Has anyone speculated on Mt.Gox's mystery auditor yet?

[Meatpile]

If it was just a standard financial auditor so they could properly operate in the United states, then why wouldn't they just say so? It would obviously need to be a full government accredited company/individual.

The fact they have "secrecy" clauses with this auditor (exact quote from the interview was something along the lines of we have an agreement about their anonymity?), and give them full access to all users info such as emails and hashed passowrds etc can only mean one thing in my eyes. The auditor has to be the IRS or homeland security.

It would make sense that they would want to be able to track "terrorist" funding efforts etc. I would wager they threatened this unfettered access as a condition of letting them continue operating in the United States.

There is no way it is just a third party "accountant" or auditor, otherwise they would love to publicize such a thing as it gives them alot of credibility as a financial institution. (Also they wouldnt give them personal info, only transaction info)


Can anyone give me any examples of why you would ever want an auditor at all if you can't tell people about it to improve trust / credibility in your company?

[BTC Economist]

I don't know if you saw the interview, but given all the hesitating and mumbling on the interviews I'd say there is no auditor.  It's complete crap.  They were just trying to make it look like it wasn't security-related (which would have been impossible anyways).

[spooge]

Which interview?

[Meatpile]

I did watch the interview from start to finish, and I didn't get the impression the Mtgox representative was lying about anything (although he was speaking english to "his boss" who couldn't speak english??)

He certainly wasn't taking it too seriously, he was chuckling at some things. But he was generally quite forward with all of the failures that mtgox has committed it seemed. Sounded fairly sincere and open about everything that was being asked to me.




(on a side note, the only thing I learned about tradehill in those interviews was that at least 2 of the 4 guys in an internet software company are not programmers and don't know anything about security or how their own system works?)

[Meatpile]

Which interview?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtWm7ivZfg4

[dennis_sweden]

In Tradehill's defence, not everyy operator needs to know the security, several of them have experience from exchanges. Given the immense security lapses at mtgox, if Tradehill want to be taken seriously, they must invest in security and prove to users that it has done so. I would reckon that their security is better than mtgox as theyr have experience from exchanges, but until they give some information as to how/who is running their security they are not a solution to the issue of mtgox, only an unknown alternative - or so I reckon.