Bitcoin Forum

Assume that all buyers would settle 100% of clients' funds and start MtGox again, who do you trust to run MtGox?

Another potential buyer is of course Facebook;

Facebook paid 19 Billion dollars for Whatsapp, that's $42 per user, an app that barely generates any revenue.

Facebook could pay $500 per verified MtGox account and $100 per unverified account

verified users = 550,000 * $500 = $275,000,000
unverified users = 550,000 * $100 = $55,000,000
Total = $330 million dollars

The current owner of MtGox get's a symbolic $1 payment for the deal, and the $330 million dollars are used to settle the missing coins.
MtGox clients can receive at most $440/BTC in this example
$330M/750K lost BTC = $440

Samsung Heavy Industries. 

It would not work, because they would need to buy over 740,000 BTC. How do you propose to do that without moving the market sharply upwards? It is called a short squeeze and it can very easily become a multi billion USD short squeeze.

The entity that acquires MtGox gives the clients an offer they can't refuse:
We give you $440 per imaginary BTC you have in your account balance and reset your BTC balance to zero.

So they don't need to buy the missing bitcoins in the market, they just settle the client's missing bitcoins with dollars.

There isn't a "No one" option. That would be my vote. Either that or "Jason Voorhees".   ;D

... and if some say no then what?

You should add Satoshi Nakamoto to your list of choices.  If the rumors are true, then I believe that only he has enough BTC to reimburse all of the clients' BTC deposits.

No one should.  If someone wanted to spend money to build an exchange why would they want to take on $100,000,000 worth of lost client money to do so?  

Well as a client I prefer to have $440 in my pocket, than 1 imaginary BTC.
I could use that dollars to buy REAL bitcoins in the market.

Whichever Japanese bank was handling Gox funds (it was the Shibuya branch now where did I put the name) under the guidance of the Japanese Central Bank, while the Crypto banking act is still being drafted.

Well you might have the Nakamoto SAtoshi option covered already ;)

Companies that are proven failures should be allowed to die the death they so richly deserve.

I don't understand why there is still such high interest in a stupid brand (magic cards?) that basically now only significances failure.

A new investor would pay for the client base, not the failed technology.

http://s2.postimg.org/bmy1ss55l/winklevoss_twins_10_e1302555749396.jpg

Holy shit! There are actually 4 of them!

So that`s only 186,000 BTC of debt per quadruplet! Totally doable.

True unregulated capitalism - let the infection that is MtGox die and rot...  please!

Rumours about USA seizure of MtGox bitcoin wallets, if that's true, FBI/NSA technically owns you bitchezz

alright, as long as they give them back

This is biased...

There is no answer for "Girl Scouts of America"...

I demand a recount of the votes!

In the a terrible moment of the online poker world, known as Black Friday in April of 2011, the US government shut down Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars and demanded all US players to be given back their money. It turns out PokerStars was legit and sent hundreds of millions of dollars dutifully back to US citizens. Full Tilt, on the other hand, had no legitimate banks to do business with for the last few years and had lost hundreds of millions of dollars either through crooked payment processors of government seized funds.

In the end, Pokerstars agreed to pay half a billion dollars in fines for ignoring a sneaky bank law and they got the rights to Full Tilt Poker. The US government, after years since its massive poker raid, is just now paying out around $180 million to US customers that never got paid from FTP. But the government wouldn't have struck that deal unless Pokerstars ponied up half a billion...

Looking at it now, I would say that poker players DO want regulation. So many people got screwed unfairly that I don't think you can compare the Full Tilt bailout to the 2008 bailouts. When Pokerstars agreed to step in and buy FTP, everyone thought it was a godsend. Nobody in the poker business wants an unregulated system now because there have been NUMEROUS other small fry Full Tilts who packed up and left with everyone's money.

Does this apply directly to cryptocurrency? Just as the 2008 bailouts dont truly apply to the FTP scandal, I don't think it applies to this either. Instead of regulation of currencies, the community can demand transparency. Regulation of these currencies sounds next to impossible so the headache that would generate would be immense.

I don't know if it would be better or worse for someone to bail out Gox. Like Full Tilt, thousands of honest people got completely screwed. We are realizing now the importance of KNOWING our money is safe, and hopefully it doesn't come to government regulation to make that happen.

Why would anyone buy MtGox?
This would be a mistake for the buyer.

The buyer would probably pay a symbolic price of 1 dollar to Mark Karpeles, and promises to settle all client funds with cash.
The true cost for the buyer would land on 100-500 million dollars as we don't know exactly how much money and bitcoin they miss.

