("mining") to "unlock" coins.
If Bitcoin is legit, why are these not?
1) Basketball players get together and issue coins for making shots from beyond the 3 point line...
2) 5 year olds awarded coins at Chuk E Cheese for high scores on whak-a-mole...
3) Models issue coins for looking hot....
WTF is the difference? Really?
I like the whack a mole idea. Every succesive mole is larger while the bat is smaller. That, and I trust a 5 year old more than...well just about anyone over 5.
As my son always says...do not trust anybody over 5.
"WTF is the difference? Really?"
People choose to use and/or invest in whatever they like. There are 200 cryptocurrencies running on the internet right now but most of them hardly have any investment. Why? Because people don't see much future in them. Investment in Bitcoin is 20 times larger than the nearest competitor, LiteCoin. The software is open source and you can start a currency yourself but nobody would buy it or use it.
Translation: bitcoin has value because people buy it. And people only buy it because other people buy it. Your logic is flawless.
The value of anything is only what people will trade you for it.
Tautology.
Ha ha... How do you spell 'relief'...? G-O-L-D B-U-L-L-I-O-N
When is the Fed going to shut down, so that honest money can be restored?
well just sitting and wishing is what they want.. you aint going to get them to do anything.. funny how bitcoin has got all the bankers on notice but gold nutters they have in their back pocket?? Gold will be nice this year (I put a pile back up in the 1200's) but nothing that scares TPTB
it might be because TPTB already have most of the gold no?
yup and those reports that they smack the price so it moves to where they want it aint no joke... china buying cheap while the west see it as dead money and the 'price' wont really fly up unless the dollar nosedives.. wish it was easy to just buy PMs and gain on the dollar but it is just protection against it.. rigged
.
Bitcoin is $510 you mental rejects.
OK fonestar, I might back up a wheelbarrow (not a truck, not even a pick-up), if btc goes under $400...please give exact, clear advice of where and how to keep them safe?
keep them in a few places.. some online wallets are actually safer than most people holding them in offline wallets..
also, buy a cheap laptop and only use it as a wallet that you never use to connect online.. you can stash your lion share in wallets on there.. and make a few.. no reason to stash all in one clump
WHat happens if the hard drive crashes on the laptop? Do I have to send my drive to a data recovery faciltiy and spend 20 grand to get my wallet back?
A encrypted paper wallet (or, if you are paranoid, an aluminum wallet) do not crash.
Just store it in some secure place and the key in some other secure place.
Maybe two copy of them in four secure places
A encrypted paper wallet (or, if you are paranoid, an aluminum wallet) do not crash.
Just store it in some secure place and the key in some other secure place.
Maybe two copy of them in four secure places
For basic security, put your bitcoins in an encrypted wallet (I recommend the Armory client) on a home computer, then immediately do one (or both) of these:
(1) Store the encrypted wallet file in the cloud.
(2) Store a paper print out of your private keys (or wallet seed) in a lockbox, and store it somewhere you trust/bury it in the backyard.
Either of those will allow you to reclaim your coins if the worst happens to your computer.
For maximum security for the truly paranoid, put the encrypted wallet on an encrypted drive of a computer you use only for Bitcoin, preferably running an OS less squishy than Windows. If you're more of the buy-and-hold-till-I'm-rich type, print out the keys as above and just delete the digital wallet entirely; now you're unhackable.
No. BTC is the promise of $510 in some exchange. Once the exchange defaults, it is nothing.
You're assuming counterparty risk and don't even know it.
You can exchange bitcoins with anyone, anywhere. Exchanges are not the gatekeepers. They are just convenient and we are used to them. localbitcoins.com
OK, I admit I have no clue as to what bitcoin really is. But it's been hyped as some sort of decentralized, non-authoritarian currency with its own rules of creation. But why should 6 or 8 or a dozen CORPORATIONS have control of this currency? Now one of them is embroiled in scandal and bankruptcy. Seems to me that, as with any money creation scheme, whether fiat money printed by governments, or central banks or fractional reserve money craetion, the only winneres are those with the privilege to create the money.
No, no, no, they don't have control of nuthin, cuz if they did, they might be liable for losses, ...
So the digital currency that was outside the financial system had counter party risk. Oh the irony.
Wrong ... the currency has no counter party. When you choose to leave your amount of currency in some else's hands, you have chosen to introduce a counter party. In this case an untrustworthy exchange.
Better to keep your digital currency in a paper wallet or bain wallet. IE. Offline and unhackable.
