Bitcoin Forum

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Would Hugh Hefner sell right now?

Bitcoin exchange rates being influenced by media reports and rumours probably these people wouldn't have wanted a bad press for Bitcoin.

chuck norris would

I agree that this will bring major attention to Bitcoin "money transmitters" and the risk of problems for them has now gone up a fair bit. Don't necessarily agree they will be forced to close. It's even more of a possibility now though.

Well that would be good, but typically when someone starts by saying that, 99% of the time, they follow it up with FUD, and not facts.  We'll see.


See what I mean?  That's not a "fact", but it is FUD.


And yet again.  Not a fact.  Just more FUD.


You'll note that your FUD is still here.  Clearly you are mistaken.


It never fails.  Any post that starts with, "don't want to spread FUD. Just facts." is filled with FUD and has very few facts.

+1

I find that interesting as well.  I am sure they had something planned previous to this.  I am sure it will all come out soon enough.

How is this even remotely a conspiracy? How could professional exchanges be responsible in any way in the Gox debacle? Since when and who mandated the Bitcoin Foundation to protect Bitcoin users from doing business with incompetent amateurs if they want to? I really don't get your point.

Magic: the Gathering Online eXchange had already lost my confidence when they skewed up big time back in April 2013. As far as I'm concerned,  since then I never traded a single coin or penny with them. Obvious is obvious.

Careful OP.  Moderators here aren't going to take kindly to anything negative about MTGOX. They will quickly dump your post into "Service" even though your post is a general post not just about MTGOX but about Bitcoin. Or worse, they'll delete your post.

I don't buy this nonsense. How can something as obvious as gox's insolvency, which people have been worried about for a year or so, be a conspiracy? More FUD. The joint statement sounds very reasonable and is an appeal to common sense. Unlike this thread lol

Obviously they have been in the loop for some time, but we can't know if we're talking about hours, days, months or even years. We just don't know. Pasting conspiracy theories over this does not give more credit to your claim IMHO.


Again, we don't know (if they shut up because they were greedy, because of this, of that... or because anyone who has done his research would never deposit a single dollar or bitcoin in an exchange that has been delaying withdrawals for months, partly in the open).

Like it or not, presenting suspicions as facts amounts to FUD. Moreover, even if they knew, it doesn't mean that they had the right to publicly disclose anything. And even if they had the right, they certainly didn't have any obligation. I believe that Bitcoin should be left to free market, and that regulation should be left to the government when it fails to be implemented by the protagonists themselves as a framework to that same free market.


It really seems we have opposing definitions of FUD. For me, seeking to uncover the truth and exposing it is the opposite of FUD.


I agree with you, and I am optimistic about voluntary implementation of this by major, professional exchanges in the near future.

Ey OP, stop spreading FUD. Europe promised nothing.

Agreed- People have to realize that just like the big players in almost any industry will get wind of news way before it happens (through inside connections), it isn't different over here in the world of crypto. Based on the fact that they had to all coordinate that statement, I'm pretty sure they knew about it for at least a couple of days.

That's pretty elementary.  Besides their own incompetence, MtGox's difficulties have always stemmed from two causes:  regulation and hackers.  And there is plenty of reason to believe (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66916.msg3598422#msg3598422) that the ultimate source of both of these are one and the same.  Regulation exists to create barriers to entry.  Licensed exchanges would obviously have the help of their host governments, just like any other international industry.  And host governments would get their pay-offs and kick-backs in return.  Killing off MtGox, dividing up the loot and cartelizing Bitcoin exchange would be a profitable endeavour for all sorts of people.

The Bitcoin Foundation has been a fairly shady organization from its inception.  Karpeles was pretty much always paying the bills, but there's no telling who was actually in charge.  It started out by working in secret, on their private forum instead of public forums like this one.  Besides kowtowing to regulators and investors, it's been a mystery for some time what their purpose has been.  But now we see the fruits of their effort:  core developers are calling for regulation and limiting Bitcoin in subtle ways;  board members are suing each other, regulators start issuing these ridiculous edicts and "warnings," seizing bank accounts and arresting Bitcoin traders;  financial industry insiders and shady investors with unknown agendas start coming out of the woodwork, having apparently been working behind the scenes for a while.

