Phoenix Bitcoin Meetup - March 5th, 7-9 PM.

This month the meetup will be sponsored by Altura Cafe, in the food court of the Fiesta Mall. (http://www.shopfiesta.com/store-directory/altura-cafe)

Altura Cafe accepts Bitcoin and will be providing a 15% discount to purchases made using Bitcoin. They will also be providing free regular coffee.

Please see the sign at Altura Cafe in the food court for directions to the location of the meetup at another location in the mall. A server will be available to take orders at the meetup and payment in bitcoin, for delivery to the meeting room.

I think a motion to remove Karpeles, given the history of misleading statements and losing 740k BTC, is likely to be successful.

While we no longer need to force them into bankruptcy, we will continue to employ an attorney in Japan to represent the interests of the depositors.

Evidently any creditor can demand certain information from the trustee as well as make other motions.

In particular I am anxious to have the attorney working on protecting the interests of bitcoin holders.

This lays out the case for breach of fiduciary duty quite nicely.

We can hope, I suppose, that the 740k BTC are "temporarily unavailable" and "not lost yet" because they are incorporated into a trust which the bankruptcy court will have control over.

If true, I guess we can also hope that Mark Karpeles spends some significant time in prison due to his recent alleged attempts at manipulation and deceit.

Yes, absolutely. The only way we will finally determine what happened is when Karpeles is answering questions under oath in a court of law and all documents and evidence have been obtained and examined.

It would be nice to see a lot more work on forensic analysis of Mt. Gox transactions, and less effort on pointless hot air, I agree. We have a public blockchain for goodness sake.

While I tend more toward the Libertarian view, I like the sentiment. Bitcoin was supposed to free people up for peer-to-peer transactions without government interference, not contribute to it.

There are several threads on this very subject in Legal. In particular, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=487340 deals with an action to force them into involuntary bankruptcy.

It is underway. I will be posting more broadly to recruit more plaintiffs tomorrow, but feel free to PM me in the meantime.

Mt. Gox will be going bankrupt soon, either voluntarily or involuntarily.

Sounds like it is technically feasible, though would require the consensus of the mining pool.

If in fact it can be shown that Gox had them and then lost control, I think one might make an argument for it, given it represents 6% of coins mined to date.

There is also the fact that some sort of procedure for implementing this would thus provide a mechanism for such dispute resolution outside the legal system, which could prove very attractive to libertarian minded folks.

But it does lead into the whole debate over coin tainting, etc.

I was just thinking more about potential solutions to the Mt. Gox situation. Firstly, this is assuming a disaster has occurred and that Mt. Gox has lost control of its cold storage and that noone else has the private keys (thus, they aren't stolen). This is also assuming that the full records of Mt. Gox transactions can be obtained (possibly by subpoena in bankruptcy proceedings).

Under these circumstances, if a majority of miners agreed, would it be possible to hard-fork the bitcoin protocol to just nullify their transactions using their cold storage after a certain date and implement appropriate transactions using a wallet under supervised control to obtain an equitable settlement for all parties?

It seems unlikely this disaster has occurred, but I guess we shouldn't underestimate the level of incompetence in handling there at Mt. Gox.

Good points about contracts vs. regulation. A hard fork would also be possible invalidating the BTC which were stolen. Common law holds that what you steal is not yours to give or sell.

Assuming the theft was large enough and the mixing extensive enough, this would interestingly have the effect of probably decreasing everyone's BTC by some small amount.

Please read the several threads under Legal.

Anyone here also interested in joining the involuntary bankruptcy proceeding? This would at least get the air cleared with respect to what has happened, likely seize the Mt. Gox officers assets at a minimum, and return something (though it will take time).

If so, please see this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=487340.0

Starting to prepare to do this -- at early stages. Please PM me if you have a substantial debt owed to you by Mt. Gox (let's say $20,000 USD or 40 BTC or more) and wish to join in an involuntary bankruptcy proceeding.

I know there is much discussion here and elsewhere about the wisdom of this, etc. My view is that it will take some time and is likely best to start now.

I thought so too, but am having a hard time finding it. Any links appreciated.

This is why the involuntary bankruptcy proceeding is needed.

I think this is quite likely. His comment was in response to the question: "How much did you lose yourself?".

His answers about the document as a whole were vague, that it was legit "more or less".

This is a good point. It seems quite likely he is referring to his own wallet, not that for Mt. Gox.

On the other hand, the comment about the document was that it was legit, "more or less", which is quite vague. He used the same expression earlier when describing whether he was doing ok, when he really wasn't. The earlier comment in this thread that he is just trying to avoid answering questions seems fairly accurate.

Perhaps we'll get some clearer answers when the bankruptcy court gets to hear this case.