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

[Mota]

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.

Never ever... I can understand people who have coins at gox would favor this, but like already said, this would undermine the fundamental priciples of Bitcoin. So what will be the next exception? I lost 1000coins back in the days, so why should gox people be compensated but me not? Ah btw, I don't can prove, that this address is mine...

The principle of bitcoin is decentralisation. Those adresses are proven to be owned by gox, since they deposited on them back in 2011 for a proof of liquidity.

If gox decides to appeal to the community it is up to the miners to decide if they want to fork or not. If you do not run a node, you have no say in the matter. If the community decides that it is better to recover 3% of the whole btc supply then they will do it, if not they won't. Easy as that. That's a decentralised majority vote and I would say it would be perfectly fitting in with the principles. If you don't want a fork, create your own node and run the old version. If 50% +1 nodes in the network join you, so be it.

That said, as long as they don't comment on it there is no way to know if those coins are lost or not.

[JorgeStolfi]

Jorge, are you aware that the UK economy used to be modelled by the Treasury by an actual water analog computer?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC_Computer

How cool! Thanks!

[Le Happy Merchant]

I'm already bored, let's move on

This. I mean I know it sucks, but I've been telling people to avoid gox for almost two years now.

Once we can get back to just watching the numbers tick up, I will be a lot happier.

[empowering]

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

Just to confuse the issue a bit more:

Consider my pet theory, namely that Mark sold those 750 kBTC of client deposits at (say) 15$ apiece off-market, when the market price was (say) 10$, without imagining that the price would increase so much, so fast.

The buyer of those coins would now be pressuring Mark to hide that deal, otherwise MtGOX clients may go to court to void the deal and recover those coins from him.  They may be floating all those rumors "I lost the keys", "the coins were stolen", "the coins were seized" --- to see which story the public will find more believable; or just to create confusion until people get bored and stop asking what really happened.

Do they have a lot of Unicorns in Brazil? 

[JorgeStolfi]

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.

I did consider that case, I think it makes no difference:

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.

Think of losing the keys as a theft by the Devil (or by God). 

[soullyG]

Reddit thread on Goxcoin speculation here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/1z2xo5/speculation_the_us_government_has_control_of_goxs/

[JorgeStolfi]

Do they have a lot of Unicorns in Brazil? 

We have something much more interesting than a stupid semi-cow:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saci_%28Brazilian_folklore%29

[KeyserSoze]

...a Frenchman who has a Frenchman roommate...

We get it already, you want to gay bash him. Certainly there are enough actual crimes he's committed for you to pursue him down those avenues.

[raid_n]

Can you expand on this? I dont understand how it would damage anything.

I mean, assuming we KNOW these 500k lost coins were Gox, why cant they be restored if the community supports it?

In essence it would break trust.
You trust that only 21 million coins will come into existence.
Forking bitcoin to change funds in any way would immediately break the trust that that what you own is actually yours.

Who is to guarantee that this change is a one time thing?
Who is to guarantee that no government gets access to unlimited coins?

Btw forking bitcoin is essentially like making an altcoin out of it.
Only one of the forks can be the "real" bitcoin. This is not to say that both can't survive.
But if such a major change were to be put through you can be certain that we'd end up with two bitcoins and
this would break just about all trust

[JorgeStolfi]

I see unicorns. All the time.

https://www.google.com.br/search?q=%22alleged+theft%22+%22cover+up%22

[empowering]

I see unicorns. All the time.

https://www.google.com.br/search?q=%22alleged+theft%22+%22cover+up%22

I am sure you do... who else would spend so much time on the Voynich manuscript other than a man that likes a mystery.

[fluidjax]

 I'm almost sorry I brought up the Karpeles Fork idea, but it is an interesting question, and shouldn't be swept under the carpet. I personally am completely against the idea. But the danger comes as was mentioned previously in offering pool operators/miners a bounty for running the forked code. It could be argued that the Gox event is so significant in size 750k that an exception in some peoples mind could be made. What is the price of the miners... 50%? The next 500 blocks found running the modified code each receive a bonus 750BTC per block found.... Very scary

As I said I am against this... Just putting it up for discussion.

[Chang Hum]

Wow I'm really bullish on Goxbtc at the moment I think once this latest news gets widespread I can really see the price rallying back to .33 in the next 12 hours!

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[FTWbitcoinFTW]

Wow I'm really bullish on Goxbtc at the moment I think once this latest news gets widespread I can really see the price rallying back to .33 in the next 12 hours!

Let me guess, you break even if it's 0.33
I feel your pain bro, sorry

[empowering]

I initially thought we were seeing a takeover or sell out from MK, and maybe that is still the case... but the more I think about it the more I wonder if
the guberment have their tricky paws on this...

oh look another Unicorn...

