Bitcoin Forum

"Bitcoin transactions are subject to a design issue that has been largely ignored, while known to at least a part of the Bitcoin core developers and mentioned on the BitcoinTalk forums. This defect, known as "transaction malleability" makes it possible for a third party to alter the hash of any freshly issued transaction without invalidating the signature, hence resulting in a similar transaction under a different hash. Of course only one of the two transactions can be validated. However, if the party who altered the transaction is fast enough, for example with a direct connection to different mining pools, or has even a small amount of mining power, it can easily cause the transaction hash alteration to be committed to the blockchain."

excuses, excuses, excuses....

lets discuss what going on here.

is this new? is this valid? is this a good excuse?

will this scare investors?

I think many might misunderstand this as compromising the security of transactions which is not happening.
The question is how many realize this may be a good buying opportunity if panic spreads.

look here:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_Malleability

Ive heard that this problem is nothing new. It seems like the news serves two purposes, to reject responsibility of peoples coins, and it has been engineered to cause the latest crash.

this will be an important capitulation for many large players.

So sad that the currency is so young and the news is already terribly manipulated.

Probably worth reposting this here too. Apparently this was from Jeff Garzik from a few days ago: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x93tf/some_irc_chatter_about_what_is_going_on_at_mtgox/cf99yac

and I am here got hard time thinking about kind of time stamper to order precedence ruler .. at low transistor level

Is this the official excuse?  Utter bullshit.   Gox doesn't have sufficient bitcoins to cover their clients accounts.  The Japanese authorities need to shut down this operation immediately and call in some trusted liquidators.  The longer this is allowed to go on the worse it is going to be for everyone.

This sounds like complete bullshit and it is like scaring off investors is exactly what they are trying to do.


I can't believe mt.gox would make such a wild claim as saying fundamentally all crypto-currencies are bugged.  Saying exchanges shouldn't be trusted is really ironic here as well, meanwhile they continue to have nothing to back up their claim.

I'm a bag holder from much higher prices and all this resent bullshit from gox just isn't fair, everyone in this market is completely full of shit

This fall has been due, if this really is it, so far the volume is very small. we will see a lot more volume tonight, where will it take us, 550? 500? 380?

It's already past $550, we've dropped over $100 in 15 minutes

About time my first music here ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWTLUmUjo8A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpbbuaIA3Ds

since we are talking pink floyd....

You got to love Mark Karpeles.

Here's a man who doesn't mind taking the entire world (well: btc world) with him on the way down, as long as it buys him an extra day or two of breathing room.

Sometimes I think E.Mucus is right: bitcoiners are among the most psychopathic creatures on earth.

(I don't really agree. But we have our fair share of psychos, i'll say that much.)

This is a calculated move from Gox to try to drop the price of bitcoin and allow them to buy back to cover their bitcoin obligations.  I strongly believe that they are trading whilst insolvent.  The sad thing is this might actually work - Assholes. 

Yep thinking about time ( and Floyd inspirations lol )

about time, matching order system, cleaning house ... you know all those stuff ...

just reading more about

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_(exchange) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_(exchange))

and to be honest in my own research about ...

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6559308/how-does-lmaxs-disruptor-pattern-work

compared to thread management, deadlock, bla bla  etc ...

F*ck the, huge price drop. -_-

lol, I had orders to go at 350, i thought, better remove then incase they get filled during disaster. bounces back to 580.... doh!

and done. +60 btc as a result of karpeles asshattery. not sure if I should hate or love the guy :/

So those selling on MtGox... how do then intend to get their fiat out?

You should love those guys. :D
Right now it's so easy to make lots of money within seconds.

So what does this flaw mean? Are transactions in Bitcoin not secure anymore?


They can rather sue MtGox for their Fiat, but not their btc.

I've said it already in another thread: the USD premium came about because goxtarders believed coins were the "safer" option. Then coin withdrawal delay started, and it became clear being in btc doesn't help either. Hence: uncertainty. Hence: panic. Hence: irrational market activity, so in short: your question is based on a wrong premise ("isn't it irrational to sell now?"). Answer is: yes, but there's no alternative to this type of irrational behavior right now (if you were dumb enough to stay on gox after month and month of bad news about them)

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1xieb9/keep_calm_transaction_malleability_is_not_double/

The tl;dr for todays viewers is: mtgox' sloppy implementation of transfers is blamed on the Bitcoin protocol as a whole, taking the entire market down in the process, for their own personal gains.

Mt. Gox Blames Bitcoin – Core Developer Greg Maxwell Responds

http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2014/02/10/mt-gox-blames-bitcoin-core-developer-greg-maxwell-responds/

Yes, but isn't it joyful to see community members that understand the situation working hard to educate others?

Bitcoin isn't broken, Mt.Gox just didn't understand txids and are blaming Bitcoin itself for their misunderstanding.  This is no different to various novice tinkerers that lose bitcoins because they don't understand change addresses or first-bits and start blaming Bitcoin itself.

fiat withdrawals have not been affected. Just do a withdrawal.

Crash in 2011, something to do with MtGox.
Crash in 2013, something to do with MtGox.
Crash last night, something to do with MtGox.
MtGox just like SR in a way it represents negative image about the network. It need to disappear!

I'll be shocked if they give back people's money at this point. They know they are going under once they allow withdrawals. What would prevent them from just taking everyone's stash and disappearing? I doubt we can rely on the kindness of their hearts. 

I wake up today to $100 prices in btc-e and gox diverting blame to the bitcoin protocol itself. That word you used is scary but apt to be true. It is the only explanation for such an absurd excuse. Its like those movies where the bad guy tries to take everyone out with himself included.

Question: Where is all the profits Gox accumulated in the past year? Surely they have enough money to pay people back.

why is this topic even discussed here, how stupid are you?

who me? this is important to speculators.....

All of you, uh and everything is "important to speculators", and there is some tolerance to this practise, but...
The stupidity is more debating a technical subject with and along with non-technical minded people. This is partly mtgox's fault for the way they published the issue, we're all adults here, or at least pretend so...

what are you on about?
the way they published it is all part of the subject, we are studying sentiment, manipulation, fundamentals, etc......
this is what they said.... that is a fact, and it is important.

I agree with you. All external factors that might affect price is part of speculation.

Gavin Andresen    Feb 10 2014

The issues that Mt. Gox has been experiencing are due to an unfortunate interaction between Mt. Gox’s implementation of their highly customized wallet software, their customer support procedures, and their unpreparedness for transaction malleability, a technical detail that allows changes to the way transactions are identified.

Transaction malleability has been known about since 2011. In simplest of terms, it is a small window where transaction ID’s can be “renamed” before being confirmed in the blockchain. This is something that cannot be corrected overnight. Therefore, any company dealing with Bitcoin transactions and have coded their own wallet software should responsibly prepare for this possibility and include in their software a way to validate transaction ID’s. Otherwise, it can result in Bitcoin loss and headache for everyone involved.

The Bitcoin core development team has worked to limit transaction malleability. There is broad agreement in the community that this needs to be eliminated. Finding the best and most responsible solution will take time. In the meantime, users of the reference implementation do not need to be concerned. Transactions are always tracked properly by the Bitcoin-Qt/bitcoind software.

This is a good reminder that Bitcoin is still young and experimental. There are best practices to think about and account for by those who want to build companies. To help improve both the reference implementation and third party software, the Foundation is committed to working with companies to produce best practices to help improve software.

---------------------------------

It would be interesting to find out if other exchanges' wallets could be affected by this vulnerability.
Maybe others didn't wait for the core developers to correct it, like MtGox did, and implemented it correctly. Or maybe not?