The Bitcoins and/or fiat funds sent to an exchange are under their control. The same should be true for a fully allocated Gold exchange so that those purchasing gold can take immediate delivery. In the current case the exchange closed up shop without saying a word. They have $3,000 of my money -- that was the most I felt comfortable risking with them at any one time and that risk has turned sour. Actually, it is about the amount of profit I've made over time arbitraging them against other exchanges.
If you give your gold to a company for safe-keeping, and the people running that company are crooks or incompetent (or both) and your gold is stolen, does that point to a problem with gold itself, or does it simply mean that you made a poor choice?
Your analogy is invalid. BTC does not exist in the real world. Gold does. End of story.
Does math "exist"? Does language "exist"? They are not physical things that can be touched, but they certainly have utility, wouldn't you agree?
Bitcoin is just a digital public ledger; it cannot be touched, but it has a utility all it's own.
the faggotry that's bitcoin,
in all its machinations,
will never match,
will never catch,
the mighty Wealth of Nations
JP Humpherdink (c)2014 All Rights Reserved
If you really mock the anosity , the imbecilia, the moronia, of everyone who pimped and pumped bitcon, vote for the little ditty above this.
Make it like a sharp stick in the eye of the bitiots.
Think about it, if we can engender a few embolisms, there's fewer anii in the world. Drop in the bucket, yes, but it's a start.
June 2011: "$30 to $2! I bet you're shitting your pants now!"
May 2013: "$230 to $90! I bet you're shitting your pants now!"
February 2014: "$800 to $500! I bet you're shitting your pants now!"
Yep, you got me. When it crashes from $10,000 to $5,000, I'm sure I'll be shitting my pants then too.
When you try to convert your intangible currency into tangible currency is when you well may "shit your pants".
Already have done so and find it to be an enjoyable process. Why wouldn't I?
I suggest a new coin
MtGoxFuckedMeInTheAssCoin
If that happened in the traditional financial system, the central banks had to print trillions and the taxpayer had to bail them out, otherwise the traditional financial system would totally crash.
But don't worry, no bitcoins were stolen, closed for remodeling, ...
Bitcoin owners are wailing and gnashing their teeth...
WAAAAAAAAAA!
LMAO!
Thye deserve everything they get... morons.
bitcon math
2+2 = 0
I got a million of 'em
So was Mt. Gox the only exchange whose block-chains got frozen up? The other BTC sites are operable? Just asking.
looks like they had a bug that made possible to hackers to deposit coins, then withdrawn them and make it look like it were not withdrawn. Rinse, repeat.
they were actually withdrawing others people coins, as, like everybody knows, you can't simply create new coins.
Shhhh! I'm mining bitcoins on a chain of computers I zombified with malware spread by email attachment.
Some of us have to work for a living, and I'm going to mine and spend as many of the bitcoins at the dwindling repository of places that accept them while the getting's good!
That new Mt. Gox logo is pretty funny.
Is it a herd of sheep or a flock of sheep , that's the question?!
You most react with the news like sheep.
Trolling..... (music)
Who think about buy and hold anything is stupid...
Its called trading, you buy low and sell high, its a discount machine.
Sight... I bought back with free money made from previous buy/sold.
Sure you did. You're a regular Warren Fucking Buffett.
What no useless comment from BONESTAR? Must be crying in his beer which he just bought with the last of his foodstamps. Sounds like the rest of them know what consumer confidence has to do with running a successful business. Let's see $20,000,000 Lost and 744K coins do you think people with a brain (BONESTA
MF Global account holders lost what, a billion or so?
If someone else is involved, you have counteryparty risk. If you have an "account" somewhere, you have counterparty risk.
By the way he writes, I would suspect he's not old enough to cry in his beer.
This situation is a great learning experience for when the Bank of Japan "implodes"...I'm sure Abe & Co. will cut communications when they lose control of the bond market and yen.
Yes, bitcoin is conceptually cool - but this shows you the market price is not justified given the inherent systemic risks involved.
I think we may see double or even single digits (USD) for bitcoins if it is true they have been robbed of 744K bitcoins over an extended period of time via the malleability 'function' which was never meant to be used as a receipt of payment.
Looks like Black Tuesday tomorrow may be in the cards.
Hey, I remember the days when in late 90's Ultima Online (the mother of Mass Multiplayer games) was gathering popularity.
Virtual currency, virtual lands, virtual properties. A plot of land big enough to fit entirely on your low resolution screen could easily go for $1000. A rare sword or piece of armor could fetch just as much.
