Bitcoin Forum

a nice analysis of Mtgox's current financial situation from Ryan Selkis. I am amazed by the details he provided.

source: http://www.scribd.com/doc/209050732/MtGox-Situation-Crisis-Strategy-Draft

The current situation will negatively affect everyone who owns or operates in Bitcoin. We will need to inject fresh coins inside the system in order to establish a basis to eventually clear the books by running the exchange (perhaps 200,000 coins). The costs of not doing so are incalculable at this stage.
They haven't lost 744,408 coins, that is the total they had on an exchange, they do have a deficit of about 200,000 coins. It is bad, but it could have been a lot worse.

How many duplicate threads do we need?

I hate to reply duplicated thread but clearification must immediately follow misinformation. They indeeded lost 744k coins, the '200,000' is the life-saving coins they are asking from investors to get back on their business, if the information of insolvency was remain closed to the public and they resume operation - the other 540k coins they can get slowly in the years following.

Quote: " At this point 744,408 BTC are missing due to malleability-related theft which went unnoticed for several years."

Perhaps the reports about illiterates are true?

In the paper it says: "The cold storage has been wiped out due to a leak in the hot wallet".

How is this possible??????. Are they coupled????. Or is it a huge theft by Mark Karpeles???

Has someone an answer for this?

Hot Pocket held, about, 2% of all BTC.
So, if the Hot Pocket (wallet) was less then 2% it was topped off by the Frigid Wallet.

Yes, but not automatically, otherwise it would not be a cold (frigid) wallet by definition, or am i wrong?

I fail to see how such a loss which was, as far as I can see, directly related to the malleability issue that MtGox didn't take into account when writing their wallet system, can be considered "theft". If you're sending out more coin than you should be, all on your own, how can the recipient be considered a thief? You gave them to him.

I agree in the rest of that quote except for that 1 word. Perhaps gifting a thesaurus to the originator of that quote would be in order?

=squeak=

Its all about definition.
Some one or some thing updated the Hot Pocket with new coins from the Frigid Wallet.
If it was a dedicated hardware, a person, software, whatever... doesnt matter. The thing doing the transfers did not take notice.

Is it illegal to drive past the speed limit, even when the police are not watching?
What has been done is abusing a system for economical gain, very illegal in most countries.

How does a team not see that they have been losing money for a couple of years, while their only job is to be the middle man in transactions.

Who abused the system tho?

"Theft" is a deliberate action... having received coins through no action on your part, doesn't make you a thief.

If they want to continue to use the term "theft", then I wanna see them making a deliberate action to start charging the people who committed that "theft" and make efforts to reclaim the stolen property, and include some jail time on top of it.

Otherwise, if they're just using "theft" to deflect their own incompetence, then it is a badly used word, and should be dropped.And THIS question here, is probably the most relevant question I have seen asked about all of this...

"theft"??? ... this was flat out incompetence and apathy about how their business was functioning... it is their own damned faults for the losses they ended up having... calling it "theft" is a joke...

=squeak=

I believe, if they've lost their cold wallet, they've lost it more instantly than that.

What I can't believe is that they're out of so much fiat. The crisis draft does look like a forgery. Gox's trade volume since the beginning of 2013 is about $2.5 billion, which would be about $25 million in fees. Even if we assume that they only charged half of that in fiat and lost all the BTC, that would be $12.5 million. Accounting for that, the figures in the document suggest that they've managed to spend $30 million into operating costs.

I think, if they were spending that kind of money, somebody would know about it.

It seems the end of mtgox to me! ???

Another theory floating around: MtGox deliberately "leaked" this document to assess the reactions and also claim that it serves as a "proof" of the "lost" btc.