Oh, fuck off.  Shit or get off the pot.  I'm sick of this kind of bullshit.

Yes.  In a Bitcoin world, you really only get one chance to be trusted, and they blew it.  I can put up with all manner of technical screw-ups and inadvertent problems when they don't impact trustworthiness.  Deliberately holding coins hostage out of spite, though, even for a few hours, is completely beyond the pale.

First use requires actual use.  I don't think what Gox did constitutes a use in commerce, as it did not identify the source of goods or services, but instead, was used as a generic term to refer to something they (as well as many others) were selling.  I.e. to the extent a trademark registration followed by no subsequent use is an asset, it isn't worth much.


Actually, it generally creates a presumption that the "first horse" has dibs.  That isn't necessarily conclusive. 

I think the term Bitcoin was practically born genericized because of its uninterrupted use by the public at large without any attempts to enforce the "trademark" against others.  As for whether I'd personally spend a few K to trademark Bitcoin, probably not.  If I thought it would be useful, I'd approve of someone with an interest in the term doing it, at least if I knew they weren't going to use it maliciously, which I probably wouldn't.

The only record I've seen is this in Europe.  I've seen no evidence they've actually used the mark in commerce as a mark indicating products unique to Gox.  Generally, a trademark must identify the products of the specific entity claiming ownership of it, and that entity must have control over the use of the mark.  Gox has effectively abandoned the mark by never attempting enforcement, not that an enforcement attempt would have been likely to succeed.

I suppose it's possible an intellectual property troll will somehow end up with possession of whatever rights they have in the term, but I wouldn't worry about it much unless it actually happens.

The trademark registration does not register actual ownership of a mark, but merely puts the first filer (in most jurisdictions) basically "first in line" with their claim of ownership, such that an accused infringer does not have a defense of lack of notice.  Of course, this being a registration in Europe, Gox would have to be able to demonstrate that it actually used this mark in commerce in at least one EU country.  And of course laws vary by jurisdiction so the exact impact of their use in commerce, assuming it exists at all, might vary in unpredictable ways.

Frankly, the proposal is antithetical to everything the Bitcoin community values.  It is like suggesting a synagogue raise money by holding an all you can eat pork BBQ.  It doesn't take long to reject it.  First, even if there were a way to impose a top-down solution on Bitcoin (how would this happen), nobody has even presented a proposal detailed enough to judge it.

The moment we're trusting some dictatorial authority instead of the protocol itself, we might as well just be trading Linden dollars or some wholly imaginary currency.

I think some consensus-based best practices might be in order, but you simply can't expect that everyone will accept even those, and as long as people insist on doing dumb things like leaving money on exchanges and "investing" in Ponzis, there's not much a central authority can do.  How are you going to stop Bitcoiners from doing whatever they please?  Guys with guns?

Let's leave that kind of thing to governments.

Because they're kind of lurking in an ambiguous area where their failure to deliver can be seen as just a breach of contract rather than fraud, so the criminal authorities aren't doing anything about it.  Also, as a breach of contract, you aren't likely to get attorney fees, so no lawyers are really swarming to get involved.  And the legal fees for pursuing it are (except for a few of the bigger fish) not likely worth what is usually going to be a small claim.

There's the class action issue, too, but it's tough to argue everyone subjected to BFL's delays has been harmed in the same way.

So this is the kind of questionable operation someone might commit who was inclined toward dishonesty but doesn't want to go back to prison.

What antivirus software?  I have Sophos and it doesn't say anything derogatory about it.

Yeah, I'm not really worried anyway (despite the general rule that any service that goes down goes down for good).  I probably wouldn't have even noticed it without it being discussed here.  It's just petty and spiteful and I certainly had nothing to do with any of this bullshit.

I could hardly imagine a worse example than the censorship body known as the Comics Code Authority, that bowdlerized and basically wrecked comics as anything but a corporate, commercial product for literally decades.  Unlike what Congress was considering, which would certainly have been found unconstitutional if fought in court, the CCA was not a government body and therefore not subject to constitutional review.  Therefore, it could basically do whatever it wanted, as it was a "voluntary" association.

Further, while some kind of self-regulation would be nice in Bitcoin, look at the leading lights, such as they are.  Even the Foundation supposedly set up to serve BTC interests turns out to have had some of the biggest crooks in the nascent industry on it.  Given past history, how would the community ensure that such an authority would serve BTC interests and not simply the selfish interests of the members of the authority?

Apparently gone with the money too.  If he was going to shut it down in some kind of butthurt temper tantrum with nothing to do with 90% of the people with deposits there, least he could have done was return the money first. 

Sure is a lot of that happening lately.

I am at a near total loss how things could possibly have happened the way Gox is claiming they did.  It is not exactly known for transparency, and now we know why.  There is no way what happened is consistent with even minimal standards of competence and honesty.

The poster referenced "accounts."  Technically, there is no such thing as a Bitcoin "account."

Those aren't real "bitcoins."  Those are just IOUs from Mt. Gox.  The thieves apparently stole (if we are to believe Gox) directly from the actual coins Gox had, and they had a so-called "cold wallet" that apparently just automatically topped off the cold wallet.  Allegedly, this went on for a lengthy period of time and these morons didn't notice until the money was all gone.  How this could conceivably have occurred without staggering incompetence or dishonesty is a mystery to me.

I think from what we've seen of Gox and the limited discussion of Japanese bankruptcy law, that the current management would fairly easily be demonstrated to be incompetent and/or dishonest and could be removed.  It'd be up to someone with an interest in it to do something about that, though.

The only problem with that is that it seems likely that would result in the shutdown of Gox, as while the current management is incompetent and corrupt, there probably isn't anyone else capable of running their servers held together with baling twine and bubble gum.

I can't say I think much of the opening of the complaint:


First off, BTC isn't a virtual currency, it's a digital currency.  A virtual currency is generally something with one issuer, like Linden Dollars, and that issuer can issue more at any time.

Second, it's absurdly self-defeating, when you are suing someone for losing something of value, to claim that it was worthless.  Okay, so Gox lost something completely worthless.  What do you want the court to do?

Once you get to the end, the prayer for relief itself is more or less well done, but something like Bitcoin is already going to be complicated to explain to a judge without getting things wrong right out of the gate.

Generally, the whole point of establishing a corporation is to shield your own personal wealth from actions against the corporation if it fails.

However, considering what a good jerb Gox did keeping its "cold wallet" and "hot wallet" separate, how good a jerb do you think they did keeping Magikarpeles assets separate from Gox assets?

My guess is they did a really shitty job, just like they did a really shitty job at everything else.

Good jerb!

Hope for his sake that he's stocking up on lube.

Someone's saying everyone hates environmentalists?  Put up your dukes.

It should bother us more that the only "news" man who actually does news is a fucking comedian.

It's one of those distinctions very few people in the real world will care about.  It reminds me of Walt in Breaking Bad insisting that he was a drug "manufacturer" and not a dealer as if this were a moral or even legal distinction.