Rollback is BS

[tsvekric]

yeah, how would MtGox enforce setting the price back?  Thats not what they claimed.  They're rolling back the bids and ask to approx when they were at that price.

[1714168166]

1714168166

[Bimmerhead]

Mea culpa

After eating some cheese and a spicy snack I've had a change of mind.

Since price conveys information about the market, and since price conveyed by the sale or purchase of stolen funds is false and is not to be reasonably expected by market participants, anybody who sold out voluntarily, or bought voluntarily, was not doing so under reasonably expected conditions.  If somebody sold 500,000 btc because they're a dork, that's one thing.  If 500,000 were sold off because they were stolen, that is something completely different.

While I find the attitude of "I made a mistake and sold because I panicked and now I want some governing body to fix my screw-up" appalling, and if I had sold sub-$10 I probably wouldn't be whining for a rollback, I would agree that in this scenario a rollback is the right thing to do.

[teamdren]

I thought the same thing at first, but imagine if somebody hacked an online real estate trading site and sold a house that wasn't theirs and tried to run off with the money... Or somebody hacked an etrade account that had 100 billion Yuan...  Similar measures would be enacted. 

I didn't really take the sell off seriously, personally, everyone seemed to be aware that it was stolen BTC being sold off.  I was surprised when they announced the 'rollback' (unfortunate wording, I would say... I would have called it a 'reversal').  Before this I thought only Wal-Mart did rollbacks.  However, at this point, I'm pleased that a reversal is possible.

[dutt]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizuho_Securities#Massive_sale_order_of_J-COM_share_incident

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Flash_Crash

Not hacks but still.

[Sebz4n]

I think people who whine about the rollback is disgusting!

They give a shit about the guy who potentially lost 8 million dollars, because they were able to buy shitloads of BTC @ 0.05 USD rates, and now feel that they actually earned those coins.

In my eyes, it's more or less in line with stealing.

[Coin.Karma]

Rollback is Awesome......................

[lemonginger]

Exchanges cancel orders all the time for various reasons.

If you don't like it, open another exchange. The greed on display here is disgusting.

[chungenhung]

i smell lawsuits coming to mtgox.

[Sebz4n]

i smell lawsuits coming to mtgox.

If anybody wanna sue Mt Gox, I'll be there to throw shit and rotten banans at them greedy bastards outside of the court room -.-

Fucking disgusting people.

[Cluster2k]

Those people advocating against a rollback are taking a very strange position.  Imagine for a moment your bank account got hacked and the funds withdrawn.  Would you just shrug and say "Well, that's what the bank and temporary user of my account dictated.  I can't argue with the will of the market!"  Real exchanges (not Magic The Gathering trading sites like Mt Gox) roll back suspicious and erroneous trades on a regular basis.

There is absolutely nothing to be gained by allowing the ridiculous trades like $0.01 per BTC to remain.

[Cluster2k]

i smell lawsuits coming to mtgox.

Good luck suing some guy in Tokyo who is only reachable via IRC.  MtGox doesn't even have a postal address to write to.

[Bimmerhead]

Those people advocating against a rollback are taking a very strange position.  Imagine for a moment your bank account got hacked and the funds withdrawn.  Would you just shrug and say "Well, that's what the bank and temporary user of my account dictated.  I can't argue with the will of the market!"  Real exchanges (not Magic The Gathering trading sites like Mt Gox) roll back suspicious and erroneous trades on a regular basis.

There is absolutely nothing to be gained by allowing the ridiculous trades like $0.01 per BTC to remain.

No one is saying the illegal trades shouldn't be cancelled.  The argument is over voluntary trades not involving the stolen btc.

[cryptoanarchist]

The real money to be made was in the price drops at all the other exchanges.   

[Batouzo]

i smell lawsuits coming to mtgox.

Good luck suing some guy in Tokyo who is only reachable via IRC.  MtGox doesn't even have a postal address to write to.

Why people here and on slashdot keep repeating that?

Mtgox.com was giving it's company address on their website.

K.K. Tibanne
24-30, Kugayama 5-Chome
Suginami-ku, Tokyo 168-0082

Sheeesh you guys need to learn your googles and html link clicking thingies.

[LastBattle]

Damn! I thought I struck it big. Shit!

[Anduril]

i smell lawsuits coming to mtgox.

Really? I would be extremely surprised how that would go. The legal status of Bitcoins is grey to say the least. Bitcoins are at best an unregulated speculative market, at worst they are an illegal currency. You cannot sue for the theft of something that is illegal; try suing a drug dealer because they gave you flour instead of cocaine

So, imagine a person had some bitcoins that were traded without their authorisation. What can they do? First we would have to look if there is a contract between the user and mt.gox, but there is no such thing, when signing up users were not given any terms and conditions through a click-wrap agreement, and the site has no ToC either. So any user would only have one recourse, and that is to hope that a court may recognise that Mt.Gox had some obligation to you, and that they were neglectful in their fulfilment of such obligation. This will be difficult to say the least without a contract.

So, even if you want to go ahead and sue, where would you do it? You could sue in your own jurisdiction, but foreign civil lawsuits are difficult to enforce, and we have established that BTCs may even be illegal in your jurisdiction. You could try suing in Japan, but for that you would need to hire a Japanese lawyer... not cheap. And then again, BTCs may be illegal in Japan too.

So, I don't really see any lawsuits happening any time soon.

[imperi]

Any libertarian in good standing would take him private army to Japan and start asking some questions.

[Grinder]

By rolling the price back to it's prior value and not letting the free market decide upon the new value after this attack, Mtgox is essentially saying that they themselves are the de facto controller of the value of bitcoin. I don't use bitcoin because I wanted some regulatory agency to say how much my money was worth, I wanted the market itself to decide that.

They're not rolling back the price, they're rolling back the trades. MtGox doesn't decide the price. If you think that is wrong you're just saying that you'll happily buy goods you know are stolen if the price is right, and it would just be proof of why your liberalist heaven would never work. How could it, when not even yourselves respect the right of property if you see the possibility to get rich?

[dumb_mother]

there were no legitimate trades i would argue sub 10$ that occurred, even after the initial sell off.  first off it was effectively a market order all the way down to fractions of a penny (ie all 1 order from the hacked account) and from there i think you could easily argue that 99% of the offers that existed for the next few minutes before the site was taken down were from people reselling the coins they just "bought" for 1 penny.  the rollback is the only solution, you cannot simply roll back the first sell off and none of the following sales because there will be countless people caught short in the market (which is currently unshortable).  it will be quite interesting to see what kind of vol comes in over the next few days and potentially weeks.

my only hope is that mtgox doesn't restore all of the bids / offers from pre-crash but instead lets us come in and fill them.  even though the bids i am working are about 13.50 and 10.25, i'd prefer to be able to revalue those myself rather than getting potentially filled the instant they bring the site back online.

[iya]

Yeah, if they roll back trades, they also have to cancel all bids and asks.