Bitcoin Forum

I don't have the skill to attempt it myself, but has anyone tried tracing known Magic: the Gathering Online Exchange ("Magic: the Gathering" for short) addresses for BTC inflow/outflow?

Are they moving coins behind the scenes? Anyone who's previously withdrawn or deposited BTC could look for reuse or follow change flows perhaps. Again, not skilled enough myself, but an idea.

Another note: people here seem to advocate buying Magic: the Gathering BTC for the eventual re-opening of withdrawals. However, with the exchange locked down the total amount of BTC and $$$ are fixed. No closed-system transaction can change any of that; for every buyer there's a seller of equal magnitude in both directions. Only the exchange rate (i.e. notional value) changes.

So in this case, we can assume there's a BTC shortfall, meaning someone won't get their BTC out. We don't yet know if there's been a shortfall of $$$ as well, but less likely unless Magic: the Gathering has been really naughty. Hence, the rational thing to do is be positioned in $$$ so as not to be caught last one on the ship. In fact, the drop in BTC price on Magic: the Gathering is the opposite of what Karpeles would want if he were trying to make right by everyone.. ideally he'd want the maximum $ value for selling an existing stake of BTC so that he could go out and buy BTC elsewhere and bring back to Magic: the Gathering to fill the hole.

So I posit that the company is not deliberately tanking the price in order to get cheap coins.. the number of coins in there is fixed. Again, can transaction analysis reveal anything about fund flows at Magic: the Gathering?

They do? Most people who suggest this get flooded with "bad idea" posts.

I compare it to playing "russian roulette".

Of course, if you like to gamble... it could pay off big (if MtG:OX is just terribly incompetent after all, and not actually malicious).

Well, some do. :)

I just read the idea in another thread that Magic: the Gathering could use their trade fee rake (if held in $) to buy BTC that they will never actually see. I hadn't considered the rake as a moderator. This would have the effect of raising the BTC / $$$ exchange rate on Magic: the Gathering, so seems like that's not what they're doing. If they held their rake in BTC, then they could just allocate that to the shortfall, perhaps with no effect on price.

What exactly is the benefit of typing out "Magic" the Gathering" everytime you refer to them?  Wouldn't it be faster and easier to write "MtGox".  It's not like people around here aren't going to know which service you're talking about if you use the usual acronym.

Are you somehow trying to say that they should be considered to be more legitimate, or more trustworthy, or more competent because their acronym represents some long company name from their past?  I don't get it.

You know I used to really enjoy Magic the Gathering.    Takes me back to my youth,  ah... Sealed deck tournaments and the smell of freshly opened cards.

I'll stop you there....

People are still sending money into MtGox to buy the cheap coins. Various processors are working and there's always wire transfer.

Time will tell if this was a wise move by those who did it.

I decided in a post some time ago (I don't expect anyone to have read it) that I would deny "MtGox's" attempted rebranding. The rebranding was intended to distance themselves from their history as a trading card exchange. That history, to my mind, actually diminishes their credibility.

One can presume that their core exchange technology was not replaced wholesale during the switch to Bitcoin, so the rigour with which you might expect Bitcoin software to be written may not be there (you don't need bank-level security for a game card exchange). This is evidenced in the sloppy transaction handling, and more importantly in their processes for fixing sloppy software. The patchwork attempt at repair over months, rather than a detailed effort to understand and analyse the problems, is a major factor in their downfall.

Bitcoin is by and large a consensus ecosystem. Their name is whatever we call them by, not whatever they say it is.  ;D Maybe more people will get on board with going back to their naming roots if I stick to it pedantically.

Disclosure: I have not been harmed in any way by Magic: the Gathering's failings... at least not directly. No funds under deposit, no axe to grind except the pain of watching the fallout on the rest of the Bitcoin world.

I find it humorous you're calling it Magic the Gathering.  I think that hurts them too...who would want to deposit thousands of dollars on a system and company built to trade Magic cards?!  I wish they would do SOMETHING though (either enable withdrawals or go under) because the uncertainty is what's killing the market, and Gox DON'T CARE.

Well, shit... I had no idea Magic: the Gathering would be so irresponsible as to allow dollar inflows. Are they allowing dollar withdrawals as well? If so, then I've completely misunderstood the situation.

Why don't you just call it MtGox? ???

Bitcoin in? Check

Bitcoin out? ...404 service not found

Fiat in? Check

Fiat out? ...same as the past half of a year (which is how long a fiat withdraw might take, if you ever get your money at all)

Why don't you just read the thread? ???

I did, was no answer on that question and OP seems to be continuing it, so I tried again. :)

Not sure if he's either just being pretentious, or using it as a pejorative term.

He clearly explained it in post #7 of this thread.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=477724.msg5269926#msg5269926

Silly post, next OP will be asking us to say "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" instead of just "BTC".

He (like you) are total new to this all.  What does some time ago mean?  Last week?

EDIT: Apologies, not you, I was looking at someone else.

Thank you. I missed that post.
Probably because I had the reply screen open for too long and ignored the warning..


Hehe, that's what I meant :)

What exactly am I "total new" to?

