i ll be there to quote you on this when we have more details of what really happened.

You should look a bit into history and who were the losers of WW2 and how there are over 50k US troops in various military bases all around japan. How many military bases does japan have in the US?
Does that not ring "occupation" within you?
Another good example is Germany.

If not the FBI, there is also the NSA and CIA, and the CIA has been operating for quite some time now in various nations.

If you think the US cannot control the Japanese gov in various ways, i have a bridge to sell to you.

He also said he has coins in there he does not have access to. Which could very well be interpreted as the US gov or some of it's agencies having confiscated those coins he is being uncertain of if he will ever get access back to them.

edit: along with a gag order restraining him from making this information public

This is just a thought and possibly not doable the way i imagine it, as i did not spend enough time to get behind all the complexity of how the bitcoin protocol works, so tread this more of like a question to the community

Let's assume some have kept the records of their transaction of BTC into MtGox

We would be able to see to which wallet addresses owned by MtGox the BTC were sent to.

If there are enough records on this, we should also be able to tell via statistical analysis, where most of those coins were sent to, which SHOULD be the cold storage wallets as probably more than 90% were sent to such cold storage wallets.

Furthermore, once we took some good guesses on which the cold storage wallets would be owned by MtGox, wouldn't we then be able to see in the blockchain where most of the coins ended up?


As i said, this is way above my head as i am no expert with the BTC protocol, so i am just throwing in an idea hoping for someone well read in how BTC works to either falsify or admit to it being a feasible way to find out.

This would however require the cooperation of all that lost their coins, so we can get enough such transactions we could then run a statistical analysis on.

No, that's not a stretch at all. This is among one of the most believable theories along with the theory of other powers interested in harming BTC have used Karpeles as a tool to execute this or blackmailed him to do this.

A stretch are theories which involve incompetence not realizing there are not enough BTC in cold storage + hot storage to back up the BTC funds in the MtGox server database for so long. This would reduce Karpeles and the MtGox team's IQ to less of fruit.

A stretch are theories that involve a scam artists managed to steal the bitcoins or malleability being the reason, which would show in many cloned transactions going out from MtGox easily to be followed via the blockchain if Karpeles released the books to some of the trusted experts in the community.
There is a reason why he does not so, and why he does not beg the trusted experts in the community, like antonopoulos, gmaxwell and the like to visit him and check his books.

A stretch is to believe that even if the 750k were gone, the exchange had no means to get those easily back via arbitrage it could have done and use a bot to trade on their exchange at no fees, allowing them to profit from the smallest price differences in buy/sell. As well as many other countless ways to manipulate using the exchange powers when you are desperate to get out of fractional reserve operation.

This leaves us only with a few options, all of which involve there having been some intentional attempt to harm BTC, with Karpeles either willingly participated in or having been blackmailed so badly, he saw no other way out than to succumb.

This is no excuse to Karpeles, knowing how this would mean the destruction of thousands of lives out there, however i am not sure myself how i would react if some men well dressed in black coats (NSA/FBI/CIA) visited me and made it clear that it is either their way or the highway...


edit: Adding to the above. It is my true belief (i could be wrong) that Karpeles is in real danger to fear of his life if the above is anywhere near accurate. Because if the above is close enough to the truth, they will want to get rid of all tracks, especially Karpeles and the gox records/books.
The only way to get rid of this risk, would be to release all information publicly as fast as possible. Or at least give the information to someone trusted in secret who would release it in such an event, and make it known to those powers.

While i have to admit i would love to see those FBI coins vanish back into the rightful owners' pockets, i can see why the core devs and many others, including myself would refrain from taking such dramatic steps to make it happen.

However, if it turns out that behind the 750k lost coins is also the FBI, i am all for it to take those dramatic steps. This would be nothing short of a declaration of war to BTC and we would have to defend ourselves if we were to be true about supporting BTC.

just my 2 cents

whatever the details are behind this...

part of the story will be that Karpeles was either put in this position by powers wanting to harm/kill BTC or he was blackmailed to act as an assassin, maybe by some well dressed men in black coats working for the NSA/CIA/FBI, making sure he will follow their assassination orders.

