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

[Peter R]

The fact remains if that amount of coins wasn't stolen, which seems more likely, then gox can probably re pay the majority of its debts. I mean everyone keep saying insolvency and it sounds like that but until someone shows proof that they owe X,Y and Z then complete loss of funds isn't likely.

I feel its more likely that they owe a certain amount and whoever is buying them out has enough to cover the difference

The way I'm leaning now is that the 750,000 BTC loss is pure FUD, leaked so that Gox depositors are more likely to settle for less than the par value of the Gox IOUs.

I think that Gox has lost customer funds and Gox is insolvent, but not nearly to the degree that a 750,000 BTC loss would imply.  GoxBTC's sold as low as 0.07 BTC = 1 GoxBTC on BitcoinBuilder, and right now the price is 0.14.  If a company looking to takeover Gox knows that the solvency situation is not that bad, they could buy up a great deal of GoxBTCs at less than 20% of face value.  In fact, maybe that is what is happening now.  Perhaps this is all it takes to regain solvency, or perhaps they cut a deal with remaining depositors for 500 mBTC on the coin.  With the current FUD in the air, I bet a lot of depositors would jump at a chance to get 50% of their funds back.  

[virtualfaqs]

From Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1yvdcd/heres_a_summary_of_what_has_happened_over_the/

1.) MtGox allegedly lose 750,000 Bitcoins, according to an ALLEGED leaked document by MtGox, titled "Crisis Strategy Draft". TwoBitIdiot, who leaked the document, is a known person within the Bitcoin community.

2.) He then decides to leak the document to the public 1 - 2 hours later confirming this number, and within the document it says they are to rebrand as http://gox.com and lie their way out of this mess.

3.) After the document is leaked to everyone, MtGox halts trades immediately (Around 5 minutes after the leak)

4.) At this point, http://gox.com is still a parked domain, and not long after starts to redirect to http://mtgox.com (EDIT: More information on the domain situation from chris45215, which basically confirms that MtGox were indeed planning to relaunch as Gox.com as explained in the leaked document. Further info on Domain Investing.)

5.) After around 30 minutes, Coinbase, Blockchain, Circle and Kraken simultaneously release identical articles titled "Joint Statement Regarding the Insolvency of Mt.Gox" (EDIT: Since then, some of the articles have removed the word "insolvency", but not all of them.)

6.) A further 5 minutes later, http://mtgox.com is taken completely offline.

Then:

MtGox web page goes blank, with hidden hint MtGox may be being acquired. - source - comment in HTML of MtGox home page (a placeholder for an announcement about 'acq'). (This web page has since been superceded)

Hours later, MtGox web page carries a statement that "a decision was taken to close all transactions for the time being in order to protect the site and our users"

Karpeles tells Reuters ""We should have an official announcement ready soon-ish. We are currently at a turning point for the business. I can't tell much more for now as this also involves other parties."

Domain name Gox.com now registered to Karpeles/MtGox. http://www.whois.com/whois/gox.com gox.com redirects to mtgox.com. (A third party could have registered this and set it up as a hoax but that seems vanishingly unlikely.)

The "Crisis Strategy Draft" report seems to be the sole source of rumours that 750k bitcoins are missing from MtGox. Also seems to be the source of a new supposed 'Gox' trademark. Rumours about ~750K bitcoins 'missing' from a MtGox cold wallet are confused, with some people assuming that 750K have gone in one go, others assuming that they have leaked away in small amounts over years, and others speculating that they have been destroyed/keys lost. If coins are 'missing', the figure might not be as high as 750k

Facebook page 'gox.com' launched, seems to be fake/troll with increasingly absurd comments about Dogecoin, etc. If the content were genuine, it would surely be on the mtgox.com and/or gox.com websites, not facebook.

IRC seems to carry comments from known(?) MtGox developers about losing their jobs.

MtGox still conspicuously fails to prove that it has Bitcoin assets by signing any in the blockchain, though this may be for commercial/securty reasons.

Thank you for this summary. There is a mess of information and rumors going around so this helped a lot.

