No one can force you to join a fork. No one. Sure you may end up as the only user on your side of the fork, in which case, what is the point?
Ultimately, the economic majority has the power to decide. If all the devs and all the miners decide to fork for whatever reason, and the economic majority decides they don't agree, the economic majority sells it's coins and the devs and miners are playing with worthless tokens.
In the case of a fork, it's highly likely that only one chain will survive. There are far, far more coins that weren't lost in the Gox implosion than there are coins that were lost. If the devs and miners decide to fraudulently manipulate the code to "save" those coins, I'm sure we will see massive dumping of coins on this fork and only Bitcoin will remain in the end. I know I will be selling my forked coins and if anyone is stupid enough to give me something of value for them, I will immediately purchase more actual Bitcoins with the money.
So, I'd like to see it because I hope that I would end up with more actual Bitcoins once everything is said and done. Those who choose the wrong fork will most likely end up with nothing but a harsh lesson about why Bitcoin exists in the first place. I don't think anyone is stupid enough to try and bail out Gox with a protocol change though.
Why would anyone want both chains to survive? It seems to me, miners would want no Gox fork and just about every investor in bitcoin, ever, (assuming the 500k+ sum) would want the fork. I dont doubt a lot of the coins would be dumped causing a temporary decrease in price, but the trust something like this would generate for me.. I never said anyone would want both chains to survive. As I said, there are far, far more non-Gox-lost coins than Gox-lost coins. Why would the majority of holders (non-Gox coins) want to bail out Gox users for failing to understand the implications of letting a third party hold your "bitcoins". Because the sheer quantity of it. Nothing more. Doesnt matter who, why, or where. If 500k coins were lost for some other reason, I dont see why people wouldnt support getting people their funds back. All this "trust loss' stuff isnt making even the slightest bit of sense to me. Sounds like people are getting boners on the thought of 6% less coins, for a whopping... 6% increase in value each? |
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I'm almost sorry I brought up the Karpeles Fork idea, but it is an interesting question, and shouldn't be swept under the carpet. I personally am completely against the idea. But the danger comes as was mentioned previously in offering pool operators/miners a bounty for running the forked code. It could be argued that the Gox event is so significant in size 750k that an exception in some peoples mind could be made. What is the price of the miners... 50%? The next 500 blocks found running the modified code each receive a bonus 750BTC per block found.... Very scary
As I said I am against this... Just putting it up for discussion.
Look by that logic any entity with enough funds can change bitcoin through buying out the miners. The point is that you would immediately and irreparably lose trust and the value of bitcoin would crash. It is a fact that you can fork bitcoin at any point in time changing anything and everything. You don't even need a majority for that. Altcoins are usually created with their own genesis block. You could also make an altcoin that uses the current bitcoin blockchain as a basis. Here comes the important bit: you as a user determine what the "right" protocol is. This isn't even a mining question btw. Such a profound change would likely split the community in half. You'd literally end up with some users supporting the "old" protocol and some with the "new" Of course I don't need to point out that this would crash bitcoins value and completely break the trust. Only if people support the change. Its not like some entity decides that we're going to give me a million BTC. People would have to support that. Where is trust lost when people vote for how their currency works? |
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Can you expand on this? I dont understand how it would damage anything.
I mean, assuming we KNOW these 500k lost coins were Gox, why cant they be restored if the community supports it?
In essence it would break trust. You trust that only 21 million coins will come into existence. Forking bitcoin to change funds in any way would immediately break the trust that that what you own is actually yours. Who is to guarantee that this change is a one time thing? Who is to guarantee that no government gets access to unlimited coins? Btw forking bitcoin is essentially like making an altcoin out of it. Only one of the forks can be the "real" bitcoin. This is not to say that both can't survive. But if such a major change were to be put through you can be certain that we'd end up with two bitcoins and this would break just about all trust Well, if 500k were deleted, then really the net amount is still the same. I mean, I dont think forking for small things or even individuals who send large amounts to the wrong address makes sense. But when its something as big as Gox, which may or may not, but for arguments sake, lost >500,000 coins? That seems worthy of a at least considering a fork to me. To me, this is a big plus to bitcoin if something like this manages to happen. I dont see why anyone would lose trust that what they have is theirs. Why guarantee it to be a one time thing? If in the future another mega-bitcoin company loses a million coins, they should have a fork considered then, too. Not just that. You'd try to open pandora's box. I highly doubt the devs would ever put that into a protocol update.
