Help, my coins are in in limbo

[hpark4]

Hello, my name is Steven and I use satoshidice often with my coinbase account. However, yesterday in the morning I made a bet using MTGOX which I won which is shown here:
http://satoshidice.com/full.php?tx=b36e960a0336c4ba1f262658b3fb9a11ea65708351fb4469f4d8c8f9f1bdc5c2
However, I have not received my payment yet.

I contacted MTGOX support yesterday.
http://imgur.com/TMu3mqx
In short, they told me that the send address is changed every time I send thus my payment seems to be unredeemed of some sorts according to these websites.
I have sent in a couple more support tickets but they keep asking me to message satoshidice but I do not know how.

My winning coins seem to stuck in an address that I don't know how to access.
http://blockchain.info/tx-index/58730665/7e05a89f9eb883fb680b29d9fca4df2c76a12f0d16affbdffa8fb0ccad2908db
http://blockexplorer.com/tx/7e05a89f9eb883fb680b29d9fca4df2c76a12f0d16affbdffa8fb0ccad2908db#o0

I tried to prove to them through a history.crv file of my transactions : http://imgur.com/y1CAqDP, that the transaction that took place was at the EXACT same time, Same satoshidice address, same amount as the satoshi dice transaction which won me my BTC. I do not know how else I can make my argument.

Now I admit I have made a mistake. I should have continued using Coinbase as my base of operations for satoshidice, tried and true method. However, I will continue to keep messaging mtgox because I am a newbie and don't understand exactly where my 21 BTC is currently residing. Has it just disappeared? I do not have much value and this is quite a lot of money to me. I just want this to be resolved and know for sure whether it is just gone forever or redeemable because it seems the coins are just sitting somewhere and I want to know what I must do...

Best,
   Steven

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[Blazr]

You can't play SatoshiDice using a shared wallet like MtGox, this is clearly mentioned.

That address belongs to MtGox, its in their wallet, but its likely you won't get the coins back from them.

All I can say is keep contacting them, SatoshiDice don't have your money so there's nothing they can do.

[Stephen Gornick]

Has it just disappeared?

Nope, it did not disappear.

But SatoshiDICE did everything correctly (the payouts went to an address used to pay for the wager).  That's not a "normal" way to handle bitcoin transaction it but it is what it is and it works if you know what you are doing.

So likely some customer of Mt. Gox just received your payouts.  Good for them.  Bad for you.

Mt. Gox could easily prevent this from happening.  If you were to try to use Bitcoin-Central to send a wager to SatoshiDICE their system would refuse the withdrawal request.  They've gone through the effort of blocking those addresses for withdrawals, They did it as a service to their customers who might not know how that works.    (There are dozens of gambling services now which do this same thing, so you could still make the mistake at Bitcoin-Central playing on some other gambling site, but not playing on SatoshiDICE.)

Now it is possible Mt. Gox could contact the customer whose account got credited with your winnings and see if that party will voluntarily part with their newfound wealth.  Perhaps that amount has already been withdrawn by that customer and the funds are long gone.  

This would be the same as forgetting a wad of cash in the drawer at your hotel room and then the next guest ends up with it.  It would be right for that person to return it, but they have no idea how.  In that instance the hotel's rental records might help them find the rightful owner. But if you were to contact the hotel and in turn the hotel checks with the guest but there was no cash found or the guest has already vacated, I doubt the hotel would do much more at that point.

[Edit: I do question SatoshiDICE on how hard it is to see the link to "Read this warning first" on their site.  The warning is needed and something like that should show more prominently on their site, in my opinion.   I don't know if that would have helped to have prevented this specific mistake from occurring, but the way it is now very few will notice it.]

[hpark4]

What's truly questionable is the responses I have received from MTGOX. The image I posted shows the response of a support member who can't spell or form his sentences properly. He labeled the ticket as "resolved" as soon as he responded, which should've been my prerogative considering they have a check box for "check this box to label this request as resolved".

My second correspondence was with Danny. He was more amiable and he said, I quote,
"Thank you for the email. We have already mentioned on the withdrawals page that our site will not work with the satoshidice and we will not be able to locate this transfer. Please contact satoshidice and see if they can help you with this."
I responded that there is no such "warning" or even any literal mention of satoshidice or even just having different send/receive addresses on the withdrawal page.

My opinion of MTGOX has changed drastically..

