Bitcoin Forum

Exchange is not a bank!
Never sleep with BTC on an exchange.
Send -> Negotiate -> Move your wallet.
Give preference to trade with more coins types, it becomes easier to exchange and have to where run.

What is the greatest lesson of MtGox?

1)  The mountains of evidence can be hard to see with $signs in your eyes.
2)  If a company screws up in a major way once, forgiveness should not be followed by reinvestment.
3)  Hope is not a reasonable investment strategy.
4)  Mountains can crumble, and when they do the fallout is felt worldwide.
and
5)  Whoever the guy is that went to Japan from UK to protest is now a Bitcoin hero.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=486605.0

http://www.addletters.com/pictures/bart-simpson-generator/bart-simpson-generator.php?line=I+will+not+leave+Bitcoin+in+an+exchange%21

Forget about bitcoin. Governments and civilization are necessary.

ye, always move to your own pc, in virtualized environment, crypted linux

I think this should remind us about how young BTC still is. These kind of incidents will occur before the services around BTC will develop to be properly funtioning. Of course people's stupidity played a big role in this incident, but I still think the services need to develop.

Agree, i never leave anything on exhanges, if i lose it from my machine/wallet, its my F??K up only.

Everyone was warned about Gox multiple times, and if one was smart, one would have avoided them after the first warning.
Once you let someone fool you around tens of times, the problem doesn't lie in them.

Never trust a fat man with your cake?

Don't put all your eggs in one basket.
Never trust anybody.
Greed is not good.
Make sure to follow market news (articles warning for mtgox have been published since several weeks)
etc

One lessons could be that if a business doesn't look too professional and is new you better be careful, especially when people start having problems to withdraw!!

WOW I just learned that mtgox disappears, I was about to say people are greedy and are depositing to enjoy the artificial low price of BTC on the website, I checked mtgox.com to see the price and POUF! It is gone

hahahahahaha best lesson!

 ;)

Definitely agreed.

But the problem with Mt.Gox was withdrawing MONEY from there... I sold some Bitcoins (bought elsewhere) on Jan. 10, and immediately requested a bank transfer. I had done the same in the past, and it took more than 4 weeks.

This time, I just never received it.

The greatest lesson is not to send money to shoddily run businesses. I could never even understand why people sent money there in the first place as it has always taken weeks and months to get verified or withdraw money etc.

yep but this will happen over and over. you could tell this every day and every minute, you cant prevent people from doing this. maybe this is a good reason why serious btc companys need regulation.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket. I'll take this lesson
Better to have a smaller profit than getting nothing.

why are people putting money on btc-e?

Don't (https://i.imgur.com/xMeW43a.jpg) use URL for username and password?

Don't ever use exchange that uses GET for login...

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me.

Do not trust any company with a funny name, especially one that is called Magic: The Gathering Online

The lesson of MTGOX is obvious.
STOP CONVERTING TO FIAT CURRENCY!

We need to develop are own economy based completely on BTC with no need for conversion.
The point of BTC is to be your own bank.

The interface with the banking system is a weakness and it has been shown over and over and over.
People keep putting their BTC in the hands of 3rd parties.
This is a critical mistake.

Sunshine

The greatest lesson may be about fear, human nature and their role financial markets.
But since you can never be to secure..
It's Satoshi's lesson. Own your wealth.
Don't farm out your banking services, remember that was the problem with money in the first place. I say exchange your monies and withdraw to cold storage any large amount. If you keep a small amount at a site because you like their app for trading just keep the balance to a tolerable amount. I use the price of the phone as an upper limit.

Use a coin that doesn't need exchanges.  NXT????

wait, wat? you are trying to say there was  a big red flag july 18 2010 ? sounds like heresy to me   :-X

Whenever I see that I always think of this:

http://www.museumofconceptualart.com/Jesusisms_vs_Bushisms/images/Fool%20Me.jpg


You don't need to use exchanges with Bitcoin either.

Keep btc in your wallet. Leave btc on an exchange long enough to do a few buys/sells and then xfer to personal wallet.

that to much obvious, now the question who didn't do that and lost money on gox? for me the answare is: speculants.