Then Everquest came and went, briefly spurring a trading frenzy.
Then World Of Warcraft came with it's virtual gold-miners located in Chinese, Indonesian and African prisons.
By the time BitCoin arrived at the scene we've already went through many forms of virtual valuables - all unique in their own way, all limited in quantity, but united in their total lack of any intrinsic value.
BitCoin is the first game currency without an actual game. So what? It comes and goes like all the other bits before it.
Yes, bitcoin is a multiplayer computer game.
Reminds me of old days of door games on BBS's that had bugs that could be exploited so you can buy uber goods to blast your enemies.
Except in this case people exchanged cold hard fiat for these coins. Trust is gone. Even for exchanges that had any shred of credibility, I can't say I would ever trust any bitcoin exchange. I'd rather buy AAPL options and penny stocks before handing over money to these bandits.
"By the time BitCoin arrived at the scene we've already went through many forms of virtual valuables - all unique in their own way, all limited in quantity, but united in their total lack of any intrinsic value."
1. UO/EQ/WoW gold is "limited in quantity"?
2. Nothing has "instrinsic value". Value exists in the minds of people based on expected utility.
3. Game currencies have entertainment utility, but only while the game lasts. Bitcoin is not tied to any particular product and has utility in transferring money quickly and cheaply around the world with no intermediates.
"I think we may see double or even single digits"
The fall of one exchange and associated scandal, while certainly bad news, does not implicate the entire Bitcoin system in any way. No way does it get down to the double digits or lower.
BitTulips right here! Come right up, don't be shy! BitTulips! Buy a dozen or two. Cost just shy of an ounce of gold - what a bargain! Buy yours before they're gone, gone, gone! Each virtual tulip is believed to crafted by Nostradamus himself and verified by Gandhi's mother's sister's cousin's brother's dentist's ex-boyfried's dog!
Not a real tulip, obviously! Sheesh! Else they'd be worthless.
Haha. Can't wait to see how people spending $465 for fake coins spin this one.
Wise man say, "Never let your tech personel drink sake."
Good ridence Mr. and Mrs. Gox.
Big banks to replace Mt Gox??????
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/25/business/apparent-theft-at-mt-gox-shak...
Sounds "decentralized" and "anonymous" to me!
If they accept fiat and give out BTC, is good enough.
Then you wash them in a tumbler and you are free to use them as you wish
The ability to be anonymous does not imply a requirement to be anonymous.
The ability to centralize your holdings of thing (gold, bitcoin, etc.) does not imply a requirement to centralize.
No-one will weep for cyber-speculators and giddy idiots who donated their money to an unregulated, untraceable, unaccountable vault run by strangers.
For private miners this is great news. A low price keeps many others off. This way the mining equipment can run longer than anticipated.
Yeah totally! Miners love it when the price of the commodity they are mining drops... You must be a business advisor right??
Read the post again, from an establsihed miners perspective who has already covered the costs of the hardware, the lower price could deter competition. O f course, that doesn't alter the fact that bitcoin is by the thieves and for the thieves. And there is no honor among thieves. Where is that MtGox guy and all those bitcoins now?
PMs Bitchez! LOL.
When goodwill goes so does the dream!
No coins in the coinGox, sad.
BitConned.
still cant figure out which price is right?
http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/currency/USD.html
a currency with 13 different price tags in USD??
wtf??
Then don't even wander over and check out the quoted prices by individual sellers on localbitcoins.com
They are 13 currencies. Once you visualize each exchange is a bank and BTC is a debt security with shared counterparties, everything falls into place.
Since the counterparties are shared, it is always in their advantage to default first, before the others do. MtGox was the smart one.
This should be bullish for bitcoin, no? With less exchanges the market should be that illiquid that the price of bitcoin should now find no problem rising to the $700,000 mark that the sages, like Max Keiser, were saying it should go to.
I am no expert on BTC, but consider the possibility it was sabotaged by banksters.
They have enough trouble with PMs. Sending a torpedo towards SS BTC may have been their move.
Mt Gox is just the first to fall. They will all be penetrated. I can't believe people keep falling for the "this new thing is unhackable" baloney. If it is made by men and on the internet, it is getting hacked.
A fool and his money are soon parted.
Man, what a pissing match.
Litecoin value has dropped 40% in the past two weeks.
Guess I better use those fancy video cards for playing Battlefield 4 and Photoshop editing.