[Rampion]

I don't know Bitcoinrain's owner personally - I happen to know the current owner of Mercado Bitcoin, and they are two separate persons. The Bitcoinrain owner SOLD Mercado Bitcoin to a third party, who is completely unrelated to the ponzi/fund. And BTW: despite of the questionable business model of the aforementioned fund, AFAIK the theft of aprox. 10k bitcoins owned by Bitcoinrain indeed happened and it was not an "inside job" as you implied.

You are misinformed.

Bitcoinrain coins were mixed with mercadobitcoin coins, this is a fact easily verified in the blockchain. The owner of both was the same person and publicly stated  that rain's coins were stolen from INSIDE the exchange mercadobitcoin, he put everything there in ONE account as a safety measure before going on a trip, then never cared to prove it was really hacked. He also lied to the press, more than once.

Here is the clown: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=10275

Tell me how come the new owner does not know this?

Rudrigo, you misunderstood me. I will give you the context. Stolfi made a post saying the following:

a) Bitcoinrain owner is a known thief, who apart from running a ponzi claimed to have 10k btc stolen which he just stole himself
b) Bitcoinrain owner runs Mercado Bitcoin, and people is still using Mercado Bitcoin despite of it being owned by a known thief
c) From a) and b) he implied that people into bitcoin is especially stupid/greedy

What I pointed out is that:

1) Mercado Bitcoin is currently owned by a different person
2) We do not know for sure if the 10k BTC theft was an "inside job" or an "outside job", so making that kind of bold assumptions and presenting them as facts is kinda pointless. I added that AFAIK the 10k theft happened indeed, meaning that it was mostly fueled by incompetence and not by insider collusion. Note that I used "AFAIK" every time i wrote about this matter and I never implied certainty.

Summing up:, I just wanted to highlight how Mr.Stolfi here is making wild assumptions (a), mixing them with a lack of knowledge of the facts (b), and using those to push a trolling/fud-spreading agenda.

[KeyserSoze]

I wonder if all Gox emails, support tickets, PR statements and other communications will be added to the Karpeles Manuscript Library?
http://www.rain.org/~karpeles/

[dreamspark]

I wonder if all Gox emails, support tickets, PR statements and other communications will be added to the Karpeles Manuscript Library?
http://www.rain.org/~karpeles/

 

[deadfi$h]

My sentiment is exactly this.... too many things are identical to the last "growth phase" to ignore.

It's so incredibly similar it's hard to ignore.

Try this... using the week chart count 7 weeks from the peak of the April bubble. That's the top of the post crash plateau. Now count 6 weeks down to the 52 EMA. That's the bottom of the bubble.

That would indicate next week is the bottom but touching the EMA and the current state of news is much more important than exact timing in my opinion.

I think we have found our bottom. What else could come out of Gox that hasn't already been priced in to take us below $400? I'd be very surprised if that was possible.

[KeyserSoze]

...and using those to push a trolling/fud-spreading agenda.

Agenda? That's outrageous! Innocent Jorge is here for purely academic reasons, and to post Chinese Slumber Party updates. His negative posts should only be construed as a sign he was severely wedgied by peers in school.

[KeyserSoze]

Andreas Antonopoulos statement:
http://antonopoulos.com/2014/02/25/statement-on-mt-gox/

[Spaceman_Spiff]

Is it me or is Martin enjoying that situation?

[Yololintian]

Andreas Antonopoulos statement:
http://antonopoulos.com/2014/02/25/statement-on-mt-gox/

Everything I see makes me believe that Gox will never recover and that the funds are most likely lost.
Seems pretty bad..

[Super T]

Live on sky news now

[KeyserSoze]

... wedgie image...

Is it me or is Martin enjoying that situation?

lol, maybe. I think he has a perma-smile except when Lisa noted the exact moment his heart broke during Valentine's Day. Martin's always been a little odd.

[kkaspar]

Sounds like we have very different trading/investing strategies. I'm definitely a mid/short term trader so charts are a must for me.

