If Mark holds a private key to this address, then the claim of MtGox being insolvent was simply false.

OOps: empty final balance

kjj,

Thanks for your thoughts. I can't fully understand them (I have a language barrier and no knowledge of bitcoin mechanics / technicalities / jargon). But at least you came up with some grounds for methodology of calculating / estimating the level of malleability exploit used to trick exchanges.

I have funds at Gox (or ''had'' in case they are gone). I really want to find out what is going on / what was going on. While trying to find it out I want NOT to rely on leaked recovery plans (which may or may not represent the reality).

Any help will be appreciated that will lead to discovery of the amount that was extracted from exchanges through malleability bug.

Okay, this assumption may not be valid, but at least we might start to try assessing the damage done to exchanges from here.

I am not the expert on bitcoin. I think a geek should conduct a study on this subject to arrive at a methodology of assessing the scale of malleability exploit.

If a good methodology is devised and a proper study run, someone might at least be able to confirm or debunk claims that were written in the ''leaked'' ''document'' that says +700k coins are gone.

Goat, lack of quality communicattion from MtGox and halting trades indicates that what you say is correct, but let's wait for things to become more clearlier. It is a matter of hours or days perhaps.

You have unfinished business with Mark (they neither apologized nor compensated you for reporting as a terrorist), but let us just wait till we have something more objective than ''leaked'' documents to which Gox has not reponded / which Gox not commented.

If your hypothesis (privkeys lost) proves to be correct then the big guys had every incentive not to help - they run competitive businesses. They could simply turn their backs on Mark without negative consequences for themselves.

Assuming Mark somehow recovers the privkeys and Gox becomes operational, the big guys who used ''insolvent'' in their statement may find themselves in an akward position (statement issued, trading halted = losses for Gox).

Solvency and its opposite (insolvency) are precise financial analysis terms that can be read only from businesses' balance sheets (most widely solvency ratio* is calculated like this: ''total assets/equity''; solvency unlike liquidity relates solely to the balance sheet structure). I doubt guys who signed the statement ever bothered to look at Gox financial statements.

It will be interesting to see how things develop in case Gox recovers the privkeys (if this indeed is the case). I smell lots of cases for defamation and causing damage.


* solvency ratio for financial institution is typically low: central banks solvency ratio ranges 0.5 - 2%, commercial banks 5 - 7%, broking companies 1 - 3%

That would mean that valid transactions do not appear on blockchain - I consider this rubbish.



I agree with this.

One needs to pair those two transactions (find them in the blockchain). There would be a few non-complex criteria for finding such malleable-looking transactions:
- amount of both must match
- date range should not be broad, e.g. the second transaction cannot be older than 1 day / week / month than the first one
- both transactions must be spent from an exchange address (not sure how to find such addresses but my guess is that such addresses generated a huge number of transactions for a short time)
- others

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It is a perfect research project for applicants who want grants from TBF.

One bails out businesses that are operational. MtGox business was to facilitate trades. Maybe there were bail out discussions between Mark and potential investors. If there were such talks, they surely ended on the moment trading was halted or a few days prior to halting trading.

At the moment there is no business to bail out.

Let's say person X (attacker) withdrew e.g. BTC 666.696969 from Gox (or any other exchange). The same person X needed to claim exactly the same amount (BTC 666.696969) from Gox a week or two weeks later, right?

What could be done is to run a query on blockchain data to identify such transaction pairs, initiated from addresses that once had a fairly high value of ''total received'' (indicating they were exchange address) and sent the same amount (BTC 666.696969) twice within a certain period of time.

If someone identifies such pairs, then we might at least get the idea of the maximum possible malleability threshold that went on the Bitcoin network.



We are not sure and cannot be sure at the moment. The malleability can very well be a real thing or just an excuse. Someone brainy needs to investigate this through blockchain data analysis.

Dear KrakenTrader and Yunus,

Are you employees of Kraken or just plain idiots? - please feel insulted. My brain is in physical pain while I read your messages.

If the guy has problems with Kraken let him speak. Do not try to intimidate him with bitcointalk code of conduct.

Now we are getting somewhere.

Let's say person X (attacker) claimed BTC 666.696969 from Gox. The same person X needed to claim exactly the same amount (BTC 666.696969) from Gox a week or two weeks later, right?

Is it really so hard to run a query on blockchain data to identify such transaction pairs, initiated from addresses that once had a fairly high value of ''total received'' (indicating they were exchange address) and sent the same amount twice within a certain period of time?

-------------------------------------------------------------

If someone identifies such pairs, then we might at least get the idea of the maximum possible theft / fraud / scam threshold.

My guess too was when reading this that MT was blackmailed or something similar.

24 hours lapsed since halting the trading...

Time to bed. Hopefully tomorrows things will be clearlier.

BUMP.

Can someone smarty please calculate the damage done to exchanges through exploiting malleability (claiming and receiving bitcoins twice).

With all this FUD going on recently (and no communication from Gox) I am really confused about damage supposedly suffered by Gox (750k BTC)

Yeah, after a re-think I think this whole conversation is a fake.

I wonder if there are other unidetified yet attack vectors (like malleability) that can be used in futire hacks / scams.

Read this: Mark Karpeles said he didn't know how much of his personal coins was lost before taking Gox's site off: http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-shit/179038-my-conversation-mark-karpeles-mtgox-2.html#post2164682


I do not think one can expect Gox's website to become operational soon  

Maybe.

The problem is Gox isn't communicating anything! I could live with my funds lost but at least I need to have this info from the official source.

I don't know if it matters. I have no clue about Japanese law. Will creditors holding fiat be satisfied prior to those holding btc or the other way round?

In case Gox is broke, is it better to hold fiat or BTC there? What are proc and cons for those two options?