The "greatest lesson" of MtGox is the same lesson I've been trying to get into people's heads for a while now.  For some reason, people just don't seem to pay attention:

If you don't have exclusive control of the private keys, then you don't have the bitcoins.

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.

Unfortunately, MANY people thought that MtGox was providing them with a free wallet service.  So it isn't just speculators.  There are many people who were just using MtGox as a web based wallet and their bitcoins are currently unavailable as well.

for bitcoin trader: never keep bitcoins at  exchange, and keep at your sides
                         never keep big cash at exchange
                        never leak your password  and change your password every 3 days in exchange.

for exchange: 1. only keep 5% of bitcoins online
                    2. Never trust computer, use half human being eye and brain to monitor
                    3.  a little delayed to transfer  bitcoins and cash is best option
                    4. risk management is tough, but it is very important for exchange

If you aren't the sole controller of your private keys, you don't have any bitcoins.

This is what I've been saying about Gox many times in the past few weeks.
They have fooled these people numerous amount of times, they have been warned many times over the years. Have they listened? No.
It's their own fault.

Some people open an account in mtgox because they read in news websites and newspapers that mtgox was the biggest exchange, they never know about old issues with mtgox.

The greatest lesson with MtGox is never trust an exchange, if mtgox has issues now others will have the same issues.

Get your bitcoins now from all exchange companies will you can do it, later you could loose everything.

Lulz

Dont put all your eggs in one basket

Don't put all of your eggs in one basket, let the basket break, lose all your eggs, gather new eggs, put them in the same basket, lose all your eggs, gather new eggs, put them all in the same basket, gather new eggs, put them all in the same basket, lose all your eggs...

AND THEN SAY...

What happened to all my eggs?

I think greed is an important one too. When people saw that BTC were "worth" hundreds of dollars more on Gox than any other exchange, it should have raised eyebrows.

Oh, and as a corollary here--arbitrage is not riskless. I'm sure numerous people made profits off price discrepancies between Gox and the real exchanges, but many also lost.

One thing that amuses me quite a bit is that people seem to have revised their memories (or have only just started following bitcoin and revised their own history).

A statement that is thrown around a lot is "MtGOX has always been a bad" etc...

The fact is, for many years MtGOX was the only reliable way to transfer BTC to fiat money.  Not only did they bail thousands of users of other exchanges and services out but on the few occasions when they did have security problems in the past they owned up to it and pony'ed up the bitcoin themselves to replace the loss.

I am in no way excusing them for the current fiasco, and they and I have had issues in the past but please remember, it has not always been like this and don't "make up" history.

Neil

Minus the several major GOXXXINGS of all of their customers, they've been pretty reliable.

To move coins that are not used for day trading, into a wallet immediately.  Do not leave excess coins on any exchange

I would say the greatest lesson has to be the proper way to set up a Ponzi scheme.

Con Man = Confidence Man.  There are still morons on here whom still have confidence in MagicalGoXXX.

Commerce on the Internet has come to rely almost exclusively on financial institutions serving as
trusted third parties to process electronic payments. While the system works well enough for
most transactions, it still suffers from the inherent weaknesses of the trust based model.
Completely non-reversible transactions are not really possible, since financial institutions cannot
avoid mediating disputes. The cost of mediation increases transaction costs, limiting the
minimum practical transaction size and cutting off the possibility for small casual transactions,
and there is a broader cost in the loss of ability to make non-reversible payments for non-
reversible services. With the possibility of reversal, the need for trust spreads. Merchants must
be wary of their customers, hassling them for more information than they would otherwise need.
A certain percentage of fraud is accepted as unavoidable. These costs and payment uncertainties
can be avoided in person by using physical currency, but no mechanism exists to make payments
over a communications channel without a trusted party.

-- Satoshi Nakamoto

I actually trust Coinbase to secure my BTC more than I trust myself to not lose it. Sue me.

No need to sue you.

Just be aware of the risks you are taking.  There won't be a lot of sympathy if Coinbase suddenly is unable to deliver on their promises.

