Mt Gox hits my account with 8.08 BTC of phantom trades

[Carlton Banks]

I've been having a problem with using the Mt Gox web platform to place bets for some time, but what they did last night is a whole other level in incompentance and negligence.

Having been placing tiny bets (0.0205 BTC) in the sell wall only minutes before, Gox decided I needed to sell precisely 8.08 BTC into the bid wall.

I've contacted Gox support. As with similar unnaccountable behaviour from their web platform in the past (albeit with much smaller sums), they have refused to accept any responsibility for these failures, despite the fact that they are not conceivably due to any thing else.

Anyone else had problems like these? After the first few times, I was just hoping that Gox wanted to bury their mistake, and that it wouldn't happen again. It seems that's no longer an option, as I've got no idea how much they will sell on my behalf, and at what price. Or when they'll do it.

[vampire]

I have no idea what you just said. Mt. Gox isn't a betting platform, it's an exchange.

[Carlton Banks]

Replace all references to "bet" with the word "trade". My concept of it being a "bet" is that you have no way of knowing that anyone will ever pay the price you place the trade at. And so it can be thought of as a bet on that price. Apologies for any confusion caused.

[kokojie]

You are saying mtgox sold 8.08 BTC for you, while you only placed a sell order for 0.0205 BTC?

[crazy_rabbit]

are you sure you didn't forget to uncheck the 'market order' button? I've made that mistake more times then I would like to admit.

[Carlton Banks]

Gox fulfilled the tiny orders I made correctly, they were placed higher than the current lowest ask at that time (and so were never intended to be sold immediately). It was shortly after having completed these orders that I noticed the missing 8.08 BTC. I brought up the history on my account, and saw that the 8.08 had been sold into the bid wall. I looked back to the browser tab where I had been placing my tiny trades. Those who are familiar with the mtgox.com web platform will know; if you haven't refreshed the page or browsed away, then the values in the fields corresponding to the most recent trade you made will still be in those fields (except the "Amount of BTC to BUY" field, which usually, but not always, becomes blanked). The evidence of my most recent trade was still there, being as it was that I hadn't refreshed or browsed away. And it was one of the tiny 0.0205 BTC values that was represented, nothing remotely corresponding to 8.08 BTC.

I am beyond mad with these people. I am genuinely not sure how to handle this, because they continually deny that this phenomenon is taking place at all, and yet offer no reasonable explanation for what is actually happening.

[Carlton Banks]

are you sure you didn't forget to uncheck the 'market order' button? I've made that mistake more times then I would like to admit.

I don't use the "market order" feature to place orders, and never have. Despite any shortcomings of Gox's web platform, I've never experienced the market order tick box suddenly becoming ticked when I didn't tick it. I have experienced these bizarre platform errors on two different OS setups on the same hardware, but using the same browser (Chrome). There is no credible explanation besides some kind of error in their platform, and they're seemingly completely intent on denying such a possibility.

[MPOE-PR]

Gox fulfilled the tiny orders I made correctly, they were placed higher than the current lowest ask at that time (and so were never intended to be sold immediately). It was shortly after having completed these orders that I noticed the missing 8.08 BTC. I brought up the history on my account, and saw that the 8.08 had been sold into the bid wall. I looked back to the browser tab where I had been placing my tiny trades. Those who are familiar with the mtgox.com web platform will know; if you haven't refreshed the page or browsed away, then the values in the fields corresponding to the most recent trade you made will still be in those fields (except the "Amount of BTC to BUY" field, which usually, but not always, becomes blanked). The evidence of my most recent trade was still there, being as it was that I hadn't refreshed or browsed away. And it was one of the tiny 0.0205 BTC values that was represented, nothing remotely corresponding to 8.08 BTC.

I am beyond mad with these people. I am genuinely not sure how to handle this, because they continually deny that this phenomenon is taking place at all, and yet offer no reasonable explanation for what is actually happening.

I'd be very concerned about an account compromise on your end. At least if no other people confirm your experience.

[Carlton Banks]

I'd be very concerned about an account compromise on your end. At least if no other people confirm your experience.

I considered this, but it's not likely. I use a Yubikey, so withdrawing from the account will be impossible to a hacker. Anarchic hacker? Surely selling everything I had would have been a much more extreme than selling 8.08 BTC.

[jborkl]

If you were logged in and someone had remote access- even though you use a Yubikey they could sell..  Just not withdraw

I agree with MPOE,

could be api or remote access maybe

[Carlton Banks]

The only API key I had on issue was for use with their smartphone app that was only ever looked at briefly, not used to trade with (wasn't comfortable with using a smartphone app really). That key had Get Info and Trading permissions, but again, I fail to see how selling that amount of coins would really get an attacker's heartbeat going. And Gox themselves should immediately be able to tell me that the questionable trades were made using that API key (which they've made no mention of, and I have supplied them with the transaction id's of the trades several times).

[Carlton Banks]

Gox support are still in some state of confusion as to whether I am questioning the validity of the 8.08 BTC of trades, or when I withdrew the vast proportion of the BTC in my Gox account.

Allow me to clarify for you in public, Gox: I DON'T TRUST YOU WITH THAT AMOUNT OF MONEY UNTIL YOU CAN COME UP WITH AN ADEQUATE RESPONSE TO THIS ENDLESS NONSENSE

[Maged]

Are you absolutely sure that you didn't have any open orders at the time?

[Carlton Banks]

I had several open orders, just not for 8.08 BTC or any amount approaching it. The largest amount that was in any way close to the amount of 8.08 BTC sold was 0.0245 BTC.

For Gox to effectively tell me that the trade was legitimate, implies that I myself must have somehow made this trade (and several other less significant aberrant trades in the past, always BTC-sell trades incidentally). Which serves to drive me wild, as it appears that Gox are lying through their teeth about this.

[Yuhfhrh]

I have never had a problem like this, that wasn't an accident on my end.

[Carlton Banks]

Well, I could believe it was a mistake of mine, were it not for the actual fiat equivalent and the actual price at which I sold still being present in their respective fields on the mtgox.com trading web page I'd been using to sell with only minutes before phantom trades.

[Enigma81]

You should pull all your money/coin from MtGox and not use them any more.  Clearly it's not safe.

[jborkl]

I have had nothing but good experience with gox.  Absolutely no problem

[Enigma81]

Neither have I.  None.  Zero.  They've been great, actually.

[Carlton Banks]

I don't understand it, frankly.

But I wish Gox support would act like something that resembles a human when I'm trying to work these things through. Instead, it's this unending carousel of prevaricating and equivocating incompetence (and the occasional plain faced lie).


Did I mention the time they changed my account withdrawal limits down to the unverified levels? When I contacted support, they politely (and slightly incoherently) informed me that "only verified customers have a 400 BTC withdrawal limit, submit your verification documents to attain this status". I had no idea how long I was going to spend telling them again and again and again and again and again that the very first thing I did when I opened the account was get verified (well, Gox forced this on me after having deposited coins to sell as my actual first act, but...)

These episodes with their software forgetting my verified status, phantom trades, changing my deposit reference ID without so much as an e-mail, god, it just drives me nuts. I simply refuse to believe this is only happening to me, because otherwise, I must be either their unluckiest customer, or hacked, or cursed, and I really can't take the not knowing why.