It's pretty obvious that there is a huge constellation of interests at work here, and most roads lead back to the US.  Just follow the money.

I think the very large criminal element does harm bitcoin, it is very of putting to me at least. Besides what is really left of the bitcoin ideal if a few hundred bitcoin oligarchs own the bulk of all bitcoins and another large chunk is in the hands of criminals.
Doesn't exactly sound like a tool to create a more fair and equal world.
Things like vertcoin and protoshares, etc. start to look more appealing. i will support any coin that builds in a defense against concentration in the hands of a few early adopters.

Please do so in the appropriate altcoin forum.

Yet there are plenty of negative MtGox threads in Discussion, and I've seen many senior members and forum mods say negative things about MtGox.

In the land of yakuza it should not be hard to get someone disappeard like the bitcoins.

I am not in gox but I would gladly contribute to this.

People should not get away with this. The justice system will not do anything because they are happy as it is.

We need to give a real statement. A hard one too so that people will be warned that we are not to mess with. We didn't came from one fraudulent system to another.

Ikinoki, are you located in Japan?

I for one put (a little bit of) money into mtgox as recently as this morning Japan time - less than an hour before mtgox disabled trading (yes they accepted deposits right until they disabled trading). But what made me somewhat confident that mtgox was going to be ok was that there was the Bitcoin Foundation meeting but they made no statement about mtgox, and during those few days all these well-known Bitcoin figures were saying they were convinced Gox would be fine.

I took a risk and I will live with it. But I certainly won`t be listening to any "authority" in the Bitcoin community ever again. They`re clearly watching out for their own special interests and aren`t necessarily going to be honest or forthcoming. Bitcoin Foundation? WTF do I care about a Bitcoin Foundation now. It`s meaningless.

Where did the Foundation say that MtGox or any other individual or bitcoin business was answerable to them?

I am amazed that they even managed to get MtGox's resignation from their board.

I think you vastly overestimate the power and relevance of the Bitcoin Foundation.

There are plenty of smart people involved in bitcoin, who pass along verifiable facts and clearly mark their own speculation as speculation. Then there are a much greater number of people who don't know their arse from their elbow, yet feel comfortable making statements of fact that turn out to not be fact.

If you want other people to sort these two groups of people for you and just tell you what to do then bitcoin right now is not for you. This lesson only seems to be learnt during the hard times, not the times when it feels like we are going to the Moon.

Although some of it is conspiracy-theory-esque, I agree with a lot of the sentiments in this thread - the whole situations smells bad. Between Gox, the Foundation, "industry leaders" (whatever) and FUD document leaks, something is not right in this story at all. Something bigger might well be behind it.

But you know, on Wall Street and in the hedge fund industry they have an important slang term "OPM" - other people's money. Playing with OPM is very different than playing with your own. Between kickbacks and connections and form-filling, they make very sure that losing it all is of no consequence to them.

When it comes to money, which after all is power, don't put your trust in any kind of authority, no matter how much reputation, history, might, charisma or qualifications it has, because the chance is they will either (a) rob you blind or (b) treat your money with the respect they have for all OPM - i.e. none.

Let them play their games - choose exit, it's the only choice you really have.

Did, yes. I misunderstood what their role was.


I don`t want anyone to tell me what to do, that`s the point. I`m not going to be assuming anyone is right just because they hold a certain position in the community. I`m going to look at the fundamentals and sentiment for myself. But you`re right, that`s a lesson learned through experience.

Conspiracy or not, there is a small circle of connections between certain investors in Bitcoin, US law enforcement, hackers, and a lengthening list of failed, likely scuttled, Bitcoin exchanges.

