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Author Topic: Bitcointalk history of MtGox and how a Bitcointalk post caught the MtGox hacker.  (Read 1043 times)
xtraelv (OP)
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June 03, 2018, 12:44:34 PM
Last edit: June 25, 2018, 02:36:12 AM by xtraelv
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2010 Karpeles was accused of computer fraud before moving to Japan
Karpeles has been implicated in hacking and price manipulation before. In 2010,the Mt. Gox CEO was sentenced in a Paris court to a year in prison in absentia for hacking. He was living Tokyo and involved in Bitcoin at the time.

Under French law, Karpeles is not considered a criminal but rather “un délinquant,” a delinquent offender.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/08/why-the-head-of-mt-gox-bitcoin-exchange-should-be-in-jail/
http://gawker.com/does-mt-goxs-ceo-have-a-secret-history-of-online-payme-1534752110
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1227216-karpeles-english.html
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1227215-judgement-karpeles.html
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=477211.msg5678671#msg5678671

Quote
Indeed, during my misspent youth, I made a huge, huge mistake. Enough silliness that I found myself locked into custody and brought temporarily placed in the "mousetrap" (souricière: possibly "n.f. (pol.): 'Baited trap' laid by the forces of law-and-order."). This was followed by an investigation of more than a year, which eventually ended in a trial.
I will not give too much detail about what I did wrong, just say it concerns payment systems on the Internet. I spent two years taking risks becoming larger, perhaps because it was an exciting side … whatever, I ended up getting arrested (in rather bizarre circumstances, noting that when I was arrested, I was just in a police station to file a complaint for something else). Anyway, I was released four days later and placed under "judicial review". Basically I did not have the right to leave France and I had to go regularly to the courthouse to speak to someone who was going to see if I lived in "the right way".
...
In the end, the trial was not concluded too bad for me (3 months suspended sentence disappearing after 5 years, and nothing in the criminal record).
(Translated from french)

July 18, 2010, MtGox Announced  by programmer Jed McCalib (who later went on to found Ripple) BTC $0.07
Initially created in 2006 as a platform for trading playing cards but not launched.
Magic: The Gathering Online eXchange, which is where the Mt. Gox name comes from was announced on bitcointalk and launched on this day.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=444.0

March, 2011, MtGox sold by programmer (Ripple co-founder) Jed McCalib to to French developer and bitcoin enthusiast 26 year old Mark Karpeles.
The exchange allegedly had already lost 80 000 bitcoins but this was not disclosed to the public.
McCaleb also said that Mark Karpeles had rewritten the MtGox codebase back in 2011 after the sale was completed.

Quote
Although I knew that 80,000 BTC were already missing from Mt. Gox when Jed McCaleb sold it to Mark Karpèles — McCaleb suggesting to Karpèles “maybe you don’t really need to worry about it” — hackers had already cleaned out Mt. Gox while McCaleb owned it. He had sold Karpèles an insolvent exchange.
https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2017/09/17/kim-nilsson-of-wizsec-how-the-bitcoins-were-stolen-from-mt-gox/

June 19, 2011, DIRECT DOWNLOAD LINK FOR LEAKED MT. GOX ACCOUNT DATABASE (CSV FILE) BTC$17.77 and drops to $16.88 over 10 days
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=19576.0
https://web.archive.org/web/20110919162635/https://mtgox.com/press_release_20110630.html

June 20, 2011, Kevin the guy who bought 259684 BTC for under $3000

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20207.0

A security breach of the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange caused the price of bitcoin to fraudulently drop to one cent on the Mt. Gox exchange, after an unknown hacker allegedly used credentials from a Mt. Gox auditor's compromised computer to transfer a large number of bitcoins illegally to himself.

June 20, 2011, I'm MtGox, here's my side.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=20250.0

June 2011 MtGox incident:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=576337#post_toc_21

June 20, 2011, Big transaction.
In order to prove that Mt. Gox still had control of the coins, the move of 424,242 bitcoins from "cold storage" to a Mt. Gox address was announced beforehand, and executed in Block 132749
https://blockchain.info/block-index/147599

September 11 2011
Quote from:  theymos
Mark Karpeles is now hosting the forum's server.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=42572.0

October 28, 2011, Mt. Gox Loss
In October 2011, about two dozen transactions appeared in the block chain (Block 150951)that sent a total of 2,609 BTC to invalid addresses. As no private key could ever be assigned to them, these bitcoins were effectively lost.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=576337#post_toc_27

February 22, 2013, following the introduction of new anti-money laundering requirements by e-commerce/online payment system company Dwolla, some Dwolla accounts became temporarily restricted.


