Bitcoin Forum

Look what they say! ZOMG

https://mtgox.com/press_release_20130412.html

This claim can be recognized as promising of further high returns.

http://www.sec.gov/answers/ponzi.htm

Bitcoin missed only one sign of financial pyramid: promises of high returns. And here is it! Congrats gox, well done.

Are exchanges even allowed to say things like that?

Those guys are jokes. It's not their job to speculate on the value, just offer the best service possible.

Seems u r right but ur opinion is quite biased. U've sold ALL coins if I remember correctly, haven't u?

yeah, i noticed that too. so mtgox speculate over bitcoin price. very unprofessional.

Lucif,

I don't see where they PROMISE anything in terms of returns.

You need to get your facts straight.

I agree they shouldn't be speculating on the price in lieu of their customers but claiming something is a ponzi without showing 100% that by definition it matches makes you look retarded.

 :D :D :D

someone needs to delete this post... it is a bald assertion that is false to anyone's knowledge.

i understand we all hate mt gox but accusations like this are serious, and crying wolf on legitimate business just helps real ponzis battle rumors.

I see the quotation 'will rise again' to be more of the biblical type, meaning that it will not die.

As far as I am concerned, when you spell "bitcoin" with the first letter capitalized, you are talking about the currency, the network and community as a whole, not the unit itself, so I would interpret their statement to mean" Bitcoin will not die because of this." But, yeah, it can be misleading.

Even if  it is the other case, Gox may just tried to be Captain obvious, not Charles Ponzi. Suppose the bitcoin price does not rise again, there are only two remaining scenarios, it goes straight down or flatline, either way Gox can't make money anymore and has to close, so obviously they have to believe the price will rise again. ;)

Actually this is bad press release. Assertion is secondary.

It is, but if you read the statement carefully, you can see many mistakes made. They capitalize the initials of the phrase "panic sell", and use "temporarily" in place where they should use "temporary", I suspect that whoever put that down could be in serious hangover after all that happened that day.

Since it's just one single instance I will give them the benefit of doubt, if I see the same thing to happen another 2 or 3 times, I may raise my level of suspicion.

We are confident ... that Bitcoin  will rise again. Nuff said.

You actually use mt gox still ? huh

Their main source of income is not depending on higher prices directly, but price attracts interest which leads to more trades with them.

Price recovering would also be an indicator that the market didn't got scared because of the DDos and if that was their belief at the time such statement makes sense.

However DDossing has happend two times since and Gox have babied the price afterwards each time with their cool down periods. If this ever goes to a court of law they have to proof that they never had any agreement with the DDosser as their efforts to recover trust and get people buying again two times more have led to yet another attack.

That's not true. It's not their "job" to do anything. Their goal might be to make money.

It's the responsibility of the customer to take his business elsewhere if he doesn't like the show any more.

I really don't understand how MtGox is still the default exchange. What with all you highly skilled technical enthusiasts devoting so much time an energy to the bitcoin experiment. Oh, wait, that would be actual work and not just a circlejerk. My bad.

When I say that Phoenix will rise from dust, does it mean it will be traded on higher price?

Please, distinguish between Bitcoin and its price. And do not take MtGox English too seriously.

If you sell Phoenix and take money for it, and say it will rise - it is clear Ponzi with all such conditions.

If you don't sell Phoenix and tell it will rise - it's not a Ponzi. Feel the difference?

Sounds like Gox knew they'd be blamed for the crash and tried to talk an angry mob down a bit.

That statement does look like investment advice.

It would be better to keep these things separate from statements by the exchange. Keeping the mania alive is very much in Gox' interest and a naïve person might go by it.

This sentence had me laughing... "Even as we speak, we are still being attacked by a yet-unknown group of people who clearly have intent to hurt MtGox and Bitcoin as a whole." [translated to English]

I've talked to a few people about making a exchange, apart from the fact that it is difficult to do right the biggest issue I run into is getting USD into such a system.

I live in Australia so obviously I would host the system in the USA or Europe, with the cold wallet stored in Australia. But how do I get USD? I would have to open a USA bank account, and then If I want to accept bank deposits I have to follow the law and verify all the customers and have mechanisms to withdraw and deposit in hundreds of countries. It just seems like a lot of hassle of handling that part, the moving USD in and out.

The exchange is a technical problem that I wouldn't mind dealing with. but the USD is a business problem far out of my capabilities.

FinCen defines the rules of dealing with Bitcoin as a money exchanger. Being in Australia won't give you less rules to apply to in dealing with money transfers, more so if you intend to deal in foreign currencies i.e. USD.

I would imagine that Gox Japan right now are moving on from voluntary collecting all personal info to verify accounts, to applying for a FinCen certificate of compliance.