FBI: LulzSec leader working for us for at least the last six months (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/mar/06/lulzsec-sabu-working-for-us-fbi)

FBI directed LulzSec in hacks at the time of major Bitcoin thefts (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66916.msg3598422#msg3598422)

MtGox partners with BitInstant to service US customers (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:P6Lz7YU50JMJ:https://mtgox.com/press_release_2011_12_01+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=ubuntu)

CEO of CoinLab is Chairman of Bitcoin Foundation (https://bitcoinfoundation.org/about/board‎)

"Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica" (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=196150.0)

Coinlab sues MtGox for $75 million over US customers (http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/03/coinlab-sues-mt-gox-for-75m/)

Bitcoin Foundation meets with regulators, law enforcement (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-26/bitcoin-group-to-meet-with-federal-regulators-law-enforcement.html)

Feds seize MtGox accounts (http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/23/feds-seize-another-2-1-million-from-mt-gox-adding-up-to-5-million/)

BitInstant CEO arrested (http://business.time.com/2014/01/27/bitinstant-ceo-charlie-shrem-arrested-for-alleged-money-laundering/)

Bitcoin Foundation praises US regulators (http://www.coindesk.com/congressional-leaders-foundation-praise-fincen-guidance/)

NY Bitcoin regulator plans to divide and conquer (http://www.businessinsider.com/lawsky-interview-2014-2)

FBI: Alternative Currencies are "Domestic Terrorism" -- "We are determined to meet these threats through infiltration, disruption, and dismantling" (http://www.fbi.gov/charlotte/press-releases/2011/defendant-convicted-of-minting-his-own-currency)

If you want to understand what is really happening in Bitcoin, go ahead and read some of these threads.  I don't post this shit for my health.

I didn't see that at all?  Can you provide a link to even one instance in the past few days of someone from the Bitcoin Foundation (or any well-informed member of the bitcoin community) saying the were convinced Gox would be fine?

That's a matter of fact, nobody can deny it.

Bitcoin is looking just like a big scam.

I don't have links, but i also read several of them saying that on the news, twitter etc, they were the ones who signed the contradictory statement.

They all DID KNOW obviously.  Gox should have informed users of stopping transfers (BTC/fiat), as soon as they stopped withdrawals.  The fact that they did not warn customers of their impending collapse is criminal!

Everything was coordinated and synchronized: Gox shutdown, industry contradictory statement, obvious fake inside document leak on major news. There is no theory, shit is going on for real.

Yes, it could very well be criminal.  I don't know which entity is going to do anything about it though.  The Japanese authorities, from what I've read, are taking a big hands off approach.  THey did market in the US so I think you could sue them in the US.

If anyone has a single link to any of the following people saying they were convinced Gox would be fine during the past few days, I'd really like to see it.  I suspect that the people saying such things were not the people whose names are on the "join statement":

• Fred Ehrsam
• Brian Armstrong
• Jesse Powell
• Nejc Kodrič
• Bobby Lee
• Nicolas Cary
• Jeremy Allaire

The fact that you heard someone say that "Gox would be fine" doesn't mean you heard any of those people say it.  If any of them did say it, I'd like to know because, I'll refuse to use any service they are ever associated with  again and will recommend that others avoid it as well.  However, I won't take such strong action based on what someone thinks someone else might have said.

That popular guy with a big strange east european name...find his twitter and you read several statements of this kind. I think he is from blockchain.info, but not he one on the list.

Everything else i read over the news,  a research will have to be done.

The foundation message board is full of liars too.

I don't see any strange east European names on the "joint statement".  This is exactly what I'm talking about.  You heard some guy say something you don't like, and you automatically attribute it to a group you don't like.

I'm not saying that the signatories on the "joint statement" didn't make claims that "they were convinced Gox would be fine", I'm just saying that I haven't seen it, and I won't make judgements based on rumors and false accusations.  Show me a reliable link and I'll back you up.  I'll tell everyone to avoid any service they are associated with.

