Huge Bitcoin sell off due to a compromised account - rollback

[Oldminer]

Mark Karpeles (MtGox)
posted this on Jun-20 04:07:

The bitcoin will be back to around 17.5$/BTC after we rollback all trades that have happened after the huge Bitcoin sale that happened on June 20th near 3:00am (JST).

Service should be back by June 20th 10:00am (JST, 01:00am GMT) with all the trades reversed and accounts available.

One account with a lot of coins was compromised and whoever stole it (using a HK based IP to login) first sold all the coins in there, to buy those again just after, and then tried to withdraw the coins. The $1000/day withdraw limit was active for this account and the hacker could only get out with $1000 worth of coins.

Apart from this no account was compromised, and nothing was lost. Due to the large impact this had on the Bitcoin market, we will rollback every trade which happened since the big sale, and ensure this account is secure before opening access again.

Source

[dinzy]

It's still an interesting way to maximize the 1k limit.  But all that fuss for a few k seems not worth the effort.

That being said, the 1k limit is a huge "regulation" in and of itself.

[Jack of Diamonds]

Their market position is huge so they really can roll back the price.

Other exchanges will follow the price like puppies, just check bitcoincharts.com when Mt. Gox opens again.

[Oldminer]

That being said, the 1k limit is a huge "regulation" in and of itself.

True, but it perhaps prevented a more dire outcome for the market all in the end? At least this way its only temporary.

[warsmith]

What do you think the price will be after the rollback?

[dinzy]

That being said, the 1k limit is a huge "regulation" in and of itself.

True, but it perhaps prevented a more dire outcome for the market all in the end? At least this way its only temporary.

Yes.  It is definitely for the best.  Had it been a legitimate sale, I'd have mixed feelings, but being a hack it really isn't real market dynamics.

[dinzy]

What do you think the price will be after the rollback?

It says 17.5 so it will be 17.5.  'wished I had funds at Tradehill'

[onesalt]

if you're gonna roll the prices back why not just and put all your money back in a fake government backed money bank. if you're too fucking stupid to set a long enough password to prevent it being stolen you deserve to have it all stolen. Regulating the market is NOT in the spirit of bitcoin.

[warsmith]

if you're gonna roll the prices back why not just and put all your money back in a fake government backed money bank. if you're too fucking stupid to set a long enough password to prevent it being stolen you deserve to have it all stolen. Regulating the market is NOT in the spirit of bitcoin.

I agree.

(because I had 100s of fulfilled orders @ 0.1 BTC) 

[hypsterj]

No one is forcing you to use MtGox. Every market requires rules to operate. Tux's market, Tux's rules.

[EricSU]

if you're gonna roll the prices back why not just and put all your money back in a fake government backed money bank. if you're too fucking stupid to set a long enough password to prevent it being stolen you deserve to have it all stolen. Regulating the market is NOT in the spirit of bitcoin.

They aren't rolling back to get the money back for the person who got their coins stolen.
Its because the market was crashed because of it.

[Coin.Karma]

Guys actually, Rollback would be the only way. Cause it was an artificially induced and not real time induced problem. They should first put a + or -5% growth limit to bitcoin on a daily basis. This is done in the Stock markets on a lot of companies.

This would be the first sensible step to make bitcoin a stable form of currency.

[Ian Maxwell]

This is not as bad as it could have been---at least if Tux is willing to pay for lost money out of pocket (Pwye knows he has enough).

It's still pretty fucking bad, though. I am done with MtGox. Maybe it's time to look more closely at that open-source trading platform idea.

[chadqberry]

I'm still not understanding how they put the price back at $17.5 when Tradehill is currently just over $11.

[bcpokey]

MtGox does not set price, buys and sells do. Likely the rollback is being done to the point where the prices were centered around 17.5, but people are free to revoke/remove/change their bids/asks when mtgox goes back up. And since there is such a huge disparity on tradehill, well... I feel bad for anyone who isn't paying attention to what is going on and forgets to change their trade data on Monday (or if they have to reset their account and can't do it fast enough).

Eventually the two exchanges will reach parity again though and will resume business as usual.

EDIT: I noticed the last tradehill trade was done 40+ minutes ago.

[chadqberry]

weird.. When Tradehill came back, the price was 14.5 again.. I was dead for 40 minutes.

[sandos]

A rollback clearly does not restore prices, and it should not. There really isn't a "price" in a market like this, there is just the last trade, and there wont be any recent trades when they open.