March 2013, the bitcoin transaction log or "blockchain" temporarily forked into two independent logs, with differing rules on how transactions could be accepted. The Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange briefly halted bitcoin deposits



April 18, 2013, Increased Trading Volume Breaks Mt. Gox BTC $181.66 over 10 days drops to $122.90

April 18, 2013,MtGox withdrawal delays [Gathering]
Customer complaints about long delays were mounting as of February 2014, with more than 3,300 posts in a thread about the topic on the Bitcoin Talk online forum.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179586.0

May 2, 2013 CoinLab filed a $75 million lawsuit against Mt. Gox, alleging a breach of contract

May 14, 2013, Mt. Gox Dwolla account frozen by DHS BTC $114.33 over 10 days rises to $128.80
On 15 May 2013 the US Department of Homeland Security  seized money from Mt. Gox's U.S. subsidiary's account with payment processor Dwolla asserting  that the subsidiary was not licensed by the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), was operating as an unregistered money transmitter in the US.

During the negotiations Karpeles’s attorneys allegedly brought up Silk Road . They said that Mark Karpeles was willing to give up Silk Road operator “Dread Pirate Roberts” if he “could get a walk on his charges.”

June 29, 2013, Mt. Gox received its money services business (MSB) license from FinCEN

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=205396.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=205542.0


June 20, 2013.[41] The Mizuho Bank branch in Tokyo that handled Mt. Gox transactions pressured Mt. Gox from then on to close its account.US dollar withdrawals were suspended .
On July 4, 2013, Mt. Gox announced that it had "fully resumed" withdrawals, but as of September 5, 2013, few US dollar withdrawals had been successfully completed.

August 5, 2013, Mt. Gox announced that it incurred "significant losses" due to crediting deposits which had not fully cleared, and that new deposits would no longer be credited until the funds transfer was fully completed

October 02, 2013, Bitcointalk hacked by "The Hole seekers". Off-line till October 07, 2013
  
After this event theymos stated:
I believe that this is how the attack was done: After the 2011 hack of the forum, the attacker inserted some backdoors. These were removed by Mark Karpelles in his post-hack code audit, but a short time later, the attacker used the password hashes he obtained from the database in order to take control of an admin account and insert the backdoors back in.

Mt. Gox Collapse
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=576337#post_toc_61

November 29, 2013. Mt Gox BTC price hits peak. (BTC $1132.26 drops over 10 days to $921.97)

February 7, 2014, Mt. Gox halts all bitcoin withdrawals.

MtGox issued a press release on February 10, 2014, stating that the issue was due to transaction malleability: “A bug in the bitcoin software makes it possible for someone to use the bitcoin network to alter transaction details to make it seem like a sending of bitcoins to a bitcoin wallet did not occur when in fact it did occur. Since the transaction appears as if it has not proceeded correctly, the bitcoins may be resent. Mt Gox is working with the bitcoin core development team and others to mitigate this issue.

February 17, 2014, with all Mt. Gox withdrawals still halted and competing exchanges back in full operation.


February 20, 2014, with all withdrawals still halted, Mt. Gox issueds another statement, not giving any date for the resumption of withdrawals.A protest by two bitcoin enthusiasts outside the building that houses the Mt. Gox headquarters in Tokyo continued. Citing "security concerns", Mt. Gox moved its offices to a different location in Shibuya. Bitcoin prices quoted by Mt. Gox dropped to below 20% of the prices on other exchanges


https://i.imgur.com/glFNsG8.png

February 23, 2014, Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpelès resigned from the board of the Bitcoin Foundation and removed his twitter accounts. (since re-instated https://twitter.com/MagicalTux )

February 24, 2014, Mt. Gox suspended all trading, its website goes offline, returning a blank page. BTC $547.09 over 10 days $662.57

A leaked alleged internal document claimed that the company was insolvent – it had lost 744,408 bitcoins in a theft which went undetected for years.


I'm sorry I led people to trust Mtgox.
I'm sorry I allowed Mtgox to use me in this way.
I'm sorry I ever made that video to help Mtgox.  
It seemed like the right thing at the time.

But I'm sick of people claiming I said Mtgox was was solvent!
I NEVER SAID THAT, EVER!
Liquidity != Solvency

I chose my words very carefully.
That is why I read them from my own script.
I said Mtgox had lots of LIQUIDITY 7 months ago when I made that video.
That was certainly true, but is completely different from saying that they were solvent.


