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

[fluidjax]

Is this thing fucking BULLISH
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1z37zw/mt_gox_has_at_least_200k_btc/
Please, clear it to me.

From this we can see that the original addresses where MtGox proved they had the private keys (a few year backs) are still untouched . This probably means that Gox doesn't have direct access to them.  if the 750K is to be believed.

I doubt Mark has lost the keys, so I can believe they have been 'off limits' by order of the US government, who is investigating Silk Road.
And each time someone verifies a dodgy account, the US government checks them out.
So maybe some of the  BTC is not lost, just inaccessible (as Mark said in IRC).
But no more info from Mark because of a Gag Order.

-But some facts would be nice

The wallets belonging to Gox that people have found so far (containing about 550k BTC) have not been touched since 2011.

Yes you are right, this is could be  a fact, 550K + a possible 70K.

[JorgeStolfi]

It's becoming more and more clear that the coins haven't been stolen, they've just lost the keys lol. Once this is confirmed, should be very bullish.

I don't think that the loss of those coins, per se, would have any effect.  

Think of the exchanges as water tanks where water represents bitcoins in the market, and the water level is the inverse price (how many BTC one can buy with one dollar).

The tanks are connected by pipes at the bottom (coin withdrawals and deposits) so the hydrostatic principle (arbitrage) keeps the water level about the same in all tanks. If one pours more water into any tank (brings more coins to the market) the level in all tanks goes up (meaning the price goes down).  The opposite happens if one takes water out of one tank (buys coins and puts them in cold storage).

If the MtGOX theft did happen, then at some point in the past, someone siphoned most of the water out of the MtGOX tank to a private barrel.  I the keys were lost, most of the water in that tank leaked out and was permanetly lost.  In either case, Mark put some bricks into the tank (hid the theft) so that people would not notice the loss, and the water level was not affected.   Then a few days ago the pipes out of that tank  were closed (withdrawals were blocked),  and the tank was disconnected and removed it from the system.   That would not affect the water level in the other tanks either.

If the theft happened, and the thief then dumped the water in other tanks (sold the coins in other markets), then there was indeed a net rise in the water level (a fall in market price); but that is past history.  

We may expect an effect only if the coins were stolen but have not been not sold yet EDIT: and are sold now.

(This analogy is imperfect because it does not model the money flows, but hopefully it is enough to argue the point.)

[Dragonkiller]

It's becoming more and more clear that the coins haven't been stolen, they've just lost the keys lol. Once this is confirmed, should be very bullish.

I don't think that the loss of those coins, per se, would have any effect.  

Think of the exchanges as water tanks where water represents bitcoins in the market, and the water level is the inverse price (how many BTC one can buy with one dollar).

The tanks are connected by pipes at the bottom (coin withdrawals and deposits) so the hydrostatic principle (arbitrage) keeps the water level about the same in all tanks. If one pours more water into any tank (brings more coins to the market) the level in all tanks goes up (meaning the price goes down).  The opposite happens if one takes water out of one tank (buys coins and puts them in cold storage).

If the MtGOX theft did happen, then at some point in the past, someone siphoned most of the water out of the MtGOX tank to a private barrel.  I the keys were lost, most of the water in that tank leaked out and was permanetly lost.  In either case, Mark put some bricks into the tank (hid the theft) so that people would not notice the loss, and the water level was not affected.   Then a few days ago the pipes out of that tank  were closed (withdrawals were blocked),  and the tank was disconnected and removed it from the system.   That would not affect the water level in the other tanks either.

If the theft happened, and the thief then dumped the water in other tanks (sold the coins in other markets), then there was indeed a net rise in the water level (a fall in market price); but that is past history.  

We may expect an effect only if the coins were stolen but have not been not sold yet EDIT: and are sold now.

(This analogy is imperfect because it does not model the money flows, but hopefully it is enough to argue the point.)

I am talking about a case in which the private keys have been lost, in which case 750k BTC has been taken out of the total money supply. If they have been stolen (but the keys are still known) it shouldn't have much of an affect.

[fluidjax]

It's becoming more and more clear that the coins haven't been stolen, they've just lost the keys lol. Once this is confirmed, should be very bullish.

I don't think that the loss of those coins, per se, would have any effect.  

Think of the exchanges as water tanks where water represents bitcoins in the market, and the water level is the inverse price (how many BTC one can buy with one dollar).

The tanks are connected by pipes at the bottom (coin withdrawals and deposits) so the hydrostatic principle (arbitrage) keeps the water level about the same in all tanks. If one pours more water into any tank (brings more coins to the market) the level in all tanks goes up (meaning the price goes down).  The opposite happens if one takes water out of one tank (buys coins and puts them in cold storage).