That goes for any of the board members of The Bitcoin Foundation as well.  I'd like to see just one reliable link from the past few days of any of the following people making claims that "they were convinced Gox would be fine":

• Gavin Andresen
• Micky Malka
• Jon Matonis
• Elizabeth T. Ploshay
• Peter Vessenes
• Patrick Murck

If such links don't exist, then you're just as bad as you are accusing them of being.  You are making false statements based on rumors or false knowledge to try and destroy the reputations of people that aren't proven to have done the things you are accusing them of.

If you don't like someone, or an organization, go ahead and say that you don't like them, but there is no need to be throwing around unsubstantiated accusations.

I don't know if he is a company owner. But he is someone very relevant and popular, almost sure that he is from blockchain.info, he was supposed working to help Gox to fix his bug. You guys must know who i'm talking about.

I have to agree 100%.  Only lost about $50k to these criminals. 

So, one guy that you think is popular says something.  He's not a board member of The Bitcoin Foundation, and he's not a signatory on the "joint statement".  And because this "popular" guy says something, you decide that: "read several of them saying that on the news, twitter etc, they were the ones who signed the contradictory statement"?

Sorry, that's not how it works.

You are debating with someone who felt it was okay to start a topic entitled "MtGox CEO confirms insolvency" and then refused to change that to reflect facts. It is a lost cause.

I know.  I'm not doing it for his sake.  The point is to make sure that other more logically thinking people that happen to stumble into this thread have a logical response to read.  If claims are made that aren't refuted, it can create an impression that the claim stands as accepted by the community.  Eventually I'll get bored with the conversation and move on, but by then there will at least be plenty of evidence in the thread that the claims being made are unsupported.

On the other hand, I truly mean it when I say that if there is any evidence of the claims I'll wholeheartedly refuse to use any service that the accused is associated with and will consistently recommend that others avoid the service as well.

It's a bit disheartening when they just flood the place with whatever bizarre statements they feel will get views, regardless of truth, wait until any calls to reason have fallen off the front page and then start new topics that say the same things. :(

You're doing good work and I do appreciate it.

He was from one of those companies and was directly in contact with Mark.

It's sort of like "I'm not a racist, but. . ." is invariably followed by something racist, and anything that comes before "no homo" is the gayest thing you ever heard (not that there's anything wrong with that).

I foun him, his name is Andreas M. Antonopoulos

http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/1yauc9/andreas_antonopoulos_gox_was_warned_and_had_funds/


"So they got taken for a bit of a ride, and lost some money, but not much. And now they're fixing their systems and I expect, eventually, they're going to get it right again."


There are other statements like that from him. Negative statements truth be told, but some are followed by "it will be fine in the end".

Let me first say that I don't believe in the OP's conspiracy theories for a second.

However, if someone can tell me the date MtGox was removed as a recommended exchange from the Bitcoing.org website, (which is run by several of the people on your list), that might help to clarify when the core development team had actually lost confidence in MtGox?

I feel it is very sad that an exchange that has been involved in so many mistakes and so much controversy for so many years were listed as a recommended exchange (the top of the list I believe, perhaps based on volume?), up until relatively recently.

It is sad because people that only recently discovered Bitcoin will not have been following the forums, and trusted that recommendation, which is in fact what it is, and deposited fresh fiat into a doomed exchange. Some of these people might now have lost trust in Bitcoin forever due to this situation.  :(

Actually, you want Heavy Regulations for exchanges. The types of regulations you want are:

1) Segregation of Customer Assets from Company Assets
2) Rules to ensure solvency of counterparties (margin requirements for trading)
3) Rules for timely crediting of deposits and processing of withdrawals
4) Rules to prevent insider trading and self dealing (manipulating the order book)
5) Regular audits to ensure safe keeping of Customer Assets

If there were an SEC regulated exchange for BTC, BTC Futures, and BTC options, I would be the first to sign up and trade there. As they say, "Return of my principal is more important than return on my principal". Right now, how do you know which exchange you can trust? You don't, and that is a transaction barrier. Drop the barriers, and more people would be willing to participate. Imagine if you did not know where it was safe to deposit your fiat money. The heavy regulation makes it easy for you to deposit money at a bank without a second thought.

