Bitcoin Forum

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Let's say it is discovered that this wallet contains stolen bitcoins from several forum users. How could they retrieve the coins? Is it ethical to put a freeze on the coins at exchanges, if this were possible?

Perhaps the best course of action would be to try to steal the wallet back, vigilante style, then return the coins to their rightful owners according to the block chain. Less some bounty of course.

what reason could they have to bundle it in one address?
unless it's a Mt.Gox address, but why have 400k there?

That address has been discussed several times now. It belongs to mtgox.

Thats a lot of BTC waiting to be sold. I wonder how much USD Mt.Gox is holding.

why not split up the wallet?  Having all those chickens in 1 basket is not a good thing

Do you typically store chickens in baskets? :P

If you don't want regulation in a currency don't expect to be able to do anything about it when something you don't like happens. It's bad it does but whining about it when it's a central, built in part of the currency is just fucking pathetic.

You have a nifty ability of reading stuff that isn't there. I don't see him say he does or does not want regulation (at least in this post). I don't see him whine about anything (again, in this particular post). He asks a few questions and suggests a possible solution to theft. Are you off your meds?

all eggs in 1 basket is too cliche, I like to use chickens in a basket

here are some of the other threads
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15984.msg209464#msg209464 (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15984.msg209464#msg209464)
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15998.msg209561#msg209561 (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15998.msg209561#msg209561)

no money sent from that address yet.
That's a large chunk that MtGox can keep without having to use to fulfill the orders of people buying BTC. Is there something I'm not understanding?

I assume a lot of people leave a fair number of bitcoins on Mt.Gox so that they can decide to sell without waiting an hour for the bitcoins to confirm after sending them.

The chickens are inside the eggs.

If I were running MtGox, I would be absolutely terrified that a breach in security, whether from external (hackers) or internal (employee) would be able to bankrupt the entire operation (and screw all of my customers). MtGox must maintain some amount of BTC online to meet daily withdrawal demand, but over time, it should be reasonably predictable how much is needed to satisfy this. Any BTC above that amount should be in the securest storage possible (encrypted, offline, multiple man redundancy to access.)

Why put them all in one address? Why not?  Sometimes rather than not putting all your eggs in one basket, it's more important to put them all in one basket and WATCH THAT BASKET.

That wallet could also be their profit wallet. Mt Gox is probably fairly profitable. Granted their profits are all in BTC.

They can't have possibly generated that level of profit yet.

432,000 / .0065 = 66M BTC

Even at a generous average of 50,000 BTC per day traded, it would take over 1300 days to generate that much volume.

If you leave your eggs in a basket for a while, and nothing bad happens to them, you get a basket full of chickens.

They can't have possibly generated that level of profit yet.

432,000 / .0065 = 66M BTC

Even at a generous average of 50,000 BTC per day traded, it would take over 1300 days to generate that much volume.
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That's a valid point. So maybe they are hoarding coin and have figured out how much they need to operate? Still, no withdraws is odd.

All time total volume in BTC on MtGox is ~6.5M BTC to date.

That's the backup wallet where they keep most of their funds.  They don't need them for payouts, and they don't want hackers to get at that amount if their server is hacked.  The wallet with that address probably isn't even on a computer, it's more likely printed out on paper and in a safe deposit box somewhere.

If I were MtGox proprietor I would fake a price spike, sell all 400k coins for whatever I could actually get for them and retire.

432k at around 30usd per coin is almost $1.3mil. Not bad

EDIT: 13mil :)

you mean 12 million.  ;)

lol yup. :)

what if the mtgox owner steals the money himself and claims it to be stolen by some unknown hackers? we could not distinguish, which of the two stories did happen, could we?

It would destroy peoples confidence in bitcoins and the market price would plummet so effectively be worthless. Besides, he's is already making a truck load off transaction fees.

and yet the sheeple still continue to pile all their money into one exchange. i swear it is going to be our own stupidity and love for huddling together in one spot that kills this project. hopefully by the time the next decentralized currency comes out people will have evolved enough to realize why one exchange with 90% of the currency is RETARDED!! haha, maybe our collective subconscious knows decentralized currency is for some reason fundamentally unwise and so we are sabotaging ourselves.. cmon people, do whats smart, not necessarily what everyone else is doing. if bitcoin teaches you nothing else, please let it be this - DECENTRALIZE! lol, i don't even know why i try anymore...

I understand where you are coming from, but people have a tendency to "follow the herd." It also has to do with the fact that mtgox was the first major bitcoin exchange and has built for itself a good reputation, and it is this reputation that ensures a constant inflow of new clients. Good for them I say! But I do hope that some of the other smaller exchanges prove their trustworthiness and that eventually we'd have some reasonable market share distribution.  Worry not when there is money to be made new entrepreneurs will step on the scene and attempt to take a bit out of mtgox's pie.