And even if they did at least a majority of miners would then have to move to that change.
No miners would run the new code unless they got a cut of the coins. That's all it would really take: Offer 10% of the freed goxcoins as extra block rewards, and *ping* the coins are back. The proof issue remains. If it were directed by a court, I could see it happening. Now *that* would be seriously dangerous to bitcoin: An actual sovereign interference in the money supply. We need to replace all the core devs with anonymous parties, untraceable by the court system. Um. That might not work out so well either. Proof-of-Ethics protocol not yet implemented. Never ever... I can understand people who have coins at gox would favor this, but like already said, this would undermine the fundamental priciples of Bitcoin. So what will be the next exception? I lost 1000coins back in the days, so why should gox people be compensated but me not? Ah btw, I don't can prove, that this address is mine... The principle of bitcoin is decentralisation. Those adresses are proven to be owned by gox, since they deposited on them back in 2011 for a proof of liquidity. If gox decides to appeal to the community it is up to the miners to decide if they want to fork or not. If you do not run a node, you have no say in the matter. If the community decides that it is better to recover 3% of the whole btc supply then they will do it, if not they won't. Easy as that. That's a decentralised majority vote and I would say it would be perfectly fitting in with the principles. If you don't want a fork, create your own node and run the old version. If 50% +1 nodes in the network join you, so be it. That said, as long as they don't comment on it there is no way to know if those coins are lost or not. No one can force you to join a fork. No one. Sure you may end up as the only user on your side of the fork, in which case, what is the point? Ultimately, the economic majority has the power to decide. If all the devs and all the miners decide to fork for whatever reason, and the economic majority decides they don't agree, the economic majority sells it's coins and the devs and miners are playing with worthless tokens. In the case of a fork, it's highly likely that only one chain will survive. There are far, far more coins that weren't lost in the Gox implosion than there are coins that were lost. If the devs and miners decide to fraudulently manipulate the code to "save" those coins, I'm sure we will see massive dumping of coins on this fork and only Bitcoin will remain in the end. I know I will be selling my forked coins and if anyone is stupid enough to give me something of value for them, I will immediately purchase more actual Bitcoins with the money. So, I'd like to see it because I hope that I would end up with more actual Bitcoins once everything is said and done. Those who choose the wrong fork will most likely end up with nothing but a harsh lesson about why Bitcoin exists in the first place. I don't think anyone is stupid enough to try and bail out Gox with a protocol change though. Why would anyone want both chains to survive? It seems to me, miners would want no Gox fork and just about every investor in bitcoin, ever, (assuming the 500k+ sum) would want the fork. I dont doubt a lot of the coins would be dumped causing a temporary decrease in price, but the trust something like this would generate for me.. |
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It's becoming more and more clear that the coins haven't been stolen, they've just lost the keys lol. Once this is confirmed, should be very bullish.