If the MtGOX theft did happen, then at some point in the past, someone siphoned most of the water out of the MtGOX tank to a private barrel.  I the keys were lost, most of the water in that tank leaked out and was permanetly lost.  In either case, Mark put some bricks into the tank (hid the theft) so that people would not notice the loss, and the water level was not affected.   Then a few days ago the pipes out of that tank  were closed (withdrawals were blocked),  and the tank was disconnected and removed it from the system.   That would not affect the water level in the other tanks either.

If the theft happened, and the thief then dumped the water in other tanks (sold the coins in other markets), then there was indeed a net rise in the water level (a fall in market price); but that is past history.  

We may expect an effect only if the coins were stolen but have not been not sold yet EDIT: and are sold now.

(This analogy is imperfect because it does not model the money flows, but hopefully it is enough to argue the point.)

I am talking about a case in which the private keys have been lost, in which case 750k BTC has been taken out of the total money supply. If they have been stolen (but the keys are still known) it shouldn't have much of an affect.

If the keys are lost, it brings up an argument to fork the block chain, and change the code to manually recover the money. To a new address. A lot of people would support it. (and many would be against)... talk about polarising the Bitcoin community.

[Dragonkiller]

Is this thing fucking BULLISH
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1z37zw/mt_gox_has_at_least_200k_btc/
Please, clear it to me.

From this we can see that the original addresses where MtGox proved they had the private keys (a few year backs) are still untouched . This probably means that Gox doesn't have direct access to them.  if the 750K is to be believed.

I doubt Mark has lost the keys, so I can believe they have been 'off limits' by order of the US government, who is investigating Silk Road.
And each time someone verifies a dodgy account, the US government checks them out.
So maybe some of the  BTC is not lost, just inaccessible (as Mark said in IRC).
But no more info from Mark because of a Gag Order.

-But some facts would be nice

The wallets belonging to Gox that people have found so far (containing about 550k BTC) have not been touched since 2011.

Yes you are right, this is could be  a fact, 550K + a possible 70K.

That's why I think it's unlikely it's a legal issue. I think he had lost the keys a long time ago and has been running a fractional reserve all along. Although I don't have much of an explanation for why he couldn't keep running the fractional reserve (unless some coins were stolen due to malleability issue).

[F-bernanke]

Senator Joe Manchin  (who wants to BAN BTC) Was at the Yellen Hearing just now.

He asked Yellen of this was possible.

Yellen replied that there is no central issuer and no central bank, and it is decentralized, it is hard to regulate and the FED has no plans to do that.

[hdbuck]

Senator Joe Manchin  (who wants to BAN BTC) Was at the Yellen Hearing just now.

He asked Yellen of this was possible.

Yellen replied that there is no central issuer and no central bank, and it is decentralized, it is hard to regulate and the FED has no plans to do that.

bullisshhhhhhh

[F-bernanke]

bullisshhhhhhh

He feared the US tax payer would end up being the bagholder, so our bearfriend Joe is bearish 

[wobber]

It's becoming more and more clear that the coins haven't been stolen, they've just lost the keys lol. Once this is confirmed, should be very bullish.

Yes, a multi sign wallet with backup on several place... It's a joke ?
Maybe a judge got all the copy because gox are in a trial ?

I think it's a technical issue, not a legal one. They almost certainly also have legal problems, but I don't think the loss of access to coins is a legal issue.

I take this from reddit but it's my vue too

IMO the banks have barred access to accounts and deposit boxes due to some injunction with cooperation of the Japanese government, and the gag orders and subpoenas prevent him from saying "boo" about it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1z37zw/mt_gox_has_at_least_200k_btc/

This was a possible explanation posted by someone on this thread. I definitely think a technical issue is more likely.

--

From reading this chat log (if its authentic) I immediately come to the following conclusions:

They did not have a cold wallet, it was one huge hot wallet, implemented by MT.
Occasionally it lost (or failed to store correctly or deleted¹) private keys of its own change outputs ('not "lost" just yet, just temporarily unavailable')
He seems to believe the keys are still there somewhere buried deeply somewhere in his database server ('We haven't given up')

_____________________
¹) This is how I imagine their wallet worked (and how it fucked up):

User initiates withdrawal:

* debit amount from user account
* generate new private key for change address and create tx
* store tx in database (indexed by txid)
* store private key in database (indexed by address, foreign_key=txid)
* push tx to network

a week later (cron job)

* for all unconfirmed tx older than 1 week:
*     credit BTC back to customer account
*     delete "invalid" tx
*         -> cascaded delete "unused" change address and its private key (ouch!)

run 2 years until wallet is dry, all supposed UTXO turn out to be STXO and all real UTXO are in nirvana already.

'

Dude you made me laugh! Not because of your explanation, which is brilliant, but because lots of people entrusted their coins to some incompetent, PHP-does-it-all fatso.