What do the buyer gain when buying MtGox? They get 1 million clients, most of them are verified.

As I mentioned Facebook paid 19 billion dollars for WhatsApp, so 500 millions for the no.1 bitcoin exchange is peanuts.

Free the bitcoin !! Fiat!!

I had a hard time deciding on none or who I felt would be a good target to stick with the burned brand next.


the best thing is for it to be a community owned endeavor with 100% transparency, and block chain accountability and secuirty, meaning that every satoshi is accounted for every second of the way.  the name would have to be changed, to protect the innocent, of course

they were once #1, but were #3 when they dropped out of the race, don't forget most of the numbers were fudged anyway so they were probably not #3 either.



as for what Facebook they have lots of cash but not so much income, they have to spend the cash to generate income, preferable on things that fit with their business model.  I can't see an exchange fitting in, although I can see they using btc.   nevertheless, how they choose to value something should not be how you choose to value it.   

Yes Facebook is probably not interested in the bitcoin exchange business, but maybe Google or Nasdaq OMX is? :)

Irony of this statement is that the fist wave of balances of FT are scheduled to be paid tomorrow.  Hope it doesn't take that long for Gox people if there is a bailout

You forgot to mention the FBI - they already have 1/5 of the BTC liability covered ;) .

Pokerstars...if they can hire the right people to actually manage and run the operations.   They definitely have enough money to pay back what users have lost, and have a great reputation around the internet involving millions of dollars.

And most WA users now use Telegram, everyone I had in my WA list is now on Telegram. :P
In the case of Mt Gox, much more customers will leave, you wouldn't end up with 1 million active clients.

How about Ripple (and Mt.Gox) founder Jed McCaleb?

He still apparently owns 12% of Mt.Gox - it should be interesting to see how he becomes involved in this.
He seems to have had zero oversight over their operations after he sold (most of) it ...

Approximately half of the people on MtGox database are verified.  Just paying out customer balances would work out to a ridiculous amount per customer for simply acquiring the database.  Buying the database wouldn't solve any of the other issues which limit the potential for operating tGox as a viable business, such as the regulatory issues or creating new infrastructure - you'd be looking at significant additional costs for addressing those issues.

Realistically, you could likely start a new exchange from scratch for what it would cost to acquire the MtGox customer database.

@ OP: You should have let the vote run for longer! I would suggest one or a group of competitors like Bitstamp, Bitcoin.de, Kraken etc. bail the customers out and either share the assets and dissolve Gox or restart the company as a mutually run venture, sharing profits.

Other big Bitcoin companies/investment funds may actually also interested in the pie, like Lightspeed Ventures, Bitpay or BIPS, Blockchain.info, etc..
And hey! What about Mt.Gox- and Ripple founder Jed McCaleb and his www.secretbitcoinproject.com (http://www.secretbitcoinproject.com) ???

i think everyone is just dreaming here

if any of the aforementioned parties were going to open an exchange ,theyde just open one and start at 0.00

taking on a few hundred millions of debt wouldnt be a feasible plan for anyone

loooks like lost is lost for whatever money people left at gox

The soft assets alone (customer base of 1m+ verified customers) are easily worth 100's of millions. Someone will almost certainly buy the assets from the trustee. The only question is how much, if any, reimbursement of customer losses will be. Estimates seem to indicate cash/btc assets of about 18% of liabilities. That's not counting any lawyer fees, and they're already lining up over this one.  

Don't underestimate how tough it is to destroy a brand. We're still buying gas at Exxon and BP...

why would anyone pay $420mill (744k coin at ~ $570) for a website that has lost customer confidence, that does noy have banking licences in each country.

unless the person was japanese and dumb.. then and only then would they bailout mtgox.

its far easier and cheaper to just set up a new exchange and pay all the licences for the main countries of the world. to then be fully legit and more trusting to never freeze accounts due to the owners having bank account taken away. (and the other excuses gox used over the years).

and as for the previous poster saying soft assets are worth it alone..

mtgox has no soft assets. they lost peoples trust which has devalued the potential customer base a new investor would gain. and also the majority of customers are purely pseudonyms. without names and postal addresses to then sell onto spam/junkmail advertising services.

just looking at the trade volume, there is not 1mill active customers. so the soft assets are no where near the value you mention

No one will bail them out!! No point

I've lost 5000$ and as it seems the Cryptocommunity is just full of greedy selfish geeks(I'm probably one of them)..

Fuck cryptocurrencies, fuck "revolutions".. Actually fuck all kind of money! Viva El Che!

Some fuckers are Lucky others isn't.. And the one that are lucky often think that they're smarter or better in any way, that's what fucking disgusts me.