I don't think that the loss of those coins, per se, would have any effect. Think of the exchanges as water tanks where water represents bitcoins in the market, and the water level is the inverse price (how many BTC one can buy with one dollar). The tanks are connected by pipes at the bottom (coin withdrawals and deposits) so the hydrostatic principle (arbitrage) keeps the water level about the same in all tanks. If one pours more water into any tank (brings more coins to the market) the level in all tanks goes up (meaning the price goes down). The opposite happens if one takes water out of one tank (buys coins and puts them in cold storage). If the MtGOX theft did happen, then at some point in the past, someone siphoned most of the water out of the MtGOX tank to a private barrel. I the keys were lost, most of the water in that tank leaked out and was permanetly lost. In either case, Mark put some bricks into the tank (hid the theft) so that people would not notice the loss, and the water level was not affected. Then a few days ago the pipes out of that tank were closed (withdrawals were blocked), and the tank was disconnected and removed it from the system. That would not affect the water level in the other tanks either. If the theft happened, and the thief then dumped the water in other tanks (sold the coins in other markets), then there was indeed a net rise in the water level (a fall in market price); but that is past history. We may expect an effect only if the coins were stolen but have not been not sold yet EDIT: and are sold now. (This analogy is imperfect because it does not model the money flows, but hopefully it is enough to argue the point.) I am talking about a case in which the private keys have been lost, in which case 750k BTC has been taken out of the total money supply. If they have been stolen (but the keys are still known) it shouldn't have much of an affect. If the keys are lost, it brings up an argument to fork the block chain, and change the code to manually recover the money. To a new address. A lot of people would support it. (and many would be against)... talk about polarising the Bitcoin community. It won't work. Without the private key, how Mark could prove those are really gox's coins? Not just that. You'd try to open pandora's box. I highly doubt the devs would ever put that into a protocol update. And even if they did at least a majority of miners would then have to move to that change. Even attempting this would destroy bitcoin Can you expand on this? I dont understand how it would damage anything. I mean, assuming we KNOW these 500k lost coins were Gox, why cant they be restored if the community supports it? How do you KNOW? Who will JUDGE? Please leave the bitcoin world and go back to your local bank. It's much "safer". Are you an idiot or something? I asked a simple question with assumptions. Those assumptions are not the focus of the post. Absolute imbecile. |
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So let me get this straight, it only took a simple check of addresses associated with MTgox to completely undermine the credibility of the crisis plan document and show that Gox is in fact solvent.
Woah bit hard to get my head around this but that logically means that pre-announcement Gox coins should be trading at around .5 , yet are being traded for just 0.06 at the moment on Bitcoin Builder.com. 1000% profit? yes please I'm going to get over there now!!!
It however doesn't prove that they still have the private keys to access them. Effectively they are still lost, and won't help their solvency, if that is the case. I really don't get why people are speculating that gox has lost keys to wallets containing massive fortunes!!! there's absolutely no news to suggest this so it's like people can't handle the shock of the good news and are trying to stop the party. The fact is it completely discredits what was laid out in the crisis document and is an ultra bullish sign for anyone holding GoxBtc now!! Well has anyone proven the legitimacy of the IRC chat? With the addresses? |
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It's becoming more and more clear that the coins haven't been stolen, they've just lost the keys lol. Once this is confirmed, should be very bullish.
I don't think that the loss of those coins, per se, would have any effect. Think of the exchanges as water tanks where water represents bitcoins in the market, and the water level is the inverse price (how many BTC one can buy with one dollar). The tanks are connected by pipes at the bottom (coin withdrawals and deposits) so the hydrostatic principle (arbitrage) keeps the water level about the same in all tanks. If one pours more water into any tank (brings more coins to the market) the level in all tanks goes up (meaning the price goes down). The opposite happens if one takes water out of one tank (buys coins and puts them in cold storage). If the MtGOX theft did happen, then at some point in the past, someone siphoned most of the water out of the MtGOX tank to a private barrel. I the keys were lost, most of the water in that tank leaked out and was permanetly lost. In either case, Mark put some bricks into the tank (hid the theft) so that people would not notice the loss, and the water level was not affected. Then a few days ago the pipes out of that tank were closed (withdrawals were blocked), and the tank was disconnected and removed it from the system. That would not affect the water level in the other tanks either. If the theft happened, and the thief then dumped the water in other tanks (sold the coins in other markets), then there was indeed a net rise in the water level (a fall in market price); but that is past history. We may expect an effect only if the coins were stolen but have not been not sold yet EDIT: and are sold now. (This analogy is imperfect because it does not model the money flows, but hopefully it is enough to argue the point.) I am talking about a case in which the private keys have been lost, in which case 750k BTC has been taken out of the total money supply. If they have been stolen (but the keys are still known) it shouldn't have much of an affect. If the keys are lost, it brings up an argument to fork the block chain, and change the code to manually recover the money. To a new address. A lot of people would support it. (and many would be against)... talk about polarising the Bitcoin community. It won't work. Without the private key, how Mark could prove those are really gox's coins? Not just that. You'd try to open pandora's box. I highly doubt the devs would ever put that into a protocol update. And even if they did at least a majority of miners would then have to move to that change. Even attempting this would destroy bitcoin Can you expand on this? I dont understand how it would damage anything. I mean, assuming we KNOW these 500k lost coins were Gox, why cant they be restored if the community supports it? |
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Whether the bitcoins are lost or not is irrelevant. The fact is Gox has 1 million shareholders which could stand to lose millions. What will they do ? What will they chose ?