[porcupine87]

Senator Joe Manchin  (who wants to BAN BTC) Was at the Yellen Hearing just now.

He asked Yellen of this was possible.

Yellen replied that there is no central issuer and no central bank, and it is decentralized, it is hard to regulate and the FED has no plans to do that.

source?

[Dragonkiller]

It's becoming more and more clear that the coins haven't been stolen, they've just lost the keys lol. Once this is confirmed, should be very bullish.

Yes, a multi sign wallet with backup on several place... It's a joke ?
Maybe a judge got all the copy because gox are in a trial ?

I think it's a technical issue, not a legal one. They almost certainly also have legal problems, but I don't think the loss of access to coins is a legal issue.

I take this from reddit but it's my vue too

IMO the banks have barred access to accounts and deposit boxes due to some injunction with cooperation of the Japanese government, and the gag orders and subpoenas prevent him from saying "boo" about it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1z37zw/mt_gox_has_at_least_200k_btc/

This was a possible explanation posted by someone on this thread. I definitely think a technical issue is more likely.

--

From reading this chat log (if its authentic) I immediately come to the following conclusions:

They did not have a cold wallet, it was one huge hot wallet, implemented by MT.
Occasionally it lost (or failed to store correctly or deleted¹) private keys of its own change outputs ('not "lost" just yet, just temporarily unavailable')
He seems to believe the keys are still there somewhere buried deeply somewhere in his database server ('We haven't given up')

_____________________
¹) This is how I imagine their wallet worked (and how it fucked up):

User initiates withdrawal:

* debit amount from user account
* generate new private key for change address and create tx
* store tx in database (indexed by txid)
* store private key in database (indexed by address, foreign_key=txid)
* push tx to network

a week later (cron job)

* for all unconfirmed tx older than 1 week:
*     credit BTC back to customer account
*     delete "invalid" tx
*         -> cascaded delete "unused" change address and its private key (ouch!)

run 2 years until wallet is dry, all supposed UTXO turn out to be STXO and all real UTXO are in nirvana already.

'

Dude you made me laugh! Not because of your explanation, which is brilliant, but because lots of people entrusted their coins to some incompetent, PHP-does-it-all fatso.

Oh it's not my explanation, can't take credit for it. Someone posted it in this thread earlier.

[jl2012]

It's becoming more and more clear that the coins haven't been stolen, they've just lost the keys lol. Once this is confirmed, should be very bullish.

I don't think that the loss of those coins, per se, would have any effect.  

Think of the exchanges as water tanks where water represents bitcoins in the market, and the water level is the inverse price (how many BTC one can buy with one dollar).

The tanks are connected by pipes at the bottom (coin withdrawals and deposits) so the hydrostatic principle (arbitrage) keeps the water level about the same in all tanks. If one pours more water into any tank (brings more coins to the market) the level in all tanks goes up (meaning the price goes down).  The opposite happens if one takes water out of one tank (buys coins and puts them in cold storage).

If the MtGOX theft did happen, then at some point in the past, someone siphoned most of the water out of the MtGOX tank to a private barrel.  I the keys were lost, most of the water in that tank leaked out and was permanetly lost.  In either case, Mark put some bricks into the tank (hid the theft) so that people would not notice the loss, and the water level was not affected.   Then a few days ago the pipes out of that tank  were closed (withdrawals were blocked),  and the tank was disconnected and removed it from the system.   That would not affect the water level in the other tanks either.

If the theft happened, and the thief then dumped the water in other tanks (sold the coins in other markets), then there was indeed a net rise in the water level (a fall in market price); but that is past history.  

We may expect an effect only if the coins were stolen but have not been not sold yet EDIT: and are sold now.

(This analogy is imperfect because it does not model the money flows, but hopefully it is enough to argue the point.)

I am talking about a case in which the private keys have been lost, in which case 750k BTC has been taken out of the total money supply. If they have been stolen (but the keys are still known) it shouldn't have much of an affect.

If the keys are lost, it brings up an argument to fork the block chain, and change the code to manually recover the money. To a new address. A lot of people would support it. (and many would be against)... talk about polarising the Bitcoin community.

It won't work. Without the private key, how Mark could prove those are really gox's coins?

[porcupine87]

If the keys are lost, it brings up an argument to fork the block chain, and change the code to manually recover the money. To a new address. A lot of people would support it. (and many would be against)... talk about polarising the Bitcoin community.

Are you serious? Someone loses a private key and the community goes like "Ok, let's fork and get the coins back to the stupid faces!"?  

I only found 180 000 coins on this two addresses of the reddit link. So you mean, it is possible, that they don't have the private keys anymore?