In any case, this man is responsible for thousand of ruined lives, and should have spoken out even if under some gag order knowing very well the implications of not doing so, because then he would have the full back up by the community rather than getting pressure from all sides now, rightfully...

Those that are going to haste to lead this investigation will MOST LIKELY be those that pushed him to act like this unless he was volunteering from the beginning to do the attack on BTC.
They will do so, because they will want to not have anything point towards their involvement in this case for various reasons.

There was definitely some manipulation going on with fake goxBTC and goxUSD created out of thin air and there was also a lot of arbitrage going on with exchange owners conspiring with Karpeles to get the job done faster.
All this added to harming BTC, and you should not listen too much to those that were very close to Karpeles and in the position of executing such. They are very likely trying to save their own asses with well written articles suggesting they are angels.

Hopefully we will know much more about what really went on in the near future and hopefully there will be a way for those with funds stuck in to get shares in gox without having to pay for the liabilities that are probably blown up with all the IOUs created.

Adding to the above. If Karpeles really lost the 750 _accidentally_ , he could have stepped forward and offered everyone with funds in the exchange some shares of the company to make up for their losses.

Trading shares of Gox along with BTC on the exchange would have allowed some which did not want the shares to at least get out some BTC out of this.

He of course did nothing of the above. So this goes more towards why the story presented here is MOST LIKELY false.


edit: In fact, he could STILL hand out shares of the company to everyone who has funds stuck in gox,  on a percentage basis relative to the funds invested IF and only IF he did not go completely bananas and create more IOUs than the supposed BTC that got stolen as well as the USD.

Unfortunately i think he did exactly that, create way more IOUs than the __supposed__ stolen funds.

Otherwise it would be two simple steps

1) give all with funds stuck a percentage in shares relative to their funds in gox and allow to trade shares along with BTC on gox

2) have the shareholders vote on a new CEO which is trusted by the community, giving gox as an exchange back it's value as with Karpeles as CEO the value would be ZERO and the exchange would close again soon

done!

Amazing point. good to know that there are some brains out there thinking still. We should certainly be able to see if double transaction were made if malleability was the reason he lost that much...

Finally someone who posts a somewhat believable theory of what happened. But i can almost assure you that even this theory is most likely false.


We are to swallow that Karpeles had 750k BTC that went lost long ago, when BTC was worth 10-100, and we are to believe that he kept his mouth shut about it, to not harm his customers' funds by operating a fractional reserve secretly.

I am not buying this, because even if this was the case, with all the arbitrage he has/could have done for sure and be it just to return the funds back into the exchange, and certainly also had the exchange do it's own trades at no fees, those funds should be long recovered.

It seems to me like every time we falsify some stupid theory not standing a chance when approached from every angle, some Roger Ver or some other entity which surprisingly had very close contact to Karpeles pops us to deliver another story he hopes would be easier for us to buy.

I am fed up with the lies and want to know what went really on.


At this point, i start to believe that Roger Ver and his gang knew very well what was going on, and are now in a process of saving their own asses.

Why would they restore 750k  BTC that got lost and help thousands of people restore their savings? I DON'T KNOW, BUT MAYBE BECAUSE IT WOULD FEEL LIKE IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO.  

either way, it does not even make sense to discuss this, because this is not even in the snowball's chance of hell territory of what really happened as i pointed out.

I agree. I can swallow everything else, but this particular point is nonsense/not well thought out. Again, i give the benefit of doubt.

There is no way 99% of the coins would vanish slowly without them going "Oh wait, 30% of the coins in our database are NOT backed by real BTC we are holding in all our wallets combined"

Maybe if not at 30% at 50% they SURELY should have noticed SOMETHING.

It's a complete garbage theory which no judge in court would buy even for a second, even if Karpeles had the IQ of fruit.
He cannot be THAT stupid given he knows how to program and has been running some business before.

For the incompetence theory to hold, we would have to be looking at the stupidest people walking earth to run MtGox.

If not karpeles, SOMEONE there would have noticed....