If 750k coins are lost or stolen, there is a 0% chance of getting money back. It would cost >1 billion dollars to acquire those coins. How long would it take them to recoup 1 billion? A long time. Like.. theyll never recoup it. So, what do they choose? Nothing. Either they have the coins or they dont. Can someone help me understand the whole wallet encryption thing? I never quite understood it. |
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I know we are all happy that Gox is gone, but am I the only one really in awe at what happened?
Im guessing when a lot of people predicted Gox' death it was by them losing market share and closing up shop... not by losing $400m USD of user money.. just crazy! All this time, we've been in awe at the incompetence and BS.. And this is the underlying reason. I almost feel bad for Karpeles. I'd have to see the final story, but in the version i'm imagining.. the guy is just dumb, not a criminal.
Then again, we dont have the fully story.. I'm just curious if anyone feels the same shock as I do that they really are.. finally, gone?
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These guys were trying til the end LOL Was just checking my emails from them and though this was funny..  |
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What if the two most recent bubbles were entirely manufactured by Gox in attempts to raise enough capital to pay off its liabilities.* And if so, how long will current speculative last?
/tinfoil hat
*Please don't counter with "but China." Almost all activities on their exchanges are by american operated bots.
I wonder if that would be possible... When gox was 90%, if Mark just made a bunch of trades without proper funds, say.. buying millions of dollars of bitcoin... it could trigger the media attention needed to help fuel (but not sustain) it.. So maybe, we could be as high as we are thanks to Mr. Karpeles convincing the market this is the proper price. /tinfoil hat |
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And here we are today. If this theory is correct, there are 750,000 less bitcoins in existence than what everyone thought.
I agree (in "speculating mode") with most of your post, but I fail to understand the 750K BTC LOST COINS theory (you're not the first to come up with it). If they were stolen, what makes you think they are destroyed? I would believe the thieves have secured and/or resold them already, so they are still in circulation, not destroyed. In the theory I just posted, the 750,000 coins aren't destroyed. It's just that the market has been behaving as though there were 750,000 more coins than there actually were since 2011. The "effective" monetary base of bitcoin would have just shrunken by 750,000 BTC. I apologize, I'm lost! Where the f#$% do these 750k BTC go? Lets say 750k coins were sent to gox over the years. 750k were hacked, so the exchange really had a 0 balance. However, those who had coins on the site still showed balances in their accounts, because when trading you arent actually transacting BTC every time, just numbers in your account. So, the 750k coins that existed still show up in everyones accounts. Now imagine the hackers coins make it back to gox, all 750k of them. Now there are 1.5m coins on the site, even though only 750k exist. Simple enough? |
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Those funds are no more. They have has ceased to be. They have expired and gone to meet Satoshi. They are late funds. They are vapor. Bereft of existence, they rest in peace. If Karpeles hadn't left them on the balance sheet, they would've been written off ages ago. They've rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. They are ex-funds.
