Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[molecular]

Today on #bitcoin

gmaxwell: wumpus: yea, I understand they had timed automatic reissues... this was also something I didn't know prior to monday before last and is one of the other reasons my "they couldn't have lost much!" position softened to "I have no freeking clue."
alpha125: gmaxwell: where did you find out abotu the automatic reissues?
gmaxwell: alpha125: from mtgox staff and magicaltux ... I had assumed previously that any reissues were manual via customer support but apparently it was just timed.
gmaxwell: you'll also note that they've kept increasing their fees and then even mad paying fees mandatory.
gmaxwell: This suggested to me that they totally misunderstood their problems. (and— I reported that I believed this months ago too)
gmaxwell: e.g. they noticed lots of txn getting stuck, they didn't understand it was because they were producing invalid txn (even though it was reported to them) and so they thought it was just 'full blocks'
gmaxwell: and they increased their fees from 0.0001 to 0.0005 — which was enough to may more than virtually every txn— and then later to 0.001 which is basically astronomic. And then they made it mandatory.
gmaxwell: of course their stalled txn had nothing to do with fees.

Edit: Just to clarify, only quoted relevant parts (maybe I should have inserted "[...]" where applicable). Full text here: http://pastebin.com/DaSph9uT

What a fucking mess. So this explains he silence. They literally might not know if they are solvent or not.

I still don't understand how this can go under the radar. Surely his accounting should output the amount of BTC that should be in the wallet. My company does that for the cash (EUR) funds it holds: it's standard practice to have accounting for that and you can compare (we do this regularly) what accounting says with the amount of cash actually in the coffer.

Did he assume the "stuck transactions" would just never go through (of course they wont because the inputs have been spent by the "sibling tx", but there's still the risk and the sane way to make sure they don't get confirmed later is an intentional double-spend to force the issue as nicely explained by Andreas in this video.

Of course these things are easy to say in hindsight and I kindof feel with magicaltux. On the other hand he could've just hired people to help him (also for the engine issues earlier last year and before that) to help run a clean shop.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[HairyMaclairy]

There is a difference between thinking some coins are missing and knowing the reason why.  

Although using some of your tens of millions on running a proper audit trail might be a good start.

[BitThink]

I guess Mark can sell his real BTC on other exchanges and buy a lot of Mtgox BTC to cover the loss. He can easily double or even triple his BTC holding in this way. I don't think his loss will be more than 1/3 of his holding.

[zyk]

Those who are selling at Gox and of course are able to cash out  are running with everybodies money and you people

are dreaming up stories why it can´t be so and are even delivering his laywers excuses, why there won´t be anything

left to sue about.

Hilarious how easy such a con can be delivered to bitcoin community....any other exchange can be expected to

do the same....its about many millions of bribes after all.

[FTWbitcoinFTW]

I guess Mark can sell his real BTC on other exchanges and buy a lot of Mtgox BTC to cover the loss. He can easily double or even triple his BTC holding in this way. I don't think his loss will be more than 1/3 of his holding.

It's one of the multiple possible plot for all this story.

Malleability bug == missing bitcoin, let's say 10K

Mark sold 1500BTC from gox treasory  @$900

Buy back 11K @ $100/$200

No more missing BTC

[Ivanhoe]

Why is bitcoinwisdom showing a volume of almost 2k the last 15 minutes, while i can't find any of that in the trade history

edit: reloaded the page and it's showing the right volume now.

[dreamspark]

I just cannot see how they are insolvent, its just not very likely at all.

Listen to the last letstalkbitcoin podcast it explains why they would take so long in regards to fixing and also the huge amount of bots that are probably trying to carry out the same fraud so they have to take it all very slowly.

I dont doubt that gox took a hit but no one has provided any evidence that they would blindly keep transfering cold storage funds to their hot wallet and non of their software would do a simple check against total account balances vs wallet balances.

[HairyMaclairy]

No one has provided any evidence they have competent coding either. 

[billyjoeallen]

Ain't looking good at all, the failed transaction started early NOVEMBER, i had got 2 withdrawals stuck back then.
So that's 3 months of exploiting the Gox Automatic Giving Machine.

This means that there are less coins available than we thought, price should go up.

To the contrary, it means hundreds of thousands of coins have been stolen, which may be sold at any time on other exchanges and greatly increasing the supply and thus decreasing the price.

This started months ago. Most of the coins would have already been sold.

[dreamspark]

No one has provided any evidence they have competent coding either. 

Inompetent at coding != emptying cold storage adresses

[San1ty]

Why is bitcoinwisdom showing a volume of almost 2k the last 15 minutes, while i can't find any of that in the trade history

edit: reloaded the page and it's showing the right volume now.

Haha, you young padawan.

Bitcoinwisdom has:
- A fucked up MACD calculation
- A wrong volume bug that's been around for ages.

I wrote my own personal data gatherer and charting, because none of those third party sites are good enough.

[Dragonkiller]

Why do people assume thieves are more likely to sell?

[zyk]

I guess Mark can sell his real BTC on other exchanges and buy a lot of Mtgox BTC to cover the loss. He can easily double or even triple his BTC holding in this way. I don't think his loss will be more than 1/3 of his holding.

It's one of the multiple possible plot for all this story.

Malleability bug == missing bitcoin, let's say 10K

Mark sold 1500BTC from gox treasory  @$900

Buy back 11K @ $100/$200

No more missing BTC

OMG...who has been selling him 11000 real BTC for a 100 bucks....  you?  cause you panicked?

[electronistul]

You guys ready for $1000+ coins * ? CCMF, to da moon!  
* as soon as Gox resumes withdrawals and they start buying in as sheep that they are

[zyk]

Why do people assume thieves are more likely to sell?

Depends on who the thiefs are and their KYC registration..food for thought

[JorgeStolfi]

How come there are no Japanese people protesting? Afterall it is Japan

I understood that withdrawals in Yen to local banks worked much better and/or for a longer time than international ones. 

Also the Japanese know that "one needs a license to protest".

[JorgeStolfi]

Bitcoinwisdom has:
- A wrong volume bug that's been around for ages.

Oops, would you care to elaborate?  Thanks...

[medialab101]

Price rising again on Gox. Willy out of coins or just taking a break?

[eiprol]

I don't get this: how would be Mark recovering REAL bitcoins buying GOXcoins after selling REAL BTC on other exchanges (as many of you are saying)? if they have lost their real BTC that were supposed to backup those GoxCoins on Gox, it doesn't matter how many Goxcoins he buys at such low price, they are just false coins, aren't they?    

The same happens with Fees; I don't get how Mark would be doing lots of BTCs from Fees, if those are FALSE COINS and real ones are missing? He is just making money from FIAT (and would have to buy real BTC from other exchanges, at higher prices)

If they have really lost many BTC, as it seems, I don't believe that this situation will help Gox to recover anything...