Bitcoin Forum

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/i4xgc/follow_the_money_trail_part_2_1500btc_generated/ (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/i4xgc/follow_the_money_trail_part_2_1500btc_generated/)

NOW things are getting interesting. 

Even more evidence that this is gonna end in a bank run when mtgox reopens and the price of btc plummets to nothing, sadly.

So.. if mtgox moves 432,000 BTC around, that proves that he has control of them, sure.  But how does that restore any confidence in his banking website, which is repeatedly shown to be vulnerable in terms of security?

who cares, just withdraw as fast as you can, and you'll be fine.

Another possible explanation for this:

Many of us suspect that MtGox is short some bitcoin as a result of the hack.  Between the start of the hack/abnormal trading and closing his doors, at least some BTC were allowed to be withdrawn.  There is no guarantee he will get them back.  Until his accounts are whole, he is effectively practicing fractional reserve banking: a funny irony given the ideological underpinnings of Bitcoin.

Who holds those ancient bitcoins?  Probably some old guard.  Think of them as being kept in reserve for a catastrophe.  This is somewhat of a catastrophe.  I could easily see Mark calling in a favor from "Satoshi" or friends to make up the shortfall.  There's your 1,500 BTC.

Edit: fixed amount

If MtGox has indeed lost control to their BTC deposit, it'll be impossible to withdraw any BTC, or possibly the first few withdraws might be successful if MtGox pays out of their own pocket (which is pretty deep considering they were making $30k worth of BTC per day). So I guess your advice is correct, withdraw as fast as you could and don't get left behind  ;D

Sounds like doing this would take 1 min and could boost morale 1,000 fold.

hmm: April 2009 , isn't that the very begining of bitcoins ? like the 1st month or so ?

There is one more plausible explanation that the author hasn't considered:

mtgox regularly moves coins from ancient mining addresses to newer ones.

Saw this comment:

This seems much more likely.  I believe mtgox still controls the 400k+ btc.  Mtgox could prove to everyone he owns the wallet by announcing an address and a time in the future and sending all the coins to the new address at a that time.

I didnt get it. Where ist the link/trail between the 400k+ btc and Mtgox? Did Mtgox ever claimed, the addresses belong to Mtgox? Why couldnt the 400k+ btc just belong to anyone without link to Mtgox?

So, is it all just wild speculation based on some chronological coincidence or are there any facts that backup those theories? Mybe I missed something....

Trolls, trolls, trolls. Run. Hide your children, trolls.

MtGOX WILL NOT NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS!

Adam from MtGox confirmed on the Bitcoin Show that that was their wallet.

Question: when market opens should I sell BTCs for low?
 or just withdraw the BTCs?

the most important thing in all of this is in the first comment to the reddit post:

~useful_idiot

really - that is so clear...

Depends on your trust issues,

A. you lost trust in bitcoin itself ---> sell the bitcoins
B. you lost trust in mtgox ---> withdraw the bitcoins

I think it's best to just withdraw the coins and sell somewhere else like at tradehill. MtGox dwolla withdrawals are notoriously unreliable and slow even before all this.

If some hacker guy has got the coins he might want to cash a lot of them out.  I still trust the bitcoin but there is a significant downside risk in the short term.

Ostrich, Ostrich, bury your head in the sand, Ostrich, nothing is wrong lalalala.

Seems to me that MtGox still controls the balance, because the 432k BTC transferred on 6-19 were already consolidated on 6-12.  Either MtGox lost control on 6-12 (no evidence of that) or they still control it now.

It also doesn't seem that an attacker was able to withdraw any significant sum during the attack.  Looking at the bitcoinmonitor screenshot (http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=19646.msg246373#msg246373), the second-largest transaction was for ~10k BTC.  And inspecting the transaction for 10,020 BTC in block 131886 (http://blockexplorer.com/b/131886), we can see that those 10k BTC eventually make it into one of the 50k BTC addresses into which the 432k is split up.

More evidence that MtGox still controls the BTC.


What does remain unexplained is how ~500k BTC were sold on the books.  That all ~500k sold were owned by one account whose password was cracked doesn't seem likely, primarily because ~500k appears to be more than the total sum of deposits MtGox controls (~432k + 10k and a bit more). 

The numbers don't back the explanation that it was a sell-off of one compromised account.  Possibly it was a sell-off of every account using their hashed passwords.  There was probably some bug/exploit in the order book system in addition to the leaked account table.

Anyone think Satoshi may have hacked Mt Gox to decentralize the coins they were hoarding?


and this is a separate consideration...


Doesn't it seem a bit fishy if Mt Gox (Mark) had 30 accounts with 50 bitcoins in each account from April 2009, and also started an exchange, then all this happens?

This suggestion is outside the sanity envelope.


It's weird... really very weird. Goes back to your first point I guess.  How many people owned bitcoins in April 2009?  Satoshi and how many others?  Not many I guess. 

I can't wait for the movie of this shit.

Who will play the role of Mark?

Well, now I do!  ;D

Sadly? onesalt, since when you've turned pro-bitcoin?