"We learned that Mark only had one bank account, shared with Mt.Gox's customers"

[NorrisK]

Wow, this is a very interesting story. Follwing that reddit page from now on, nice to see some insiders presenting facts!

What part of your life history makes you think some guy on an Internet forum is "presenting facts"?

Fair point.. Maybe I used the wrong wording there..

Let me rephrase it to "Following that reddit page from now on, it is nice to read some stories about Gox from someone who claims to be close to the inner circle of GOX."

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[ajareselde]

That's what happens when incompetent people try to run a multi million dollar bussines, and it doesn't surprise me the least how the
whole scandal happened, since they were over their heads, and before were a tiny magic the gathering trading cards market. I'm only happy that i pulled my money
out while the time was still right.

cheers

[Cryptopher]

That's what happens when incompetent people try to run a multi million dollar bussines, and it doesn't surprise me the least how the
whole scandal happened, since they were over their heads, and before were a tiny magic the gathering trading cards market. I'm only happy that i pulled my money
out while the time was still right.

cheers

I think part of the problem was that a lot of people who invested their money/coins into the Gox machine didn't know or fully appreciate the exchange's background.

It was simply a money making opportunity for many investors, but profit-taking could not be sustained.

With the right management and model in place, Gox could have been a serious driver in helping people get access to their first coins.

It's so easy in hindsight, and foresight is difficult when you're blinded by the crazy gains. Even in Gox's dying moments, people were shorting like crazy, trading Gox coins for Good coins etc, hedging on the hope that one day they may get them back.

You did well to get out when you did.

[ajareselde]

I think part of the problem was that a lot of people who invested their money/coins into the Gox machine didn't know or fully appreciate the exchange's background.

It was simply a money making opportunity for many investors, but profit-taking could not be sustained.

With the right management and model in place, Gox could have been a serious driver in helping people get access to their first coins.

It's so easy in hindsight, and foresight is difficult when you're blinded by the crazy gains. Even in Gox's dying moments, people were shorting like crazy, trading Gox coins for Good coins etc, hedging on the hope that one day they may get them back.

You did well to get out when you did.

People were trading gox coins for "real" ones indeed, but that was just natural human reaction where greed kicks in, and people go for all or nothing method.
I'm not saying that Gox couldn't be serious giant exchange, but i'm kind of glad it didn't, because with their willy bot and total colapse, they have in fact created the
wind strong enough to force notion of bitcoin to people and news media. Ultimatively, w/o Gox, i doubt we would even have three digit market price.

cheers

[gentlemand]

It's so easy in hindsight, and foresight is difficult when you're blinded by the crazy gains. Even in Gox's dying moments, people were shorting like crazy, trading Gox coins for Good coins etc, hedging on the hope that one day they may get them back.

I remember that phase well. The idea of profit was blinding people to the obvious outcome. One poster here wired in $55,000 a few days before it completely went up in smoke. There's managed risk and then there's just deranged vulturedom.

You'd have to be pretty heavily blinkered to not be aware of what was going down. That's not a hindsight thing. I wasn't interested in touching Gox when it was still number one.

[BillyBobZorton]

Only an idiot, or someone who intentionally stuck their head in the sand, couldn't see there was an issue at Gox years before it went belly up.  Why people put money there I have no idea.  Maybe it wasn't obvious what the  problem was (we have more details now) but there was something off and it was only a matter of time.  I got the feeling there were a lot of naive younger people who had money/btc there.

It was adviced by plenty of people in the community including Andreas Antonopoulos that people should never put their coins inside anything that isn't their own wallets that the control. People that got scammed by Mt Gox wouldn't listen so it's their fault, they took a risk and they lost, that's how it goes.

[Hazir]

Only an idiot, or someone who intentionally stuck their head in the sand, couldn't see there was an issue at Gox years before it went belly up.  Why people put money there I have no idea.  Maybe it wasn't obvious what the  problem was (we have more details now) but there was something off and it was only a matter of time.  I got the feeling there were a lot of naive younger people who had money/btc there.

It was adviced by plenty of people in the community including Andreas Antonopoulos that people should never put their coins inside anything that isn't their own wallets that the control. People that got scammed by Mt Gox wouldn't listen so it's their fault, they took a risk and they lost, that's how it goes.

It is not so hard to imagine that bitcoins stored in online wallet/service will be hacked sooner or later. There is NO guarantee and no measure that will keep coins stored that way safe.
Only a extreme fool or an ignorant keep his coins that way. There were hacking attempts (successful!) on bigger services that MtGox in the past (not necessarily bitcoin related) and those who believed that their coins are safe there were daydreaming.

[Cryptopher]

It's so easy in hindsight, and foresight is difficult when you're blinded by the crazy gains. Even in Gox's dying moments, people were shorting like crazy, trading Gox coins for Good coins etc, hedging on the hope that one day they may get them back.

I remember that phase well. The idea of profit was blinding people to the obvious outcome. One poster here wired in $55,000 a few days before it completely went up in smoke. There's managed risk and then there's just deranged vulturedom.

You'd have to be pretty heavily blinkered to not be aware of what was going down. That's not a hindsight thing. I wasn't interested in touching Gox when it was still number one.

Yeah throwing money into Gox at that stage was a huge risk, one which could have paid off massively.

I created a Gox account but never used the exchange, I think that I was turned off by them trading BTC only - whereas there were other reputable exchanges trading with alts too.