The SEC con artists and scammers. They claim to ensure those five things you mention, and when they ignore repeated warnings or just watch porn instead of doing their job they have no accountability for their failure.

Anybody who pushes regulation as a solution to the problem of exchanges is being disingenuous. Regulation is a power grab, not a solution to a problem.

You want sound exchanges that can't lose or steal customer funds? Find a way to do it with cryptography. If you think the problem of losing money because the people you trusted to do the right thing didn't can be solved by trusting different people to do the right things you're a fool or a liar.

+10

The closest to regulatory compliance I can see is Coinbase, which is at least registered with FinCEN and working toward figuring out the regulations in any states where it might be necessary.  They also appear to have (if their claims are accurate), a reasonably good protocol for securing coins and keeping them in cold storage.  

Gox claimed to have cold storage, but I don't see how that claim can possibly be consistent with losing the vast majority of customer funds.  

That link is from February 13.  Mr. Antonopoulos was not at that time involved in assisting MtGox with fixing their problems and was talking based on recent reports at that time.  Furthermore, Mr. Antonopoulos is not a staff member of MtGox, is not one of the signatories of the "joint statement", and is not a board member at The Bitcoin Foundation.  There is no reason to believe that Mr. Antonopoulos has any additional information at that time than what he was reporting.  Even if he did, he's just some popular speaker (as you already mentioned), and anything that he said shouldn't be used to cast a shadow over the organizations that he isn't a part of.

So Gox claims can't possibly be consistent, and you you accept Coinbase claims at face value?

Perhaps what would be better would be an independent financial AND security audit performed by a trusted third party?  Partnership with a major global insurance underwriter to insure the security of deposits would be helpful as well.

Good luck. As soon as you transfer BTC to the exchange, you are at their mercy.

One possible way is to have your own wallet that they control. Kind of like the on-line wallets. They are the only ones with the withdrawal key. Then they could pay for your transactions out of your wallet, and you could keep a watch on the balance.

Problems:

1) Risk of any on-line wallet: Someone there steals your money. They go broke, and the withdrawal key is lost. Or, they somehow loose the withdrawal key. Maybe some type of key bank that you can access with a private key. Once you use the keybank, the account can no longer be used for trading (since they do not exclusively control it anymore). Maybe a 24 hour delay to give them time to stop trading on our account and close out any open positions.

2) It may take time to clear trades, but if they control the wallets, then they would not need to wait for confirms.

A segregated real wallet that you can watch could solve a lot of trust problems. You still have the counter party, and the risk of them manipulating the exchange. You also have the problem with fiat money balances. Would you accept regulations to cover that?

It doesn't have to be that way at all.

Of course it's best if people don't hand their coins over to third parties at all, but since that message continually falls of deaf ears the next best thing is to implement a system that does unimpeachable real time accounting of both the btc asset and liability side, and also prevents any single entity from losing or stealing coins:

http://bitcoinism.blogspot.com/2013/12/voting-pools-how-to-stop-plague-of.html

This might not be that incorrect. What was the foundation doing all this time? Gaving is developing, okay, the others? Pretty much nothing. This could have been prevented.
Many members here have warned people about Gox, and they have obviously been right all this time, while the foundation was blind.

The writing has been on the wall about Gox for a LONG time now.  It's not like this should come as a surprise to anyone.  There will be no increased regulation because of Gox's incompetence, regulators only care about money laundering, not some dummy who can't run his business. 

Fixed your typo.

Straw man alert.  Coinbase doesn't have a years long history of constant lying.  Their claims are entitled to somewhat more credence.