I think there have been huuugely positive signs coming out all through this bear market that have been overshadowed by negative press. So much investment in bitcoin based businesses, apps, big companies accepting bitcoin as payment, atms, general public consciousness of bitcoin, etc, etc. As a long term bull, I think this is the best time one could possibly buy. The price is only currently low because people are freaking out about Gox which has nothing to do with all the positives mentioned above.

Here's what I'm talking about... I mistyped before, this is the 52 week EMA which is exactly the line that the last crash rode up and off its final bottom. Also note that the low of that crash was not near the high of the previous bubble.

Sadly I don't see many news that can make the bitcoin price turn upwards. To me -
bitcoin based businesses - Not bitcoin based businesses, but crypto based businesses. They can ditch bitcoin and just jump to another crypto with relative ease. So, they are not dependent on bitcoin and their existence isn't supporting the success of bitcoin. Those investments wouldn't been made if they were dependent on bitcoin.
apps - I haven't seen a lot of new good apps for bitcoin. I think that the most important piece of software that gives value to bitcoin is Armory. And the development of Armory is rather slow.
big companies accepting bitcoin as payment - Big companies accept bitcoin for marketing reasons, not for financial benefits. Implementing bitcoin payment will actually cost you more money and work hours then it is gained by any transaction efficiencies. Companies are accepting bitcoin because it can create free press + new loyal customers, that are loyal to bitcoin. And if someone buys something with bitcoin, then he will only hold bitcoin temporarily or he will waste the bitcoins that he held before. The company that receives the bitcoins, will convert it to $ right away, because bitcoin doesn't enable liquidity. So, if new companies are adopting payment, then I can see that it will more probably have a negative effect on the price, not positive.
ATMs - I think that the atms are a gimmick. If someone wants to buy bitcoins then it's cheaper to buy them online. I think that ATMs were meant to catch the regular folks who find buying bitcoins online too difficult. I think that this idea failed because those regular folks distrust those ATMs even more. I think that zipzap cash for coins was a better idea.
general public consciousness of bitcoin - during the past months it hasn't been exactly a good thing. People are more sure that bitcoin is just a pyramid scheme and they ridicule people who are involved.
I think that EU/USA market is saturated. Almost everyone knows about bitcoin and they have made up their decision if they want in or not, and it's very hard to turn those decisions around. People tend to be rather radical when deciding their stance on bitcoin. They either love it or hate it and there is a low chance in turning it around.

I see that the only choice is to enter those markets that haven't been touched yet. Then you can create actual demand and then you can be certain that the price will go up.

[KeyserSoze]

Andreas Antonopoulos statement:
http://antonopoulos.com/2014/02/25/statement-on-mt-gox/

Everything I see makes me believe that Gox will never recover and that the funds are most likely lost.
Seems pretty bad..

On a good note he apparently worked *with* competitor Coinbase on security/funds review (audit?) measures recently.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[JorgeStolfi]

[ ... BitcoinRain ... ]

I am replying in the "Bitcoinrain Debt problem" thread.  Please consider using that thread for further post on this topic.

[soullyG]

Andreas Antonopoulos statement:
http://antonopoulos.com/2014/02/25/statement-on-mt-gox/

Thanks for posting this, I think he sums up exactly what everyone should be learning from this whole debacle - trust in crypto, not (repeatedly shown to be incompetent) people or centralised organisations.

[Rampion]

Andreas Antonopoulos statement:
http://antonopoulos.com/2014/02/25/statement-on-mt-gox/

I'm usually a fan of Andreas, but this rant disappointed me. Half of it is pure marketing of his own product, and it's a lie: despite of the private keys being held client-side, for blockchain.info would be trivial to steal users funds. They just need to inject code to "redirect" funds to a different address on the next transaction, as strongcoin did to return to OzCoin the coins that were stolen to the pool.

Third party wallets are always insecure by definition.

[dreamspark]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mWkY5yIAnc&feature=youtu.be

[gidi337]

does anyone know how to make the gox api price go up

http://data.mtgox.com/api/2/BTCUSD/money/ticker

i have a trade on plus500 which they have not let me close for the past week,  and if the price on the api could be higher at least when the monthly contract expires i won't have a loss

thank you