It was pretty sad seeing people trying to trade their way out of a shitty Gox-shaped situation. A first world problem if I ever saw one.

[abercrombie]

[meono]

Wow, this is a very interesting story. Follwing that reddit page from now on, nice to see some insiders presenting facts!

Why on Earth didn't they post some alarm bells at the time? There's no shortage of anonymous options to do so.

because they're inside trading as well. You really think anyone with integrity would keep silent about this?

[moni3z]

Didn't Roger Ver go over the Gox bank statements at one point and he didn't notice Karpales was using it as his personal bank account?   http://newslines.org/mt-gox/ver-problems-caused-by-banking-system/

[Xiaoxiao]

Really?  Did he fake transactions and market data as well to pump up bitcoin?

[johnyj]

In fact, exchanges and banks are very similar, all of the customers share one account, and when that account blow up, exchange or bank will fail

A bank can be regarded as a simplified exchange: It only records the change in each customer's USD balance, while exchanges must record the change in customer's both bitcoin and USD balance

[Lethn]

Good God, how much incompetence. A school boy would design and secure the funds of Mt. Gox better than what Mark did. Both, hot wallets and bank accounts (or a single bank account). This is really getting ridiculous!

Even I've got a second bank private bank account for a place for any profits I make that flow in through Bitcoin or my business purely for money managing reasons, that way I know what's coming in and what's going out properly and can keep an eye on things, it's common sense. One for any family money coming in that I spend purely on education and so on, the other for my own private use, it also means I can legitimately top up my primary account if it gets a bit low.

Either this guy just didn't give a fuck, or he's really, really stupid.

[gentlemand]

Didn't Roger Ver go over the Gox bank statements at one point and he didn't notice Karpales was using it as his personal bank account?   http://newslines.org/mt-gox/ver-problems-caused-by-banking-system/

He said he was only going on what he was shown at the time. Even then if I was asked to record a ringing endorsement I'd want to be pretty rigourous. Maybe there were some juicy looking accounts printed up just for him.

He did have his money where his mouth was. Lord knows why.

[Ayle56]

It's so easy in hindsight, and foresight is difficult when you're blinded by the crazy gains. Even in Gox's dying moments, people were shorting like crazy, trading Gox coins for Good coins etc, hedging on the hope that one day they may get them back.

I remember that phase well. The idea of profit was blinding people to the obvious outcome. One poster here wired in $55,000 a few days before it completely went up in smoke. There's managed risk and then there's just deranged vulturedom.

You'd have to be pretty heavily blinkered to not be aware of what was going down. That's not a hindsight thing. I wasn't interested in touching Gox when it was still number one.

Yeah throwing money into Gox at that stage was a huge risk, one which could have paid off massively.

I created a Gox account but never used the exchange, I think that I was turned off by them trading BTC only - whereas there were other reputable exchanges trading with alts too.

It was pretty sad seeing people trying to trade their way out of a shitty Gox-shaped situation. A first world problem if I ever saw one.

A huge number of noobs (including myself) found out about Bitcoin at that time. We were so green that we knew nothing about any problems at Gox, and just wanted to buy Bitcoins as fast as possible. It's easy for people already into Bitcoin back then to say how obvious it was that Gox was going under. However, to noobs it seemed like the biggest, and therefore best exchange.

[gentlemand]

A huge number of noobs (including myself) found out about Bitcoin at that time. We were so green that we knew nothing about any problems at Gox, and just wanted to buy Bitcoins as fast as possible. It's easy for people already into Bitcoin back then to say how obvious it was that Gox was going under. However, to noobs it seemed like the biggest, and therefore best exchange.

It was the daddy for a long time and was mentioned in all of the Bitcoin resources so it's totally understandable why people would give it a look.

At the same time if someone had sniffed around in greater depth then they'd realise that you couldn't pull dollars out of it and it had been the victim of numerous glitches and hacks.

Most of my early coins were from localbitcoins but when I did get around to using an exchange in October 2013 I chose Bitstamp after doing some research.

[americanpegasus]

Everyone also needs to be aware of the following comment, made on Reddit by /u/discoltk.  It provides, what I believe, is the most likely explanation for the massive price jump of bitcoin in 2013 and the subsequent collapse of Mt. Gox: 
 

Unless Mark sold or lost coins before the bubble(s), and was already effectively net short on coins before the run-up. He had an explainable excuse (DHS confiscation) for not being able to remit fiat, but no excuse for not allowing coin withdrawal. So in this theory he's forced to buy coins using the locked up customer fiat. This compounds his problem by driving the price up more. Until finally arbitrage through JPY accounts leaves him out of fiat, at which time (as indicated in the wizsec report) the bot starts selling. The fact that they suddenly had a JPY withdrawal bottleneck at the beginning of 2014 supports this conclusion. Finally he's out of coins and fiat, except for the 200k coins which would presumably have been what he hoped to keep for himself. In this theory I suspect he felt the heat from all the media attention and reluctantly decided to cough up those coins.

Obviously this is all conjecture but its really the simplest answer that supports the history. Especially if he was short those coins due to a much earlier hack. This would make his insistence that he was hacked true, and his sense of victimization justified (in his mind).

   
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3fe92x/im_ashley_barr_aka_adam_turner_the_first_mtgox/ctor4f3

[TheButterZone]

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/commingling FOR FUCKS SAKE!

[dollarneed]

are you kidding me?
as for biggest exchanger they should have more than one bank account
even the small company have at least 2 bank account
oh cmon Mark are you serious to build an exchanger?