I agree. I can swallow everything else, but this particular point is nonsense/not well thought out. Again, i give the benefit of doubt.

There is no way 99% of the coins would vanish slowly without them going "Oh wait, 30% of the coins in our database are NOT backed by real BTC we are holding in all our wallets combined"

Maybe if not at 30% at 50% they SURELY should have noticed SOMETHING.

It's a complete garbage theory which no judge in court would buy even for a second, even if Karpeles had the IQ of fruit.
He cannot be THAT stupid given he knows how to program and has been running some business before.

For the incompetence theory to hold, we would have to be looking at the stupidest people walking earth to run MtGox.

If not karpeles, SOMEONE there would have noticed....

nonsense theory

In case of such a large loss of BTC he could if he was able to prove without doubt that this cold storage is his, work together with the trusted core devs and the community to give him back control of those lost coin in an update of the client.

It should not be too hard to prove that such a huge cold storage is his, especially if they kept some records of the transactions, along with other records a security expert could easily figure out.

nothing of what karpeles spouts out makes sense or connects in a rational way, which is an indication of lying.

The theory of them having lost so many coins on some not registered scam artists, when they were asking an arm and a leg for verification, only a few fools would buy.

Karpeles would have to BEG some of the trusted core devs like gmaxwell and others like antonopoulos to audit all the moves from the supposed cold store wallet to the supposed scam artists that supposedly stole it.

He of course does not do that, but instead represents us with an image of his cat.

He will also have to show us where he channeled all the USD and be audited by trusted members of the community. Again, he should beg for this, but instead he will keep sending us more pics of his cat and say sowwy.


Furthermore, as i explained several times, this prick has created probably WAY more BTC out of thin air than was ever stolen from this exchange supposedly.
This is the ONLY explanation why the price on MtGox went down to 91.5 USD when other exchanges were at 500-650. Only a few insane fools would have sold at this price, certainly not enough to push the price so far down.

He even kept asking for more deposits to fraud people out of there money during that time, as well as getting more real BTC into his hands via the builder tool that allowed people to interchange fake goxBTC for real BTC.

He also created insane amounts of fake USD/IOUs simply by entering a few numbers in the MtGox databse is my believe when looking at the sharp swings.


All this has to be investigated, and see WHERE TO he channeled all the REAL BTC and USD and WHEN EXACTLY he did that and WHO got hold of it. We might be able to figure out SOMETHING even if he used a mixer service to try and conceal the tracks.


Furthermore, if they "just" lost the passwords to the cold storage, and they can without doubt prove that it is THEIR cold storage, i am pretty sure the core devs in agreement with the community could release an updated client which gives them back the control over those coins, or even if i am wrong, this would have been a POSSIBLE way to save them he should be seeking to make it happen.
Of course this prick does not do any of the above, so i am convinced that this theory some put forward is out of the way as well. He does not even attempt to do anything in this regard.


His only thoughts now are how he will be able to get away with some new identity and possibly a surgical face-lift which will change his appearance so no one will recognize him after, along with some diet to lose weight, all sponsored by the powers that want to harm BTC.

To make myself clear. I do not think Karpeles only created BTC out of thin air for the _supposed_ BTC he lost to _supposed_ scammers.

I believe he created WAY WAY more goxBTC out of thin air than most would dare to think. Pushing the price that low, some of the users now might own incredible amount of fake goxBTC far above the 750k he mentions. Same goes for the USD part.

In such a case, you cannot simply trust their books. But who can you trust then? Taking the company just to find out you owe 1 billion BTC later and who knows how much USD will NOT be fun...

I am no expert in this just have a natural tendency to be paranoid.... So let me ask you this question. How do you find out ALL the liabilities a company has if the company itself has tampered with the books?

Is there a source where you can look up all liabilities a company has that is __100%__ accurate and would cover you legally under any circumstances?

It CAN be much worse. liabilities are not just what they owe to the customers. Plus, how do you know if he did not lie about how many customers are out there he owes how many USD/BTC to?