[hpark4]

I wonder if it will do any good to mail a personal letter with printouts of all available information including a very animated but professional letter to:
Mt.Gox AML
Cerulean Tower 15F,
Sakuragaoka-cho 26-1, Shibuya-ku
Tokyo, Japan
150-8512

I would enjoy getting the bitcoins back so much but it would be so much sweeter to get an actual response. Their support system is complete hoobastank and I don't see how users of bitcoins in the U.S. can trust MTGOX without the simple necessity of customer service.

[Stephen Gornick]

I responded that there is no such "warning" or even any literal mention of satoshidice

Mt. Gox did exactly what your actions instructed them to do.  They processed your withdrawal request and sent your coins to the address you specified.

It would be a nice service if they did block withdrawals to SatoshiDICE addresses, certainly.  But they don't.  And there isn't outrage by the community because Mt. Gox having to add protections for you costs money, and you don't pay for that we do as it gets added to our trading fees.

I want low cost trading more than I want guard railings.

Bitcoin is a non-reversible payment method.

Non-reversible.  Low cost. That's why it has value.

[airsheep]

Sorry to hear about your loss of BTC Steven, hope you manage to get something back!

I'd be interested to know what prevents online wallets like MtGox from:

• never giving an address used by one user to another user
• remembering all addresses used by a user and considering them all to belong to him

since that would seem to prevent these sort of problems.

Is it a technical reason - I thought addresses were cheap to
generate, but perhaps having to cope with lots of addresses
per user is tough?

Or is it more of a philosophical thing based on the original
intention that addresses aren't used over and over by the
same user (like how change goes to a different address)?

[Stephen Gornick]

Or is it more of a philosophical thing based on the original intention that addresses aren't used over and over by the same user (like how change goes to a different address)?

Using a hosted (shared) wallet helps to increase transaction privacy.    Bitcoin addresses that are used for your withdrawal will not likely ever be ones that you used when receiving a deposit.  So someone attempting to use the information in the blockchain alone to determine your activity when you use a hosted (shared) EWallet is something that is pretty ineffective.  

A competing Exchange+EWallet service, Coinbase, takes a different approach.  With them a user's account has specific Bitcoin addresses assigned only to that user.  So all withdrawals do come from the Bitcoin addresses to which that user received payment.  And that's why Coinbase could be used with SatoshiDICE whereas Mt. Gox should not.

After lamenting that this was yet another instance of someone losing funds due to this "return to sender" approach that SatoshiDICE utilizes I did ask Mt. Gox.   The response:

<MagicalTux> we could provide a way to generate return addrs

Which probably means some special case handling might be implemented so that SatoshiDICE wagering from a Mt. Gox EWallet will be possible, someday.

[astutiumRob]

Or is it more of a philosophical thing based on the original
intention that addresses aren't used over and over by the
same user

I have multiple addresses (each with a different purpose), and they get used over and over just fine, your issue is specific to the way your wallet provider system works.

[hpark4]

http://blockchain.info/address/16jM4mbzPQsPAxhbVk5pt9FAK9xCGm1m6m

It looks my BTC has finally been moved by whoever received it. After continuing to write in support tickets and receiving a decent correspondence they told me this

"Hello Steve,

As we have mentioned earlier that the bitcoin address generated is only a sending address and not a receiving address. On checking, we do not find that 16jM4mbzPQsPAxhbVk5pt9FAK9xCGm1m6m is linked to any Mt.Gox account. Therefore, it was not us who removed it. This address may actually be linked to a non-Mt.Gox account and the person who has access to that bitcoin address may have removed it.

Thanks,

MtGox.com Team"

It's been a few days now and I have no qualms about my loss because it was my own mistake. However, if anyone here can do me the favor and look through the few transactions my BTC has gone through here:
http://blockchain.info/address/16jM4mbzPQsPAxhbVk5pt9FAK9xCGm1m6m
and tell me if MTGOX was telling the truth. I have an inkling that the last two addresses that have the final balance:
16k4hscpjwJwrGwBLKCVc3JKRNre9dYADY 17.54316906 BTC
1FtvtCLiQ3W1XCHo5Acc5RGNNMfKbLztwv 6.70607025 BTC
On whether these two could be MTGOX accounts or Satoshidice or something. I just want to know if MTGOX really checked.

[ndr]

I'm really sorry buddy but you lost your coins
NEVER use Mtgox our other online ewallet
ALWAYS use the bitcoin client

This is really FUCKED UP, to win, but loose