O RLY?

Looks like mods are truly overworked. The whole forum is being flooded with anti-gox posts, and I don't see any of them being removed...

Onkel Paul

Not a straw man.  Check the definition.  It would only be a straw man if I was the one who introduced the idea that Coinbase's claims were accurate specifically so that I could knock it down.

You were the one that introduced the "if their claims are accurate" statement in reference to Coinbase, therefore not a straw man.

Furthermore, I'd think if there is one thing people would have learned by now it that a good reputation is a very poor indicator of reliability.  After Bitcoinica, Instawallet, Bitcoin Savings & Trust, and inputs.io I'd think that by now people would start to see that if Coinbase wants us to believe that they have "a reasonably good protocol for securing coins and keeping them in cold storage" then we need more than "claims" by them.  At a minimum they need to provide an independent audit by a trusted third party.

Better yet would be complete transparency of their process.

One does simply not keep $350M in a single cold wallet.

"We have HUNDREDS of cold wallets!  We just don't use any of them.  We decided to automate re-spending of coins rather than implement a simple line of code that would force a human to look at the request."

Your post is gibberish.  One site has been demonstrably transparent, the other hasn't.  I'm done playing with trolls.

Now that bitcoin is finished, can we expect another better cryptocurrency to take over in the future? Or is confidence in cryptocurrencies in general gone?

How much ya lookin to invest, kid? I gots a bridge for ya!

Transparent?  In what way?

How many bitcoins does Coinbase control?

How do they determine which transactions to cancel due to "high risk"?

Are they engaging in "fractional reserve"?  How would you know?


LOL.  Clearly one of us has facts and logic on our side, and the other is frustrated that their opinions don't hold water.

The most important rule to remember when it comes to bitcoins is:
"If you don't have exclusive control of the private key associated with a bitcoin address, then you don't have the bitcoins that are associated with that address."

There is only one web based wallet that I know of where you maintain exclusive control of your bitcoins.

Here's a hint...

Coinbase is NOT that web based wallet.

Any time you send your bitcoins to an address where you don't have exclusive control of the private keys (such as MtGox, CoinBase, BitStamp, BTC-E, localbitcoins, etc), you are making a donation to whoever has control of those private keys.

The bitcoins immediately belong to them and not to you.  They are no longer "your" bitcoins.  In return, most of the people who run these websites will offer you a promise that they will send an equal amount of their bitcoins wherever you ask them to whenever you ask them to.  You need to decide if you trust them to deliver on such a promise, keeping in mind the possibilities that they could have security flaws, could find their assets seized by government agencies, could be tempted to keep the bitcoins for themselves, and a variety of other situations that could cause them to fail to live up to the promise provided.

For those of you impacted by Mt Gox collapse, Bitcoin Builder is still making a market for MtGox bitcoin. http://bitjuice.com/2014/02/25/bitcoin-builder-still-processing-mtgox-trades/

DannyHamilton You are wither trolling or trolling.

After reading this, http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-02-25/why-trolls-start-flame-wars-swearing-and-name-calling-shut-down-ability-think

Which side are you on?

The only thing DannyHamilton is doing wrong is defeating my ignore list by quoting trolls.

You don't even know who you are talking to, must be high

Remember that some people earn a paycheck by being immune to fact and logic, and by attempting to infect others with that immunity:

http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/02/25/snowden-training-guide-for-gchq-nsa-agents-infiltrating-and-disrupting-alternative-media-online/

Now there's a fact you got right.

I'm participating in too many threads and with too many stubborn people that are refusing to use logic or take into consideration any facts.

You are right on this:

I failed to notice that darkmule made the false "strawman" accusation, while you, "bananas", made the "trolling" accusation.

I've therefore deleted the post where I made the error.  I apologize for the mistake.

(See how easy it is to admit when you are wrong and acknowledge facts, you really ought to try it sometime).