mtgox.com has blocked my account with 45 000 USD in it!

[Bimmerhead]

I don't understand... how is a regular bitcoin user supposed to be able to determine if btc he is receiving are 'tainted'?

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[Zerbie]

The question isn't so much about righting a wrong, it is about who gets to decide who did what, and what constitutes a wrong.

Don't we all have that right?

Well, if I'm holding $10,000 for you in an envelope in my house because we are trustworthy friends, and I ask you where you got the money and you say "selling widgets on the internet", and I inform you that I am against the distribution of widgets and so I'm giving your $10,000 to a charity of my choice, how does that fit into the postmodern notion of anyone getting to define right/wrong?

(Pardon the run on sentence)

I think Noam Chomsky and his idea of social anarchy may have the correct idea about the use of force and authority.  He argued that authority/force is sometimes justified, but it is the user of force who must justify his actions.  Noam used the case of a child running into the middle of traffic, and the use of force to save the child's life.  Anyone who understood the situation would agree that the use of force in this case would be justified.

In this case, mtgox may be doing the correct thing, but the burden of justification rests on mtgox.

[kiba]

Yes this is true, but it would force scammers to do more work. There is no perfect system, but we cacn always make it continually more difficult.

Security have a cost, Nefario.

[marcus_of_augustus]

"Tainted" coins, traced transactions, justice delayed ... starting to smell like big gubmint "money" masquerading as something else, just saying.

If mtgox felt like he was receiving stolen property why didn't he just give it back and not deal with the guy instead of playing cops and robbers and freezing it into his own possession?

[BitterTea]

If mtgox felt like he was receiving stolen property why didn't he just give it back and not deal with the guy instead of playing cops and robbers and freezing it into his own possession?

So what you're saying is that if someone scammed or stole bitcoin or USD from you and then deposited it mtgox, and then mtgox found out about it, you'd want him to give the money back to the scammer/thief?

[rebuilder]

So what you're saying is that if someone scammed or stole bitcoin or USD from you and then deposited it mtgox, and then mtgox found out about it, you'd want him to give the money back to the scammer/thief?

I can't speak for moa, but personally I want proof that the person was a scammer in the first place. I'm not keen on the idea of mt gox as King Solomon. I've withdrawn my funds from the service for now. If solid evidence is produced that Baron was involved in stealing, I may become a customer again. If not, I'll have to conclude the risk of having my funds seized on a whim is not one I'm willing to take.

[kiba]

I can't speak for moa, but personally I want proof that the person was a scammer in the first place. I'm not keen on the idea of mt gox as King Solomon. I've withdrawn my funds from the service for now. If solid evidence is produced that Baron was involved in stealing, I may become a customer again. If not, I'll have to conclude the risk of having my funds seized on a whim is not one I'm willing to take.

Blah. MtGox dispute resolution is a lot more transparent than paypal.

[rebuilder]

Blah. MtGox dispute resolution is a lot more transparent than paypal.

Have there been many previous cases of dispute resolution by mt gox? I'm not aware of a history of such arbitration that would let me judge how well they handle it.

Like I said, if solid evidence is provided that Baron was involved in wrongdoings, I'll consider the matter settled. It may even end up with me having an increased trust in mt gox as far as arbitration goes. I will want to see that evidence, though.

[Mahkul]

I just can't wait for mtgox to post some more info about this, but I can understand why he's doing this. Don't forget it's not just Bitcoins involved, but also LR and a lump sum of it. If I was running an exchange I would have done exactly the same, who knows what actually happened? Let's just wait for him to give us some more information.

On a side note, nobody forces anyone to use mtgox and as far as I know nobody signed any agreement and for all I know one day Jed could just close the website, take all the moeny and disappear. It's all based on trust so stop whining, if you don't like mtgox just don't use it.

Side note two: I would never put that amount of money onto any web-based account (not at this early stage of BTC development).

[caveden]

Well, before you accept the payment you can check whether the coins are tainted. At the moment this must be done manually but I think a service will popup that covers this soon enough. It's the same in real life accepting stolen goods.

I doubt any service will become popular. If it does, attackers will send tainted bitcoins to random forum users to undermine the system.

And honest random users would give back the tainted coins they freely received to the true owner...

I also think some service of this kind could be useful if it manages to be quick enough. For example, a exchange has some coins stolen. In less than 24h, it publishes it and all addresses touched by such coins become tainted. No bank which agrees with the terms of this service will accept any of those coins anymore, if they ever receive them, they transfer back to the original owner.
Eventually, such service could even write a patched version of the standalone client that recognizes dirty incoming transactions.

To think about... it opens dangerous doors, but it may have a positive balance in the end... it's how voluntary justice is supposed to work, through ostracism. The dirty coins would get ostracized...

[marcus_of_augustus]

Yep, it opens many, many dangerous doors.

I'm not saying mtgox is bad, they may have good reasons for doing what they are doing but it is bad precedence to set for someone in the business of holding others money on account.

Why do you think money is fleeing western banking capitals? Seemingly arbitrary account freezings is the scariest thing out for prospective customers and you are quite right, no one has to use them!