[derpinheimer]

Can you expand on this? I dont understand how it would damage anything.

I mean, assuming we KNOW these 500k lost coins were Gox, why cant they be restored if the community supports it?

In essence it would break trust.
You trust that only 21 million coins will come into existence.
Forking bitcoin to change funds in any way would immediately break the trust that that what you own is actually yours.

Who is to guarantee that this change is a one time thing?
Who is to guarantee that no government gets access to unlimited coins?

Btw forking bitcoin is essentially like making an altcoin out of it.
Only one of the forks can be the "real" bitcoin. This is not to say that both can't survive.
But if such a major change were to be put through you can be certain that we'd end up with two bitcoins and
this would break just about all trust

Well, if 500k were deleted, then really the net amount is still the same. I mean, I dont think forking for small things or even individuals who send large amounts to the wrong address makes sense. But when its something as big as Gox, which may or may not, but for arguments sake, lost >500,000 coins? That seems worthy of a at least considering a fork to me.

To me, this is a big plus to bitcoin if something like this manages to happen. I dont see why anyone would lose trust that what they have is theirs.

Why guarantee it to be a one time thing? If in the future another mega-bitcoin company loses a million coins, they should have a fork considered then, too.

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.

Never ever... I can understand people who have coins at gox would favor this, but like already said, this would undermine the fundamental priciples of Bitcoin. So what will be the next exception? I lost 1000coins back in the days, so why should gox people be compensated but me not? Ah btw, I don't can prove, that this address is mine...

The principle of bitcoin is decentralisation. Those adresses are proven to be owned by gox, since they deposited on them back in 2011 for a proof of liquidity.

If gox decides to appeal to the community it is up to the miners to decide if they want to fork or not. If you do not run a node, you have no say in the matter. If the community decides that it is better to recover 3% of the whole btc supply then they will do it, if not they won't. Easy as that. That's a decentralised majority vote and I would say it would be perfectly fitting in with the principles. If you don't want a fork, create your own node and run the old version. If 50% +1 nodes in the network join you, so be it.

That said, as long as they don't comment on it there is no way to know if those coins are lost or not.

No one can force you to join a fork. No one. Sure you may end up as the only user on your side of the fork, in which case, what is the point?

Ultimately, the economic majority has the power to decide. If all the devs and all the miners decide to fork for whatever reason, and the economic majority decides they don't agree, the economic majority sells it's coins and the devs and miners are playing with worthless tokens.

In the case of a fork, it's highly likely that only one chain will survive. There are far, far more coins that weren't lost in the Gox implosion than there are coins that were lost. If the devs and miners decide to fraudulently manipulate the code to "save" those coins, I'm sure we will see massive dumping of coins on this fork and only Bitcoin will remain in the end. I know I will be selling my forked coins and if anyone is stupid enough to give me something of value for them, I will immediately purchase more actual Bitcoins with the money.

So, I'd like to see it because I hope that I would end up with more actual Bitcoins once everything is said and done. Those who choose the wrong fork will most likely end up with nothing but a harsh lesson about why Bitcoin exists in the first place. I don't think anyone is stupid enough to try and bail out Gox with a protocol change though.

Why would anyone want both chains to survive? It seems to me, miners would want no Gox fork and just about every investor in bitcoin, ever, (assuming the 500k+ sum) would want the fork. I dont doubt a lot of the coins would be dumped causing a temporary decrease in price, but the trust something like this would generate for me..

[raid_n]

I'm almost sorry I brought up the Karpeles Fork idea, but it is an interesting question, and shouldn't be swept under the carpet. I personally am completely against the idea. But the danger comes as was mentioned previously in offering pool operators/miners a bounty for running the forked code. It could be argued that the Gox event is so significant in size 750k that an exception in some peoples mind could be made. What is the price of the miners... 50%? The next 500 blocks found running the modified code each receive a bonus 750BTC per block found.... Very scary

As I said I am against this... Just putting it up for discussion.

Look by that logic any entity with enough funds can change bitcoin through buying out the miners.
The point is that you would immediately and irreparably lose trust and the value of bitcoin would crash.

It is a fact that you can fork bitcoin at any point in time changing anything and everything. You don't even need a majority for that.
Altcoins are usually created with their own genesis block. You could also make an altcoin that uses the current bitcoin blockchain as a basis.
Here comes the important bit: you as a user determine what the "right" protocol is. This isn't even a mining question btw.
Such a profound change would likely split the community in half.
You'd literally end up with some users supporting the "old" protocol and some with the "new"
Of course I don't need to point out that this would crash bitcoins value and completely break the trust.

[aminorex]

Think of losing the keys as a theft by the Devil (or by God). 

Depends on your worldview, I guess.

[fluidjax]

the guberment have their tricky paws on this...

+1
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