They are not gone, just pining for the blockchain... Beautiful funds, those bitcoins. This whole matter is far from being concluded... there is a lot of sorting that still NEEDS to be done. I am sure that we DO NOT know the half of the financial situation of Mt. Gox and the extent to which it may be feasible to either reopen or to reimburse customers.... these details are going to be worked out in the coming weeks.. and maybe months. Dude, Gox was run into the ground. It was hollowed out completely. Karpeles didn't stop burning money until there was no more left to burn. It may take time to know the details or we may never know the details, but that doesn't change the relevant fact that Gox was bled dry. Denial is one of the stages of grief so it's ok, but acceptance is the last. See you there. I can picture it.. shovels of dirty fiat being thrown into a furnace. Every time he ran low, he just had to release some stupid press statement and cause a crash. Coffers refilled. GENIUS!! Finally a month ago he had no choice but to do the desperate.. disable withdrawals. Dirty fiat poured in only long enough to run that PoS for another 2 weeks. LOL |
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And here we are today. If this theory is correct, there are 750,000 less bitcoins in existence than what everyone thought.
For this to be true, those coins would have to have been lost. Where in this scenario did this loss occur? If the hackers mixed coins and eventually resent them to Gox to sell them, how do we conclude that they were then lost? Unless MK lost the private keys (unsubstantiated), those coins are still in the supply. I think hes just saying "750k less coins than were thought to exist, exist" As in, the 750k are gone to wherever and exist normally. However the 750k in Gox users' accounts? Well, it doesnt exist (But, they were actively traded on the exchange, so they "half existed" for awhile) |
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Where do you get such an idea from? |
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What would they gain from being a fractional reserve  Who's theory is this? It makes no sense, with due respect! R U saying that the price of BTC should bounce because 750 k are gone?... I dont.. see where he said that? What would they gain from being a fractional reserve Sounds more reasonable than anything else I've read, but its still hard to believe they could hang on this long with that kind of debt though. |
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Edit: Due to some angry Gox depositors, I've been advised to disclose that Karpeles was overstating the fact that he had "lined up" investors. The truth is, in a move of desperation, Mark asked several investors for a bailout, all of which seemed to have immediately notified the authorities once they learned the extent of the fraud, negligence or incompetence at Mt. Gox.
That is to say, my leak did NOT cost depositors their investments. There was no chance of a bailout. Please direct your anger at Mt. Gox, and please do not blame me for your losses. Even if you disagree with my reporting, there was nothing to gain by continuing to cover this up, but much prolonged agony for Bitcoin and perhaps additional damage for new depositors.
Thank you for your support and understanding. That was what he hyped up?? Really? |
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What would they gain from being a fractional reserve |
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Are you on his mailing list? The link to get on it seems to be down. Those who know of this news before hand will have a huge advantage http://eepurl.com/JgGy5No I'm not. I don't really think it's going to move the markets, whatever he comes out with. In fact, he had previously suggested he thought other companies such as Blockchain, SecondMarket etc were involved in the cover-up. The fact that he is now saying Gox acted alone is a positive. Well, I am not one to predict the future, but I think that the market will react aggressively if there is any hint of the coins still being around and not lost as per the previous document and current speculation. If this is the case, that only means one thing for market prices. Regardless of what comes out though, it will be an interesting read none-the-less. P.S. Having listened to the interview http://letstalkbitcoin.com/e87-the-captive-and-the-mountain/#.Uw6aWoV_e_w, I trust 2bitIdiots releases. The guy is an asshole and clearly wants to be effecting the markets, not helping anyone. Hyping up his release. What a loser. |
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You can do it Bitstamp. Just $2 more. I believe in you.
Theyve been trapped there for nearly an hour now, lol! Unless we get a friendly whale, I expect dumping  You can do it Bitstamp. Just $2 more. I believe in you.
Time for more pictures of trains. Good point, train pictures should incite a rally. However, I think this train matches us more.  Here we go boys; destination:  |
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You can do it Bitstamp. Just $2 more. I believe in you.
Theyve been trapped there for nearly an hour now, lol! Unless we get a friendly whale, I expect dumping You can do it Bitstamp. Just $2 more. I believe in you.
Time for more pictures of trains. Good point, train pictures should incite a rally. However, I think this train matches us more. |
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