What if he just created a few billions fake BTC and passed them onto him as the owner. His personal bitcoins stored on MtGox. What if he sold those in return for real USD? What if he also created fake USD and sold those for real BTC? It gets so mind boggling i cannot even think it out.

You have to be VERY careful with this rat. This is not someone who was out just for the money, but a paid BTC assassin by someone high up....

The truth could be way way more complex than we like it...

Do you see what this means? At first it seems to make no sense...

How can Karpeles have his personal bitcoin stored in the exchange, YET it is temporarily unavailable?

If he has bitcoin stored in the exchange which he owns, he surely has the private keys to it, right? right! But then it would be AVAILABLE to him.

So we conclude he does not have private keys to that bitcoin on the exchange. So that bitcoin is NOT real. It's fake bitcoin he created simply by entering numbers into the database, which would explain the sharp decline to 91.5 USD as pointed out above.

Noone sane would have sold at 91.5 USD when other exchanges were at 500-650.

He created BTC out of thin air and pushed the price down, in order to get more fools to buy that low priced goxBTC via the builder for real BTC he would then keep dumping.
edit: Also to get more fools to deposit more funds into MtGox for him to grab more real USD

Those buying the fake BTC were trying to multiply it with the sharp up and downs in that period and resell to others trying to do the same in this ponzi which just ended when MtGox shut down and the last one to hold those fake goxBTC got burned.

the problem with all the above proposals is that we do not know all the liabilities of MtGox.

What if there are hidden liabilities that would make MtGox extremely toxic to own?


Otherwise it is a simple 2 steps process

step 1 ) replace Karpeles with new CEO/s which is/are trusted by the community

step 2) get everyone who has funds stuck in MtGox to agree on taking a share of the company he will be able to trade on MtGox along with BTC when it opens up again. Those shareholders are the new owners. AGAIN __only after checking if there are other liabilities hidden behind MtGox we do not know of__


I wish it was THAT simple. However, if Karpeles did something more sinister, like create fake BTC and fake USD out of thin air by entering numbers in the MtGox server database, then this is getting too complex for me, and it will require some brainiac to unwind this and get to the most righteous solution in who gets how many shares.

Unfortunately i fear that he has done exactly this for two reasons.

Reason number one being the price of BTC has fallen down to 91.5 USD at it's low. This however makes no sense at all. Not even the stupidest of all idiots would have sold his BTC for 91.5 USD when other exchanges had it at 500-650.
I strongly believe he created fake BTC and took the price down to 91.5 USD in order to get more real BTC from people trying to buy this fake BTC at low prices in an attempt to profit from the sharp up and down, multiplying it and then reselling it to others attempting the same. A ponzi which just bursted when gox closed shop.


Reason number two is this strange comment


how can bitcoin he owns and which is on the exchange not be accessible to him? How can it be temporarily unavailable? He should have the private keys to those bitcoins if it was real BTC.

This to me means that the BTC is NOT real, but fake. Just numbers in the MtGox database. I already wrote a full article about this earlier.



I hope strongly that i am completely off and it really is just an easy 2 steps process to restore gox and give those with funds stuck something in return they can hope on profiting of in the future. But PLEASE make sure you examined MtGox from all sides before deciding to become owners of this potentially HIGHLY toxic business which might lead you into bankruptcy....

Because they would get access to the servers and software running this exchange plus the customers and volume IF and only IF a new trusted CEO would lead it. Many old customers which left when the withdrawal delays appeared would return possibly if they trusted the new CEO.

If they go by your option, they would be just one out of many new exchanges out there, with little chance of ever getting to the volumes MtGox had.

MtGox is infamous now, mainly because Karpeles runs it and because of the lost funds. Both of those issues however would be fixed the way i proposed it.
So if those issues were to be fixed, then who would NOT want to hold a share of an exchange with high volumes and a bright future?


You think you can just start a new exchange and get all the volume? You won't, because you need volume in order to get new customers which you will never have as there are already other exchanges which offer that like bitstamp and btc-e.

With MtGox it is a completely other scenario. With the right steps, it's old volume can return and even surpass it when withdrawals work without delays.