What if someone sells coins in a legitimate sale and then turns around to Mtgox and claims they were stolen, what's he going to do then?

[rebuilder]

On a side note, nobody forces anyone to use mtgox and as far as I know nobody signed any agreement and for all I know one day Jed could just close the website, take all the moeny and disappear. It's all based on trust so stop whining, if you don't like mtgox just don't use it.

I fully agree it's based on trust. I feel I can trust someone more if they tell me what they will and will not do. That gives me a way to evaluate how well they keep their word.

It's not a question of liking or not liking mt gox. My situation was this: Someone reported their funds on mt gox were held. I had some funds there as well. I'm not aware of any track record mt gox may have in handling cases of foul play, so I can't evaluate to what extent I can or can not trust them to do it right. I therefore deemed it prudent to withdraw my funds until this matter is resolved. I do expect the end result to be that mt gox comes through and the evidence is solid. I just don't know for sure yet.

Again, I'm not trying to agitate here. As far as trading goes, mt gox's reputation here is solid to say the least. I do, however, think we will be seeing more and more disputes as the economy grows, and there will be increasing pressure to develop a more transparent method for dealing with them. Some community members now essentially have the powers of judge and jury thanks to their standing, that's just where we are now. It can work for a small community. As the community grows, I think that will become unsustainable, and I'd like to plan ahead for that. That's all.

[sturle]

There is pretty strong evidence that this guy was involved in some theft of BTC. I'm trying to talk to him to make absolutely certain.

from that man from IRC only 9000 BTC, in that day when I received BTC rate was about 0.30/BTC, so it's total of ~3000 USD, so it's necessary to block all my money ( all 45 000 USD) ? ore suspicious transactions involved?

You bought coins for USD 3000, and don't remember anything about this guy (e.g. IRC channel or nick or LR account number) or have any record of the transaction?  Doesn't sound very likely to me.  Are there more suspicious transactions involved?

[breandan81]

I wish there was a full story here, if the details are at all right this is a problem.  Even if baron somehow stole a few thousand BTC, that is by no means a reason to hold 45k in LR.  I'll reserve judgement until mtgox posts the whole story, but personally the whole issue of mtgox suddenly freezing accounts does make me nervous.  If this really was due to receiving stolen bitcoins that's an even bigger problem, for reasons that have already been argued in this thread.

[Baron]

There is pretty strong evidence that this guy was involved in some theft of BTC. I'm trying to talk to him to make absolutely certain.

from that man from IRC only 9000 BTC, in that day when I received BTC rate was about 0.30/BTC, so it's total of ~3000 USD, so it's necessary to block all my money ( all 45 000 USD) ? ore suspicious transactions involved?

You bought coins for USD 3000, and don't remember anything about this guy (e.g. IRC channel or nick or LR account number) or have any record of the transaction?  Doesn't sound very likely to me.  Are there more suspicious transactions involved?

I was trading in IRC only one time, there is no more suspicious transations involved. As I said before, it was more than month ago, so I can't remember details.

why mtgox.com started asking/blocking my account only after month?

[Baron]

The most interesting thing is that man from who was "stolen" money do not appeared here until now, I would like to see what he says. I think all of bitcoin users knows about this forum, why that man not appeared yet?

Also, it would be nice to talk about this situation directly to that man from who money was "stolen", not under mtgox.com rear.

[caveden]

What if someone sells coins in a legitimate sale and then turns around to Mtgox and claims they were stolen, what's he going to do then?

Any decent system should consider not only the reputation of those who make crime accusations, but proofs too. This someone would have to prove the theft, otherwise his unprovable claim would be just some negative points on his/her reputation.

Or do you mean someone who has acquired stolen coins without knowing it? This is more complicated, and I don't know how such system could solve this issue. Basically it's a matter on who should be the final victim, the first one to be stolen, or the last one to receive the stolen coins before they get caught.
Leaving it for the first victim has an advantage since it "forces" people to be more responsible with their belongings.
But leaving it to the last one increases the range of such protection system, making it much more difficult for the thief to get away with the coins, since people would now start to worry with the sources of the payments they receive. Banks could automatically detect dirty payments, the standalone client could have add-ons to indicate dirty payments and so on.

Anyway, it's a complicated and delicate issue, of course I don't have all the answers, but it would be interesting to see how free market interactions will deal with criminals.

[caveden]

45k$ is a significant amount of money. I am wondering why is it still being discussed here at all. This is a matter for police and/or civil litigation.

Police? Seriously? What do you expect them to do, besides filing a report?

[ribuck]

mtgox ... dishes out "guilty" verdicts ... Please do correct me if I am wrong.

I haven't seen any statement from MtGox that resembles "dishing out a guilty verdict", or anything other than "I'm looking into this".

[gene]

mtgox ... dishes out "guilty" verdicts ... Please do correct me if I am wrong.

I haven't seen any statement from MtGox that resembles "dishing out a guilty verdict", or anything other than "I'm looking into this".

Freezing funds is a drastic measure. Would you be ok with your bank freezing your money, without a "guilty verdict" while they were "looking into" it?