It gets a lot easier when you only have to accept vouchers. Loss of GoxUSD was a major blow to the parasitic grey market operators, and a major blow to Bitcoin-related USD usability. I'd imagine other exchanges will be following Gox's lead here with regards to FinCEN regulations. Getting fiat out of government control will always be a necessary goal, and removing the codes is a giant leap backward, even if I do suspect Gox engaged in FRB with it.

Idunno... Whatever happened to the sea platform The Pirate Bay was interested in buying....? Sealand. Surely we have plenty of multi-millionaire ultra-idealists in the community, now....

Don't blame Mt Gox for everything. They have just asserted what everybody of us expected anyway with a little bit market knowledge.
Even if some assertions of this type would be punished in some countries for registered stock market assets if they are done from their emitter by bitcoin wouldn't be the case.
It is nowhere an officially registered asset and even if it would be Mt Gox is not an emitter of bitcoin. Anybody may assert anything what he expects the bitcoin will be.
What is true that we have high expectations on Mt Gox and they don't correspond to it. But we don't have a better choice at the moment.

I have a feeling that everyone who hates Mt.Gox is using it a lot... cool down people, they've fucked up and they'll fuck up some more. But this is still an experiment as far as the devs are concerned.

Should've been called BitcoinBETA!

Except that mtgox are not a bitcoin organizer...

They are just giving their opinion. If this is a ponzi then everybody who has a blog and who comments on where the SP500 is heading is running a Ponzi.

Its a good thing Mt Gox does not represent bitcoin.

Does this concern anyone might give gov excuse it needs to announce an "official investigation on behalf of the public"

And that is exactly what I thought when I read the statement. They didn't say the PRICE will rise. They meant that the bitcoin as a currency will not halt it's existence.

OR

They meant to speculate but naive users like me would have faith that the means is what I've just said. If yes, they are laughing in our faces when we deliberately send them OUR money.

I don't know what to think  ???

Would that be unlawful, in Japan? (I'm guessing it would be, in the US, Europe.)

How does this turn Bitcoin into a ponzi?

"GOOG will go up."
"AMZN will go up."
"Oil futures will go up."

All would qualify as investment advice if coming from the mouth of anyone in a position of employment even remotely related to finance. So yeah, MtGox should definitely not have said that.

Topic starter has the logic of courtney love.

We'll know if Bitcoin is a Ponzi when the last miner is powered down and the last slice of pizza is eaten.

That would seem to indicate a basic lack of understanding of the bitcoin protocol.  If the miners shut down completely, there's nothing to confirm transactions. That doesn't make it a ponzi anymore than having computers store your bank account balance makes earning money at your job a ponzi.

I don't get this thread. I think everyone was confident that after a huge crash, Bitcoin would rise again.  how is that a promise of profit?  you still have to decide when to buy and when to sell.  People will still loose money from bad buy/sell decisions even if Mtgox says something like feeling confident Bitcoin will rise again after a crash.  Btw, that's like stating the sun will rise again tomorrow.. no big revelation.

April 3rd Mt Gox statement -- 'I understand that many of you have a lot at stake here, but remember that Bitcoin, despite being designed to have its value increase over time, will always be the victim of people trying to abuse the system, or even the value of Bitcoin decreasing occasionally. These are not new phenomena and have been present since the beginning of time when humans first started trading'.

Can you imagine a brokerage in the US being able to say that the underlying is 'designed to increase in value' or that it's value 'decreases occasionally'? They couldn't because it would be illegal.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=172944.msg1805765#msg1805765

April 3rd Mt Gox statement -- 'I understand that many of you have a lot at stake here, but remember that Bitcoin, despite being designed to have its value increase over time, will always be the victim of people trying to abuse the system, or even the value of Bitcoin decreasing occasionally. These are not new phenomena and have been present since the beginning of time when humans first started trading'.


..is anything in that statement speculation?  I don't think so.  I mean.. it does sound brazen.. but it is basically true.. with one big if.. if it is accepted by more and more people.

I said nothing about the bitcoin protocol. Having the miners cease their function is the only analog in Bitcoin to a Mr. Ponzi ceasing operations. I also don't have any reason to believe there is any probability that the Bitcoin network will cease for many years.

Bitcoin does not represent the assets of any enterprise. Currencies have their value pegged (at some point) by a soverign which Bitcoin doesn't have. Bitcoin is designed to float (which means rise to the top) amongst other currencies. That is axiomatic of the design of cryptocurrency, not merely a prediction.

The actual work is happening in a number of projects, including "buttercoin" that is a project that launched four days ago and has already built a working trading engine that is ridiculously fast (millions of transactions per second).

https://github.com/buttercoin/buttercoin

It's a fair question to ask: What have you done for bitcoin lately.

