Bitcoin Forum

My first post here although I have been reading for months but recent events have spurred me on to 'put pen to paper'. So hi :)

Going on recent posts and hysteria from many posters who (and I may be wrong) seem like over excitable school girls I'm expecting the worse in any replies but nothing ventured nothing learned!

I have to hold my hand up and say I have 'coin at Mtgox, but I have it spread around elsewhere too, I personaly dont trust 'gox but then I dont trust any other exchange any more and on the plus side 'gox has up until now bounced back after the problems they have had and we all know exactly where to find them if we need to :) For balance I cant withdraw my money form any of the other exchanges that have locked down withdrawals either.

So my question, should we be thanking mtgox for alerting us of a potential problem and doing the right thing by stopping withdrawls and protecting our money or do people still believe its all mtgox's fault and things would have just been fine as they have been?

Speaking as a mature level headed adult who is comfortable with his investments in Bitcoin (and some other crypto's) my view is this mass hysteria, swearing and hatefull posts is doing the whole Bitcoin 'indusrty' nothing but harm if we want tor make the future of Bitcoin secure.

Tin hat on ;)

The issue was already known. The problem was with how Gox handled it causing everybody to panic thinking Bitcoin was fucked.

I think we have right to blame gox, they didn't handle the whole thing.

How could they of handled it better?

There is a chance I suppose that they are just using it as an excuse but lets say they arent, just for discusson, What should they have done?

I think their initial post may have been vague because they didnt want to allert everyone to the fact that there was a potential security problem. But then why did the people in the know rubbish their second statement with the reason they had closed the withdrwal lines?

It all seems a bit confused, dont the devs talk to the big exchanges?

They could have handled it better by implementing the protocol correctly in the first place. It's like complaining that Spanish is a flawed language because the fact that "embarazada" means pregnant and not "embarrassed" confuses you.

Just like the other exchangers who miraculously haven't experienced gox problems.

I'm pretty sure a node started spamming the network with transactions it had tweaked using the malleability issue after MtGOX released their news. After this some transactions I made were recast by someone else.

The person behind the second attack, where non-GOX transactions were affected, may not have been the person who caused the initial issues for MtGOX. Once other transactions started getting effected, exchanges had a reason to be concerned. The first person could have chosen a different exchange to attack, but if the attackers are the same person, hitting MtGOX first (the biggest), and then showing everyone else could be affected would be a great way to shake confidence.

As others have stated, the issue was known, and has been addressed by the dev's. Greg Maxwell, in particular, has stated that the "flaw" only is a problem to Gox because of them using a very custom implementation of the wallet that does not handle the problem correctly.

I've never used Gox, so I don't have a personal story one way or the other. But by observation, I'd have to say that they have been extremely sloppy over a long period of time. I'd like to jump on the "scam" bandwagon, just because they look scammy in this, but I think it's more likely incompetence and arrogance. Number one postion makes you the number one target, and they didn't wear proper armor.

I'm all for customization where it makes sense, but if you have a wallet design that doesn't address an issue that has been in the open for some year until JUST NOW, then you did it wrong.

I think this will all sort itself out, and I think that Gox will need to get a lot smarter, a lot more efficient, and a lot more transparent THIS WEEK, or they will become part of Bitcoin's history rather quickly.

Of course, I could be wrong. They make a lot of money, and that can gloss over a lot of stupidity.

Am I missing something here though, other exhanges I use have also shut down withdrawal or is this not related to the problem Gox had, I realise Gox have obviously been using flawed code but if the other exchanges dont have the same problem why the big shutdown?

It is all a bit confused right now, which is what you would expect from a de-centralized operation :)

There honestly should be no pointing of fingers.  

Gox certainly (being the oldest exchange) should have been the first exchange to implement their own secondary txid verification measures, but i am quite sure (most) all the exchanges have failed to provide adequate security measures against this issue.

In a sense, Gox was merely the trigger for a situation that had to happen: Malleability has to be mitigated from the core code because this issue is not going away until the protocol is hardened against exploitation of this type.

I am glad it happened now as opposed to when the btc network is worth trillions.

They could've solved the problem on their end by updating their programs like they were told they should do. Putting the message out there like they did only caused panic. They also need to stop running a shoddy business and stop blaming other things.

When MtGox found out someone was exploiting a vulnerability in their automated BTC withdrawal software to basically steal bitcoins there was no DoS attack on the network globally going on. That attack only started after MtGox released their statement blaming a well known issue for their problems. Other exchanges like Bitstamp can not be exploited the same way as MtGox, so the reason why they suspended BTC withdrawals is different and directly related to this new DoS attack. They just have to update their software so transactions can get properly confirmed again and bitcoin withdrawals can resume as usual. MtGox is in deeper shit right now.