BTW - if the miners keep on mining it's bullish for AMD whose video chips and associated cards demand a 30%-40% premium over NVIDIA. Of course for those not mining it's bullish for NVIDIA because they have a price advantage for PC Gamers, but that is a declining market.
With Dogecoin and now FlappyCoin (based on recent news of a game pulled from the ios app store causing controversy), is it possible that the future for altcoins is to ride the latest internet meme and milk all the sheep that pile into it? Go back a few years and imagine if someone had created a GangnamCoin. Adopt early, pump, dump, rinse, repeat.
According to this report dodgecoin was mined illegally by using a Harvard supercomputer. Consequences will follow.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/student-secretly-used-harvards-su...
"Thank you, come again"
Satoshi Nakamoto
Hitler gets Mt.Goxxed
Leaked Mt Gox document: "Crisis Strategy Draft"
http://www.scribd.com/doc/209050732/MtGox-Situation-Crisis-Strategy-Draft
hmmm pump & dump again...
""At this point 744,408 BTC are missing due to malleability-related theft which went unnoticed for several years. The cold storage has been wiped out due to a leak in the hot wallet""
nice -
750,000 BTC equals about $375 million at today’s exchange rate....somebodys getting a new beach house today
http://mattvukas.com/2014/02/24/breaking-mt-gox-dead-long-live-mt-gox/
Certainly not any of the SUCKERS that bought into the PONZI scheme. Give me all your money and I will give you BScoin that keeps going up in value but don't ever ask me for a cash out. LOL Bernie Maddof is alive and well. I am sure he is in his jail cell wishing he could start a BScoin exchange. Step right up!
Each trade results in a Bitcoin being sent from the currency counter in red to the country on the map. The value in BTC is listed in green and plotted across the map. The last exchange rate for each currency is listed in @purple and updated for each trade.
http://fiatleak.com/
A new one born every second.
It's all an "act"
The buttcon-tards have been completely fooled.
Where is the article at the top? All I see is comments...
btw this is the second thread today I've seen with no OP/article.
My virtual boat sank and all my BTC went with it!
So if all the exchanges are frauds, where does fonesex purchase his notional bitcoins?
Or trade them for real fiat currency? AKA "cash out".
Well, that's the real trick isn't it, that cashing out thing. Too funny!!!!
you can still sell bitcoing @ 538 here?
https://coin.mx/?affiliate893
or is that a "clutchatstrawcoin" site?
Time for dip-buying. I do not trust bitcoin as a store of value. But in a market dominated by inexperienced speculators with news like this people can panic and dump markets. So a bit of speculation could give a big reward for just a bit of risk.
So I set up a limit order to buy over 50,000 bitcoin at another exchange.
Seriously. If somebody is willing to sell me bitcoin at a rate of about 8,000 bitcoin/USD, I will buy and take the risk that bitcoin goes to zero. If the price goes back up to USD 1,200/bitcoin I will have made a 60 million profit from an investment of about USD 6.
Who knows? I could get lucky that somebody panics and dumps a large amount of bitcoin at market on this exchange. These bitcoin exchanges are so primitive; most of them do not even have circuit-breakers.
sorry, wrong subthread.
+1 for thinking like a King tho. perhaps BTC is a sovereign currency after all?
Good luck with that. How does that Hotel California song go again?
Why do I get this feeling that this bitcoin community is nothing more then a commission or council like the 5 mafia families? Mt Gox was just offed.
+1, The Kraken is the tell? ;~)
The following industry leaders stand by this statement: Fred Ehrsam — Co-founder of Coinbase Jesse Powell — CEO of Kraken Nejc Kodric — CEO of Bitstamp.net Bobby Lee — CEO of BTC China Nicolas Cary — CEO of Blockchain.info Jeremy Allaire — CEO of Circle
lots of 3 letter acronyms coming from a community that supposedly is acting as a countermeasure to 3 letter acronyms.
the space was getting crowded it seems.
Remember... this has always been a poorly coded, mickey mouse little trading card exchange, which was then purchased and ran by a guy with very little experience in anything..
That little mickey mouse guy seems to have pulled off a scam that has netted he, and his henchmen, millions.........if they are able to promptly cash out, that is.
Coinbase giving out morality lessons, wonders never cease. Conbase and the NSA together forever.
shocking, who could have seen this coming.
morons
Like many, I don't fully get this whole Bitcoin and can't say whether it thrives or fizzles. Not my fight I guess. I suppose it makes sense if you can mine and make profit for doing so. Otherwise, what makes this better than gold or diamonds or (shocking) the USD?