This mentioned address is not too old (end of april 2013).
https://blockchain.info/de/address/1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbhx

This one, with 111,000. This is touched 2011 the last time (exept of this small "donations")
https://blockchain.info/address/1933phfhK3ZgFQNLGSDXvqCn32k2buXY8a

btw: x% of the coins are owned by 100 individuals. I like statistics^^

[Chang Hum]

So let me get this straight, it only took a simple check of addresses associated with MTgox to completely undermine the credibility of the crisis plan document and show that Gox is in fact solvent.

Woah bit hard to get my head around this but that logically means that pre-announcement Gox coins should be trading at around .5 , yet are being traded for just 0.06 at the moment on Bitcoin Builder.com. 1000% profit? yes please I'm going to get over there now!!!

[raid_n]

It's becoming more and more clear that the coins haven't been stolen, they've just lost the keys lol. Once this is confirmed, should be very bullish.

I don't think that the loss of those coins, per se, would have any effect.  

Think of the exchanges as water tanks where water represents bitcoins in the market, and the water level is the inverse price (how many BTC one can buy with one dollar).

The tanks are connected by pipes at the bottom (coin withdrawals and deposits) so the hydrostatic principle (arbitrage) keeps the water level about the same in all tanks. If one pours more water into any tank (brings more coins to the market) the level in all tanks goes up (meaning the price goes down).  The opposite happens if one takes water out of one tank (buys coins and puts them in cold storage).

If the MtGOX theft did happen, then at some point in the past, someone siphoned most of the water out of the MtGOX tank to a private barrel.  I the keys were lost, most of the water in that tank leaked out and was permanetly lost.  In either case, Mark put some bricks into the tank (hid the theft) so that people would not notice the loss, and the water level was not affected.   Then a few days ago the pipes out of that tank  were closed (withdrawals were blocked),  and the tank was disconnected and removed it from the system.   That would not affect the water level in the other tanks either.

If the theft happened, and the thief then dumped the water in other tanks (sold the coins in other markets), then there was indeed a net rise in the water level (a fall in market price); but that is past history.  

We may expect an effect only if the coins were stolen but have not been not sold yet EDIT: and are sold now.

(This analogy is imperfect because it does not model the money flows, but hopefully it is enough to argue the point.)

I am talking about a case in which the private keys have been lost, in which case 750k BTC has been taken out of the total money supply. If they have been stolen (but the keys are still known) it shouldn't have much of an affect.

If the keys are lost, it brings up an argument to fork the block chain, and change the code to manually recover the money. To a new address. A lot of people would support it. (and many would be against)... talk about polarising the Bitcoin community.

It won't work. Without the private key, how Mark could prove those are really gox's coins?

Not just that. You'd try to open pandora's box. I highly doubt the devs would ever put that into a protocol update.
And even if they did at least a majority of miners would then have to move to that change.
Even attempting this would destroy bitcoin

[F-bernanke]

Senator Joe Manchin  (who wants to BAN BTC) Was at the Yellen Hearing just now.

He asked Yellen of this was possible.

Yellen replied that there is no central issuer and no central bank, and it is decentralized, it is hard to regulate and the FED has no plans to do that.

source?

I'm listening the live stream:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-27/yellen-testifies-senate-live-stream

[soullyG]

Not just that. You'd try to open pandora's box. I highly doubt the devs would ever put that into a protocol update.
And even if they did at least a majority of miners would then have to move to that change.
Even attempting this would destroy bitcoin

+infinity

I can't imagine most people would agree to this, even if they did have funds in Gox - it undermines one of the core principles of Bitcoin..

[Templer]

Senator Joe Manchin  (who wants to BAN BTC) Was at the Yellen Hearing just now.

He asked Yellen of this was possible.

Yellen replied that there is no central issuer and no central bank, and it is decentralized, it is hard to regulate and the FED has no plans to do that.

source?

I'm listening the live stream:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-02-27/yellen-testifies-senate-live-stream

thx for that!

[aminorex]

Not just that. You'd try to open pandora's box. I highly doubt the devs would ever put that into a protocol update.
And even if they did at least a majority of miners would then have to move to that change.

No miners would run the new code unless they got a cut of the coins.  That's all it would really take:  Offer 10% of the freed goxcoins as extra block rewards, and *ping* the coins are back.
The proof issue remains.  If it were directed by a court, I could see it happening.  Now *that* would be seriously dangerous to bitcoin:  An actual sovereign interference in the money supply.
We need to replace all the core devs with anonymous parties, untraceable by the court system.  Um.  That might not work out so well either.  Proof-of-Ethics protocol not yet implemented.

[Chang Hum]

There's some bloody funny public notes on those gox addresses just reading through them now!

Public Note: Hi! My name is Preet Bharara and I'm homeless Indian junkie. I'm accepting donations to buy crack for me and my ugly wife. Please help me. Thank you.