It is not fair however to assume that people haven't done anything, or that only those who have have a right to complain or an opinion.

Most service workers would have a different opinion of the consideration paid them by the wealthy.

I didn't know that people are counting suit sleeve buttons, I'm calling my Savile Row tailor and telling him to update my pattern to buttons all the way up!


While Tradehill charged a USD fee to both sides of a trade, mtgox earns both BTC and USD in fees. This put about 9000 BTC of fees last month into their wallet. You can make your own argument that this is like a stock broker being paid in the stock he is pumping, but as Bitcoin is a currency, it shows that they are putting confidence in Bitcoin's success and future value by accepting it for their trading service (unlike most traders here, who just want to extract the most USD from BTC). Would you rather have an exchange that doesn't trust BTC enough that they want all their fees paid in USD?

BTW, it did go back up after a crash (to other exchange's prices), which everyone besides mtgox could also predict.

What you are saying is completely irrelevant. If bitcoin was traded on a futures/forex firm's platform, it would be illegal for them to make this statement. Forex firms cannot make these types of statements. An exchange or brokerage house cannot make statements regarding future performance other than there are no guarantees and that past performance is not indicative of future results. A systematic managed forex fund is 'designed to go up in value', but if I stated this, I would be summarily shut down. If this isn't obvious to you, it tells me that you have little professional financial experience because this is a basic, cardinal rule.

Gox is unregulated. These statements, in addition to the bizarre pricing action on their exchange, make me question everything about Mt Gox. Were there ever DDoS issues?

This.  Not sure if the statement was intentional or just really bad writing but it should be changed.  Even if MtGox is speculating on the exchange rate internally it has nothing to do with the press release and they shouldn't be providing advice to (potential) clients.

MtGox needs to be acquired by some big boys...yesterday.

Mike, why would anyone buy them? They have nothing to offer an investor: No technical skills, no management skills, no operational excellence.

Just a brand and domain. If that's what you meant, well yes. Just redirect the domain to a real exchange built by pros, not amateurs

Market Power. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_power) Dominance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominance_(economics)). They are worth a lot.

Long-standing name recognition.  Public perception that MtGox price = bitcoin price (eroding fast, monetize it while it's still good).  Banking relationships.  Real-world security experience.  Willing customers with significant investment in Gox (e.g. bot operators).  Infrastructure that, although is broken, can probably be fixed.

Why does the exchange operator even concern himself with price... he shouldn't. Neither should he (in my mind) decide to halt trading in order to "cool down the market". He should concern himself with running the exchange smoothly and that's it, not try to influence market participants in any way.

Y'all just said "domain name and brand" a few different ways, as I said in my original message.

As for the "infrastructure", no it cannot be fixed it is much less than worthless. Their code is shit.

No, a smart investor would build on a completely new platform (a real trading engine, EMS/OMS) and just slap on the acquired brand.

"float" doesn't necessarily mean "float to the top" and limited supply is not a feature of cryptocurrency. It's a feature of most cryptocurrencies currently in existance.

Also, it was not a "design goal" of bitcoin to keep increasing in value. I'm sure satoshi had that hope, but it's not built into the system because "value" isn't built into the system. Scarcity is built-in, "value" is given by the users, not by technology.

It doesn't suit mtGox well to try to calm the panic by speculating on the price going up. It's just not their job and to do so is equally unprofessional as not getting help with fixing the engine or fixing it in time which might even have prevented the panic in the first place.

hey fucker, don't insult Courtney, k?

Calling Bitcoin itself a Ponzi because one exchange has made wildly irresponsible statements is idiotic.

This is definitely evidence, though, that supports staying the hell away from Gox.  This entity is clearly speculating with Bitcoin while purporting to be an exchange, an entity that should be neutral.  I suspect their service will continue to go down whenever it is convenient for them to do so, or when they can profit by exacerbating a panic.

People should seek alternatives to this bullshit site.

I absolutely understand your positions. I simply don't agree with them. That's my opinion. I am not a currency professional and neither are the folks at Mt Gox.

He's just pointing out where the media is getting it's slash pieces about bitcoin from:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_chicago/2013/04/bitcoin_is_a_ponzi_scheme_the_internet_currency_will_collapse.html

Gox speculating price will go up, while running an exchange kind of infers they will manipulate the price using their own exchange to make sure it does.

MtGox has a brand in the sense Enron has a brand. It is well known but it is not worth money.

LOL. Did you ever heard about freedom of speech? Why the hell exchanges can not say their opinion?

Because when one googles 'buy bitcoins' mtgox is the only exchange on page 1 without scrolling. It is that simple.