Why are you asking me what "some time ago" means when the OP is the one who wrote it?

I feel like I'm in the twilight zone with this thread.

As I said, sorry, I was looking at his profile and yeah, its like the twilight zone.

When he is referring to making a decision "sometime ago" he means literally last week.  He was not around for the years that MtGOX was the only place to reliably exchange bitcoin for cash for a majority of the world.

Neil

Calling it "Magic: The Gathering" is pretentious, and increases the apparent legitimacy of the exchange.

"Magic: the Gathering" is a respected product produced and sold by a well established, and reliable company (Wizards of the Coast).  Wizards of the Coast is owned by a manufacturing company (Hasbro) that has stood the test of time (over 50 years).

Calling MtGox "Magic: the Gathering" can cause confusion to newbies that don't know that MtGox started out as an exchange for Magic: the Gathering, and lends a false appearance of being backed by Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast.

MtGox has dirtied their own reputation plenty.  There is no need to falsely soil the reputation of a card game, and two legitimate gaming companies by trying to associate that manipulative and unreliable company (MtGox) with a past that it abandoned long ago.

No worries. This is a very strange thread. LOL.

Some time ago I will say that tomorrow.

Oh, you! My brain hurts. I'm off to find a milkshake (frappuccino flavor) in the hopes of getting brain freeze!

You forced my hand to actually go look when I posted the idea.. looks like Feb 7th, so yeah, not long ago. I wrote "some time ago" to avoid the effort of looking it up.

Joined the forum apparently on Jan 3rd. Sorry for being a newbie!

Regardless, I shall continue to refer to them as "Magic: the Gathering Online Exchange" - DannyHamilton pointed out rightly that I shouldn't conflate the reputation of the exchange and the gaming companies by shortening it.

Welcome to the twilight zone.

I guess you don't mind your threads getting derailed by your own pretentiousness.

I've been bathing in pretentiousness since I joined the forum (some time ago!  ;D). Can't escape it here.

Ok, so any thoughts on the blockchain analysis? Has anyone looked into whether money has come out of known addresses since the lockdown? Can anyone point to the duplicate transactions that were supposedly accidentally sent? Or do they employ good address non-reuse there so we can't know anything?

Would be interested to hear from someone who has withdrawn whether a map can be built and whether we can see any current BTC operations they might be performing now.

That explains it. I have also worked out why my iPad is so heavy today, it is all those movies I put on it last night.

There's nothing surprising about MtGox either screwing up, or ripping people off, since this seems to be common in exchanges.  The surprising part is they managed to drag out the process SO LONG.

If anybody feels inclined to dig deeper, go ahead.
Here is a chain of withdrawals during the last few hours of regular operation:

1EPaoLYsvfazTf1ZEhTvjZvNXGesMr73h, a mtgox address with 4.30722452 btc

https://blockchain.info/tx/059aa4dae6b848fddcb7b9f86ebecf11a3af06b73ab19218304280a6bbd84a3f
2014-02-06 21:22:13 Successful withdrawal of 0.1 btc. Fees 0.001 btc. The rest of the input went to:

16SXexeWTUFi1asPkddSfzQuaYYHcLXSyd, a mtgox address with 4.20622452 btc

https://blockchain.info/tx/e578068d49657dade6d28bdf96d390910a1caf5e07cf8780cefa50308604eb6d
2014-02-06 21:56:18 Successful withdrawal of 0.2121 btc. Fees: 0.001 btc. The rest of the input went to:

13LMEitwdyZGhWEufPFyv4iEh2EdSTF71z, a mtgox address with 3.99312452 btc
which formed a new input together with 1PgepqVs7qVDb5eTeLxD3hUHHkL9hvYT4B and 1JnMrqCjmQDtMzLAnXZoqAakaaQnQ86hio
totalling 4.32050044 btc

https://blockchain.info/tx/f212018759cf7d57adff0b981b018e5354557cbe730af66751c50c043184a7a6
2014-02-06 22:23:55 Successful withdrawal of 2.631 btc. Fees: 0.001 btc. The rest of the input went to:

12RzyaLD7t2FQQ1KdTumM3ZP4dS5v8nUWH, a mtgox address with 1.68850044 btc

https://blockchain.info/tx/cfff3243ad3172bb9a4134fd4c024c08ef53e77f66dbbcb9f6dc9bc34158ccd4
2014-02-06 23:09:40 Successful withdrawal of 0.6 btc. Fees: 0.001 btc. The rest of the input went to:

1F9KiBMJsLPc5MfYCDHn9yHgu814fvvqQs, a mtgox address with 1.08750044 btc

https://blockchain.info/tx/eb93e821a118fa6472024341c9a0c9a769738f0e45f801fb2f3c69135d6034d0
2014-02-06 23:41:06 Successful withdrawal of 0.1 btc. Fees: 0.001 btc. The rest of the input went to:

1BiSxCN983GJsQNW87hRGeTywnAFZFVAhp, a mtgox address with 0.98650044 btc
which formed a new input together with 167R3UEEdLhuPtqcXHpPmy3EtgPJgb2KGr and 1BBnqvSjxtL2a7kvwmyVSLpA7f3DBcMLfw
totalling 1.02890044 btc

https://blockchain.info/tx/cc782820e840e7d1409fe07b76eb9edd422d0cdccb54f704133ffae5dbf52c67
2014-02-07 00:14:12 Successful withdrawal of 0.3 btc. Fees: 0.001 btc. The rest of the input went to:

18ZPAzjAWH8BWmB65fQXfkpjkY4nKGMRpY, a mtgox address with 0.72790044 btc
which formed a new input together with five other addresses
totalling 90.79696997 btc

https://blockchain.info/tx/f586cfe973ea38a510fa6a9baf6b0230a25990bb9f6c0d109e509ca35addfd67
2014-02-07 01:11:04 Internal transaction, fees: 0.000 btc. Destination:

16UYfZ9ZtDcmAfM9anPgefUT5ZzgkidEr4, probably a mtgox address with 90.79696997 btc
which formed a new input together with 14SZYYSyrdyYD1bAtCNKnsQZiZvg5QRTBR
totalling 90.89706958 btc

https://blockchain.info/tx/ea0f7c34a2f358b35f581669de220648593d1be612530539e8152360bb292360
2014-02-07 02:18:41 Successful withdrawal of 0.25 btc. Fees: 0.001 btc. The rest of the input went to:

13dEWRffXFQKTiixL9siS4rFELwpM3xBmc, a mtgox address with 90.64606958 btc

https://blockchain.info/tx/844035476a6a5bc7a6edf9cab4eeee284a58a015a2a2069d349d2a94604762a5
2014-02-07 03:45:18 Successful withdrawal of 0.1 btc. Fees: 0.001 btc. The rest of the input went to:

14aj7CVhyK16Y4MbDKyQvfknF9rk2umScJ, a mtgox address with 90.54506958 btc

https://blockchain.info/tx/8b57451f47dc6571877f86d18ee34444185704e8e94381d700b627ee8f36475a
2014-02-07 04:21:46  Successful withdrawal of 1.0 btc. Fees: 0.001 btc. The rest of the input went to:

1KczRaWJYhqL8U1PQ6w85ooQXxJY2qrC6m, a mtgox address with 89.54406958 btc

and as of here, several internal zero-fee transactions took place. The first one happened 2014-02-07 09:12:03, and all the other ones on 2014-02-08 and later.

In case anyone is interested, the only connection that mtgox has to trading MtG cards is the domain name*.  Someone had a (defunct?) card trading site and got interested in bitcoin, so they wrote an exchange and put it on the domain they happened to already own instead of registering a new one.  It took off, and the exchange was sold, domain name and all.

Plenty of morons around here like to talk trash about it, but it should only take a few minutes thinking about how a bitcoin bid/ask engine would work, in contrast to how an engine for discrete auctions operates, to send you looking for ignore buttons.

Regarding the original question, the blockchain will not be particularly useful here.  Most of the fun was happening in mempools across the network.

*  Possibly some UI stuff too.  I have no inside knowledge, but plenty of history is available here.

Exactly.

Newbies will be newbies.  Trolls will be trolls.

When it becomes obvious that a newbie is a troll, my kill file is updated.  Makes the forum a much more pleasant and useful place.

So has anyone done what the thing is asked?

Pat1900 got it started. I tried following the change from a few of those transactions forward and found that the zero-fee transactions continue for a while... I found transactions at least up to Feb 16th or 17th. Often these zero-fee ones are finally ended with a fee transaction that looks like it might be a later transfer out. Very hard to follow without some big graphical interface to pan around in.

Anyone have a nice tree/graph/mesh view to show transactions? I know blockchain.info has something like that, but it's a bit limited in the way you can view the data.

As for those calling me a troll, that's fine. The central point of my comment is what we're talking about here.. everyone seems stuck on my calling them Magic: the Gathering Online Exchange.

it sounds fun.  what's the point?  sex??

1. "So in this case, we can assume there's a BTC shortfall, meaning someone won't get their BTC out. We don't yet know if there's been a shortfall of $$$ as well, but less likely" -> It doesnt change anything. If MtGox goes under, people who are owed money by MtGox, may it be USD, CAD, EUR, JPY, or even bitcoins, will be reimbursed proportionnaly to their debt.

2. By acting like fools, the price of BTC has fell very low on their market. They can simply buy BTC on their own market at a very reduced price. They are exchanging BTC IOUs to USD IOUs. But if the hypothesis that they are short on BTC but hve enough fiat is true, then they are very happy with that change; if they "buyback" enough btc, then they will reduce their BTC debt below ther BTC assets, while not increasing their USD debt over their USD assets.

3. Even better, if they open withdrawals again someday, the price of BTC will rise dramatically. They can now sell (on their own market) some of the BTC they bought during the crisis, at a massive profit.

4. Contrarely of what has been said, fiat withdrawals work on MtGox. Delays for USD are terrible, so thats why people say that withdrawls are effectively blocked, but it has been my understanding that withdrawing JPY and EUR is ok.

Why wouldn't you? :)

Magic: the Gathering is a card game under hashbrown and what chain you wan ?