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http://www.fentonreport.com/economy/any-mt-gox-acquisition-plan-must-include-accountability-and-must-return-the-remaining-client-funds



Any Mt. Gox Acquisition Plan Must Include Accountability and Must Return the Remaining Client Funds

April 15, 2014 11:42 pm

From what we understand, Mt. Gox has 200,000 coins left and several hundred thousand still missing or stolen.

Let’s be clear. These coins belong to the customers. They are NOT the property of Gox or whoever acquires Gox. They are not to sit in limbo for ages and sure as heck not to be used to repair the business, hire employees or grow assets. I’ve heard speculation that some think an investor/ acquirer could run legal interference claiming that these coins are not property. Wrong.

These coins belong to the account holders. Period. Potential plans are irrelevant to this fact and the fact that Mark claimed he lost all the coins and then found 200,000 of them does not make them any less the property of the account holders than if Gox had been a healthy company and was acquired.

When a bank goes bankrupt, the assets in the bank and in the safe deposit boxes are still the property of the account holders.

If you have your car at a mechanic and the mechanic goes bankrupt it’s still your car.

The 200,000 coins belong to the customers just as much as the coins at Coinbase, BitStamp and Kraken belong to those customers. If someone acquired one of those companies and implied in any way that they controlled those coins it would be considered theft and would be totally and completely unacceptable.

200,000 coins represents roughly 20% of what is missing. Therefor if someone had 100 coins at Gox he would be immediately entitled to remove 20 of his remaining coins from the exchange. He would also be credited with 80 missing coins and darn well deserve far better accountability of what exactly happened to those 80 coins.

The same is true for Mt. Gox. Let’s not let the massive problems Gox has had serve as an excuse for additional, even more harmful, unethical and even criminal actions.

By the way, the precedent of opaque communications and secrecy will not fly with a new owner either. The community and the clients of Mt. Gox deserve FAR more openness and transparency.

The ONLY acceptable business plan for an acquisition is one which includes variations of the lines:

1) All of the 200,000 coins belong to the account holders and will be immediately credited to accounts and refunded on request as soon as it is technically possible even if this means manual transfers to addresses.

2) The details of the investigation, exact status, explanation of when keys were held and other details will be immediately shared with all international law enforcement as well as a large group of independent industry members and with the public if at all possible given investigation status.

If an investor can purchase Mt. Gox and ask customers to voluntarily give them a chance to rebuild the exchange they may be pleasantly surprised to have some of those 200,000 coin holders stay. If not then this is something they need to account for in their plan.

The current management at Gox is perhaps criminally negligent in responding to questions about the status and withholding remaining client assets. The new owners need to have a standard at least a step above the worst business disaster in modern history.

I am not a bankruptcy expert but if things work close to the way they do in the USA, any acquisition would have to be BETTER for the people owed money (creditors) then the courts just doling out what remains to everyone equally.  It looks like there is between 20-30% available for creditors now.  There might be a slight bonus as some creditors may not claim funds leaving more for those who do.

So if a new company (example gox.com) wanted to do the acquisition, they would need to add some value for the creditors. 

Precisely.  It would be nonsensical for a trustee to agree to a deal that is worse for the creditors (depositors) than a straight-up liquidation of the remaining assets. 

This is what many following this might be missing.

The 200,000 coins are NOT assets of Gox, they are assets of the clients.  There is a clear separation and a massive number of examples from other businesses which show this.

 Just as in the examples above --- a custody service does NOT get to keep client assets no matter how bad their situation is or how bad they mess up.

Client assets do NOT go on balance sheets, EVER.

Straight-up liquidation might be the end result.
For an investor group to make long-term profits they need to make sure part of the ~26% of client funds are trapped in Gox for trading.
Why on Earth would anyone invest money to manage a complete run on the bank?

Thinking of this subject, I'm no bankruptcy expert of coarse, would the account holders be creditors? After all they did not actually lend the BTC they deposited it.

When banks go bankrupted in the U.S. the account holders do loose their funds but that is why we have FDIC Insurance in the U.S and regulations.

Sorry guys this is why the Governments warn against BTC because it's not regulated, which is of coarse why we all love it, but these Government and Banking Agencies are and will use this as a reason to try to slap down some regulations on BTC. We are not going to get any sympathy from them as a result.