The bitcoins belong to them and not to you.  They are no longer "your" bitcoins.  In return, they 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've chosen to trust them to deliver on that a promise.

Keep 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, along with a variety of other situations that could cause them to fail to live up to the promise provided.

You are placing blind faith in an entity with no evidence that they are deserving of that faith. They are not audited, your "deposits" are not insured, and there is little (if any) regulation forcing them to follow any particular "best practices" or "security protocols".

Im still mad karpooples bought a frappacino with my BTCs

LMAO!!!!!!!!!  :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D

It's striking sometimes how much similarities it has compared with a bank.

If you aren't the sole controller of your private keys, you don't have any bitcoins.

Its easy enough:
http://brainwallet.org/ (http://brainwallet.org/)
With a brain wallet, you don't need any backup.

To be extra safe, disconnect your computer from the network (pull the plug) while entering your passphrase. When done, close the browser, delete cookies and then reconnect.

Use your social security number to salt your passphrase.

thats it.

When you have done that, you are in the position that wherever you are, you have access to funds. Even if the govt steals all your assets, throws you in jail a few years and chucks you out on the street naked and bleeding, you can walk into a tailor shop and leave with a $5000 suit.

if you wanna trade, trade on as many exchanges as possible. it's safer, and it's more effective because of volumes.
if you wanna store, store it on linux, encrypt wallets and do daily automatic backup on some remote machine.

still wonder why so many people left their money at mt gox, i fleed away the moment the problems began...

The first and only lesson:  never keep bitcoins or money at a place you don't control.  The wallet and bankroll of any exchange is a massive honeypot for all the worst the Internet has to offer.  It could all be gone tomorrow without any warning.  Unfortunately that also severely limits the opportunity to trade money for bitcoins and back again.  This is the greatest weakness bitcoin has today.

In my case, don't get blinded by greed.

An unregulated, uninsured, unaudited bank, but yes a bank.

Possession isn't necessary for ownership. 

Just because you transfer custody of your coins to someone doesn't make the new holders of the coin the new owners, just like when you take your kids to school it doesn't make the teacher the parent.

You entrust your fiat / cryptocurrency to exchanges for the specific purpose they set forth in their agreement -- essentially to safeguard until you have removed it from their system.

Don't store coin in 3 rd party wallets outside your control
Take responsibility for your coins
Spread yr risk by using multiple exchanges and service providers

Bitcoins aren't children.

Bitcoins are a cryptocurrency.  This means that they rely on cryptographic proof of ownership.  That cryptographic proof is provided with a digital signature from a private key that is cryptographically linked to the bitcoin address.  When you "send" bitcoins, what you literally do is digitally sign an agreement that transfers ownership of the value to the controllers of a specific set of private keys.


You are not "entrusting your fiat / cryptocurrency to exchanges", you are purchasing a promise.  You are trusting the exchange to deliver on that promise.  There are many untrustworthy individuals and many untrustworthy organizations in the world.  Be careful about purchasing promises from untrustworthy entities.  The promises are often not worth what you pay for them.

Unless they actually exchange Magic cards for bitcoin (and vice versa), of course ;)

If you plan on holding any coins for the long-term it is best to store them in a paper wallet.

Developers are currently working on an offline paper wallet generator and we need testers! It's built in HTML and JavaScript and is very similar to other paper wallet generators like bitaddress.org and bitcoinpaperwallets.com

There will be many advanced features included in this paper wallet generator, for starters:

- ZIP download for offline generation
- Multiple coin support (BTC, LTC, NMC, PPC, NXT, etc.)
- Security dashboard: Gauge your setup's security level in the hopes of achieving Zero Trust
- Import Keys or Generate your own
- RNG Generation: Entropy collection based on mouse movement
- Batch generation and printing of multiple wallets

Full feature list will be announced, all features may not make it into the initial Beta but they'll all get added before release.

Please sign up at http://www.cryptopapers.com so you can be notified upon BETA release.

Cheers!

Be Fearful When Others Are Greedy and Greedy When Others Are Fearful

or


Admit nothing, deny everything, demand proof, and make outrageous counter accusations. And if all else fails, discredit all opposition.

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