why does mt gox care about one user

[lemonginger]

but just to be clear, the gains weren't from a greedy hacker. they were from completing a trade on an exchange where the counterparty happened to be a greedy hacker. if i make money selling fruit at a fruitstand for cash, the fact that the cash is stolen doesn't matter in any modern legal system that i'm aware of. again, that's true even in the united states, which adopts the relatively unusual legal rule that stolen goods can be returned to their prior owners even after an innocent purchase.

Hi Unk,

I really appreciate your posting history and your philosophy in general on the "state of bitcoin" at the moment as being better thought of as a preliminary experiment with blockchain technologies rather than The Perfect Currency Of The Future.

However, on this, I think you are wrong. First off, every major exchange I'm aware of has a history of rolling back trades for various reasons. I realize your point is that the trades in and of themself weren't a result of a glitch, however this need not be the case. Open market manipulation especially when undertaken by someone who does not actually own the coins involved and when the disruption is large enough the shake the entire market seems to be a clear cut case when it would be best for everyone if the trades were reversed.

I agree with you that exchanges need to move towards more transparency in terms of when/how funds will be frozen, what redress procedures are, when trades will be broken, etc. However, as you have noted numerous times, we are still in the preliminary days and have outgrown ourselves a bit in terms of what we are able to deal with. It's a shame that growth has not occurred in a slower fashion and that suddenly there's very real amounts of money at stake, (especially because, as you mention, it is going to strongly impede a willingness to throw the current block chain out the window and move to something better) but that's where we are at.

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[unk]

hi lemonginger,

first, thank you for the kind words.

i agree; i think a central problem is that growth occurred too quickly, and bitcoin as a result has likely suffered. hopefully it hasn't suffered in an unrecoverable way.

as to the propriety of a rollback, i think the difficulty here - the root of all disagreement - has to do with differing understandings of the business norms of financial exchanges. i've never seen a consensual broken trade as the result of a theft of funds on one side, and so my instinct is to imply a promise not to break trades in that manner on the part of the exchange. similarly, market manipulation is not usually sufficient to break trades; the typical response to that is legal, not unilateral.

that having been said, i recognise that the issue is not black-and-white, and there is room for reasonable disagreement. and i don't want to overstate my argument, which i might have done in the zeal of discussion. i'm mostly just trying to call for more transparency and disclosure, and less unilateral action. and i'm bristling at the 'trust' given to mt. gox when, realistically, they're a highly compensated oligopolist acting in their own self-interest.

[bitbot]

I wasn't  buying stolen goods. I bought goods that the market gave me for the price I hand picked.

Yes; and I bought a Bluray player out of the back of some guy's car that he was offering at a price that I hand picked as acceptable to me.

I'm afraid your willingness to transact doesn't imply the willingness of the other party.  Your repetition that you are pleased with the deal does not change the nature of what you were buying: stolen goods.

you chose to buy hot electronics out of a shady persons' car

I didn't choose which btc to buy, the market did and because of that I am not liable for anything.

[realnowhereman]

So you're saying that it's only immoral if you knowingly buy stolen goods?

Well you know the coins are stolen now.

Anyone with any decency would be offering to undo the trade voluntarily.

[bitbot]

I just want to kiss my hot coins one last time before returning them to mt.gox's personal account

[Hook^]

I think because the one user was an account set up to move everyone else's bitcoins to it, and they tried to drain all of Mt. Gox's bitcoin wallet from there.  The user probably doesn't exist.