Now I think, again I'm no expert, if they do consider the Depositors Creditors and it works like the U.S. each and every Depositor will receive letters from the Bankruptcy Trustee asking you to submit a claim on what you think you're owed and if you do not respond you get nothing. Simply dividing the BTC up between account holders is not a viable way of handling the situation because it wouldn't be far if the guy who deposited 10 BTC gets paid in full and the guy who deposited 10,000 BTC gets a partial payout.

This being said the other question is does the Japanese Government even consider BTC property or a currency? If they don't then we are all SOL. If they do the funds will go to secured creditors first, unsecured creditors second, and again I don't think a depositor is considered a creditor at all but they'd be dead last.

Bottom line is I don't think any of us are going to have any rights to that found BTC IMO.  :-\

This is not the case, depositors at the bank become first in line as creditors to re-captialise the bank, its called a bail-in and lots of people in Cyprus got angry about it!

Does this still mean their deposits cannot be used to rebuild the company?

I also feel the only logical outcome should be a full return to account holders but based on the facts and the history of Gox I suspect this will not happen.  I really hope I'm proven wrong.

So here is my advice. Return the 200k immediately to people who lost their coins.

200k/650k = 30.77%.

Gox itself lost some 200k. This can be written off, as the entire theft was caused by their negligence.

Now, we have the Mt.Gox domain + brand name, with the interface and software. We can arrange an auction for these items.

Gox itself lost some 100k not 200K (at least that was the "official number" when things starting going to court)
200k/750k = ~26.6%.

OK... but still it will be 200/650, and not 200/750. This is because it was Karpeles who stole the coins and he should compensate the users. It is crazy to say that we should compensate the thief. So Karpeles can forget about his 100k, while the 200k should be immediately made available to the users.

That's not clear. If Mt. Gox were a regulated stockbroker under US law, they would be. If Mt. Gox were a Payment Services Agency under Japanese law, they would be. It's not clear whether they are in this case, though. An attorney asked by Fortune Magazine said deposits are customer assets, not business assets (http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2014/03/06/mt-gox-bitcoin-bankruptcy/).

This matters a lot. If they're customer assets, then they were stolen, and you can go after Karpeles' personal assets.

Bravo sir.

#2 - the full disclosure of the situation is critical not only to MtGox creditors, but to most of the Bitcoin community. Anything less than full disclosure dampens trust in the systems. Like it or not, all of the other exchanges that must hold client funds to facilitate trades can have just as much of a perceived risk as MtGox.

I think we still need to know exactly what happened with Mt. Gox before anyone can start coming up with an idea what we are owed. I'd like at least a portion of my coins back as soon as possible, but on the other hand- if some company can take over Gox, rehabilitate it, and over time, give me back all of my coins- I'm temped to go for that. Gox should not be Karples, and in the hands of capable investors- why couldn't they turn things around?

Other than that, I have the feeling that we as depositors are probably the last in line to get our money back anyway. :-(

No acquisition. Mt. Gox is going to straight liquidation. Coverage in WSJ, Reuters, etc.

Good...Hopefully Gox will be dead and gone forever.*
*After Magic Mark finds all of the coins.  :)

Is it? That's not why I love it. I'm not anti government.

Bitcoin will be regulated one day (probably soon), and I'll be glad when it happens. Do you want there to be unregulated banks operating which take your money, then disappear overnight and leave no trace? Regulation is a good thing.

"Regulation is a good thing" from a joint statement by Enron and Bernie Madoff.  :D

Bitcoins don't Need Regulation, businesses do. There is a big difference between those two.

I think we will never see our coins back.

There is nothing missing, everything is stolen

Who succeeded in their scams due to lax regulation.
Big business in the US constantly campaigns to reduce regulation.
Had either been properly regulated, they couldn't have done what they did.

No. You will definitely see some of your coins back. The percentage is not clear. That will be decided by the Japanese court. May be later, you will get a sweetener on top of it, after out of court negotiations.

Don't think so, since most of the 'evidence' says the coins were lost after the malicious attack even if there will be percentages returned it will be in low amounts. My estimate: >10%

This "digital currency with no government regulation" thing is working out GREAT for you guys LOLOL GET GOXXXED!

Between the claims of theft and gross mismanagement bringing MtGox down, the court, trustee and lawyer fees that need to be paid, I would summarize the total pool of funds waiting to be paid out to MtGox's customers as:

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