There are two very different problems here.
Mtgox had a bug in their wallet that made them lose some funds due to transaction malleability. This is their fault, they should have fixed it when they were warned years ago, but they didnt. If people panicked because of their announcement it is because those people didn't trust mtgox in the first place. No panic was to be had with the statement they produced.

On a second note, by bringing to light the problem of transaction malleability, someone started to DDoS the bitcoin network. This put malleability on the top priority list for bitcoin, if it wasn't there as gregory maxwell says in his interview.

So i feel that mtgox is at fault for not updating their software when suggested, but it turns out for the better that this DDoS happened because of their flaw now, rather than later. Both mtgox and the btc foundation should have been more careful with their statements, instead of pushing blame to eachother.

+1
This summarizes the situation pretty good.

Gox is at fault. The other exchanges were fine.

First of all welcome! Gox isnt 100% to blame but they did start this.

Maybe not so: http://blog.bitbargain.com/post/76337403346/bitcoin-malleability-issue

"It turns out that this issue is indeed affecting everyone. Mt.Gox and BTC-e have disabled withdrawals, Bitstamp is considering it, Localbitcoins is considering it, Bittylicious is considering it. We are in contact with each other as well as the developers of Bitcoin."

Bitcoin's endgame? Bitstamp also suspends withdrawals: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=461841.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=461841.0)

How come all the major exchanges had experienced the same problem, even though the problem was already known. Did they use the same code? Or did they all ignore the problem tough it would go away?

This was the reason for my orginal post, I am usnure Gox deserved all the screaming outrage and rabid posts that were aimed in their direction, maybe just some :)

They should all be fired.

all of them.

having no one in charge is better

They didn't have the same problem.

MtGox = lets naively keep paying the same customer over and over and over on withdraws so he can steal coins.  Oh crap we just lost a small fortune so lets shutdown and blame Bitcoin.

A few other exchange = the DDOS and the way the reference client handles unconfirmed change outputs is caused us to generate broken withdraws so lets suspend withdraws until the patch to not spend unconfirmed change outputs is released.

Some other exchanges ( including https://bitsimple.com ) = Yup we are still open.  Right this second.

Starting to see the difference?

The way they dealt with it was. How was that affecting them until they blabbed?

You guys crack me up.  Did any of you read Satoshi's white paper? You are free to innovate and create things with in Bitcoin including its client.  Coinbase or the others are just interpretations.  Some work better than others but everyone has the right to create API's and interfaces in the way they see fit BECAUSE...............

THIS IS AN EXPERIMENT!! hahaha  Babies.

Gox has done a better job of transparency in my opinion and innovation than the others and with out them Bitcoin would not exist plain and simple.  I disagree with Kaperles A LOT BUT he owes me NOTHING and he owes you nothing.  Have you directly compensated him for his time.  You should be thankful for what he has done and if I lose millions I will feel the same way.

Be visionary, provide solutions, create, innovate and stop pointing if you want to create value.  Some of my solutions are coming soon.  We require no pre-buzz.  You will figure them out on your own soon but I have left my life some time ago and dedicated all my efforts and time to the movement in many forms.  

An just a little commentary.  You could say I made a bet of a life time ;) And no offense Cameron and Tyler - you have very little to bring to this game in my opinion offering a product to benefit off of the demise of BTC by offering a short mechanism to do so.  Short mechanisms have some academic dogma behind them but that is because they served a purpose in a place where MARKET MAKERS EXIST and free markets DO NOT!  In BTC it is truly a free market mechanism, subject to natural pump and dumps, maximum points of fear and greed and everything else in between.  Buy it or sell it but do not allow people to short it.  You guys seriously need to be euthanised - just stop meddling and go play tennis or something.  These two have a black cloud over them in my opinion.  They are a risk to BTC hehe.  Mark figured this out years ago, you saps are climbing on board.  This differentiates wealth and lack of wealth amongst us, believe me.

WesandEAC, not really sure what you are getting at but I'll just leave it.  Yes Bitcoin is an experiment, just like Facebook and the internet and electric cars and electricity.

As for Gox, of course they are to blame. Gox broadcast it's incompetency for the whole world to see, shining a bright light on Bitcoin instead of it's own failures as an exchange.  In doing so it disrupted the economy and created this network wide attacked on bitcoin transaction malleability.  If it's not Gox, I'm not really sure who else you could blame for it....