Max Keiser? You kidding?

My small BTC exposure just fcuking exodussed out with Gox.

Bankruptcy protection just means wiping the slate clean. No chance of recovering assets.

Whoever buys Gox will just get the customers accounts and the domain names. The administrators and lawyers will rape the company of the cash it has.

The platform is fcuked. By the time someone fixes it or replaces it, other exchanges will be up and the existing ones will take over the market share.

Who is going to trade with Gox again after wiping out so many people and $5bn off BTC market cap?

Value is sub $5m.

Just the KYC archives would be worth billions to someone like google, esp. combined with blockchain forensics and other google data mining efforts. But why would they pay off the holders?

Come to think of it, coughing up a few hundred mil to provide some recovery for holders and then watching where the money goes might be a reason :)

ditto

NSA would be the highest bidders of course ;) But they don't buy it directly, instead through several layers of middlemen so nobody finds out.
Or through Google that will handle over the info directly :)

I think the fact that most users of this forum voted "Nobody. Let MtGox die and clients lose all BTC and fiat." reflect very badly on the character of these individuals.

Everyone that got dooped needs to acquire gox including all famous bitcoiners and all creditors (they already should be given at least equity in the company)

Anyone who's cheering the demise of Mt.Gox and thinks that this is somehow "good for bitcoin" etc. has seriously misread the current situation.

6-7% of all bitcoins in the hands of unknown criminals is very, very bad for bitcoin and will have repercussions, both short and long term, that we can't even begin to fathom at this point.

Exchanges worldwide have already been served with subpoenas. There is ample evidence that large scale blockchain mapping efforts have been underway for quite some time now. Some groups already have evidence to at least partially substantiate Mt.Gox's "malleability" hacking claims.

Hopefully at least some of these coins will be traced/seized/recovered. It's difficult to completely obfuscate 6-7% of all bitcoins over several years without slipping up somewhere.

That's why we should consider inflating away the bitcoins held by thieves: raise the max bitcoins to 21 billions ( 1 BTC will be worth $0,5)

That is the beauty of bitcoin: No bail out, no too big to fail

And also a lesson to be very careful about centralized exchanges, users should never have large exposure on those platforms

... or maybe we could just peg them to Dogecoin at 1:1.

But seriously - this could be a difficult test for the 'fungibility' of bitcoin. If the coins are somehow tracked, should they really be considered untainted or could this lead to legitimization of the black- or redlisting that's been previously proposed?

Blacklisting 1 million coins implies that they are out of the market, therefore we need to raise the max limit of bitcoin supply corresponding ( 21 + 1 million btc = 22 million btc max)

To users with holdings in gox:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=489949.0  (Voluntary Reorganization Best Option for Us All)

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1yyrvf/open_letter_to_mark_karpeles_voluntary/

Now is the chance for the first time to build a truly transparent and crowd sourced exchange. 1 million people have the interest in doing so.
  No need for external investors. Take whatever money they still have, kick Karpeles out and elect a capable committee for running the safest and most transparent exchange ever.
  After a few years, there is a chance the fees will gather enough profit to pay the 1 million owners.


"Nobody. Let MtGox die and clients lose all BTC and fiat."  this is a stupid idea for everyone

While a GOX rebirth will encourage the newbies that a private bank can fail, but a public run exchange (like bitcoin itself) is better, and it cannot fail.

It will be a great example to the world. All the news/media proclaiming the death of bitcoin because of GOX, will look like idiots.

It's only 42% that have voted for this, most are actually voting for a bailout.  I wonder how many of them would be willing to put their money where their mouth is and contribute to a bailout fund.  Seems pretty silly to vote for what someone else should do with their money.

+1

Those who are looking for a bailout are in the wrong currency.

Risky move, but Winkle bros could maybe bailout Gox and that would have huge positive effect on price, I think it would skyrocket immediately and actually the could earn something.

Mt.Gox do not need to be bailed-out.
They have 22M cash and well-know brand.
No external investors need.
There is the clear and simple plan how to ressurect Mt.Gox:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=492748.0

Satoshi!

He could launder his premine and all are happy. Pure win-win.

That premine might not even be Satoshis. He posted bitcoin on a cryptography mailing list so anyone on that list could have potentially been an early miner.

once they hit a big mixer like satoshi dice or btc-e,it would be more or less impossible to prove they were anybodys from gox

also changing the core principals of bitcoin is wrong imo ,the coins can be split down to 0.000000001
which leaves 21 billion satoshis ? theres no need for everyone to keep thinking of full coins as they become
harder to mine and more valuable