Transcript:
I'm Roger Ver, long time Bitcoin advocate and investor.
Today I'm at the Mtgox world headquarters in Tokyo Japan.
I had a nice chat with MTGOX CEO, Mark Karpeles, about their current situation.
He showed me multiple bank statements, as well as letters from banks and lawyers.
I'm sure that all the current withdrawal problems at MTGOX are being caused by the traditional banking system, not because of a lack of liquidity at MTGOX.
The traditional banking partners that MTGOX needs to work with are not able to keep up with the demands of the growing Bitcoin economy.
The dozens of people that make up the MTGOX team are hard at work establishing additional banking partners, that eventually will make dealing with MTGOX easier for all their customers around the world.  For now,  I hope that everyone will continue working on Bitcoin projects that will help make the world a better place.


Roger Ver

February 25, 2014,Mark Karpeles deaththreats?
Death threats are being received and such posts are causing a problem for Bitcointalk moderators.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=486622.0



Some of the veiled threats got some sarcastic replies:

Quote from: bluemeanie1
post your death threats to Bitcointalk.org.  Fun for the whole family.

-bm
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=667023.msg7533904#msg7533904

February 28, 2014, Mt. Gox filed in Tokyo for a form of bankruptcy protection from creditors called minji saisei
https://www.mtgox.com/img/pdf/20140521_announce.pdf
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179586.msg6852155#msg6852155


February 28, 2014,[GOX] Crime Scene Investigation, Case #MG744
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=492776.0;all

Mt. Gox also faced lawsuits from its customers.

March 03, 2014, Today filed a motion for civil rehabilitation proceedings for Mt Gox
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=498120.0

March 09, 2014, Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy protection in the US, to halt U.S. legal action temporarily by traders who alleged the bitcoin exchange operation was a fraud.
https://www.mtgox.com/img/pdf/20140523_notice.pdf
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179586.msg6889659#msg6889659

March 20, 2014, Mt. Gox reported on its website that it found 199999.99 bitcoins — worth around $116 million — in an old digital wallet used prior to June 2011. The total number of bitcoins the firm lost is now down to 650,000, from 850,000

It was estimated that up to 30% of the transactions on MtGox were due to Silk road.

May 26, 2014, The willy report
The “Willy bot”—was artificially inflating its account balance and using the money to buy Bitcoins. When Mt. Gox ran low on Bitcoins, Willy helped make up the shortfall. Sometimes its trades went the other way, selling borrowed Bitcoins to generate cash. Critics speculate that it was a fraudulent, if failed, exercise to keep Mt. Gox afloat.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179586.msg6940908#msg6940908
https://willyreport.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/the-willy-report-proof-of-massive-fraudulent-trading-activity-at-mt-gox-and-how-it-has-affected-the-price-of-bitcoin/

To whom it may concern,

 

This is a notice related to the bankruptcy proceedings of MTGOX Co., Ltd. (the Tokyo District Court 2014 (fu) no. 3830), which we are sending to you pursuant to the request from the Tokyo District Court.

 

On July 24, 2014, the Tokyo District Court 20th Civil Division issued an order to change the period for filing proofs of claims and the date for investigation of claims as follows
(please refer to the attached file.).

Detailed information for the filing of proofs of claims, including the form of the filing document and the process of the filing will be disclosed through the website of MTGOX Co., Ltd. at a later date. Your patience would be very much appreciated.

MtGox bankruptsy documents (Japan & US)
https://www.mtgox.com/img/pdf/20140618_order.pdf

(Old Date)

Period for filing proofs of claims:     until November 28, 2014

Date for investigation of claims:       February 25, 2015 10:00am

(New Date)

Period for filing proofs of claims:     until May 29, 2015

Date for investigation of claims:       September 9, 2015 1:30pm

 

This email address (mtgox_trustee@noandt.com ) is used only for the purpose of sending messages, and we are unable to check and respond to any replies to this email address.

Since we plan to provide the information regarding the filing of proofs of claims and the bankruptcy proceedings by posting it on the website hosted by the bankruptcy trustee (http://www.mtgox.com/ ), please check this website.

 

Bankrupt MtGox Co., Ltd. Bankruptcy trustee Attorney-at-law Nobuaki Kobayashi

April 16, 2014, Mt. Gox gives up its plan to rebuild under bankruptcy protection, and asked a Tokyo court to allow it to be liquidated.

May 27, 2014, Coinlab files objection to re-opening MtGox
CoinLab, the former operations manager for Mt. Gox in the US and Canada, has filed an objection to the plan to revive the now-defunct exchange issued by Sunlot Holdings,
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179586.msg6976215#msg6976215

May 29, 2014, unlock codes for Mtgox yubikeys leaked
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=631044.0

July 30, 2014, [SCAM] The (fake) compensation process of deposits in Bitcoin market MtGox.com.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=716917.0


Since its collapse, a number of Mt. Gox employees have spoken about how Mt. Gox was operating, with a picture being painted of a disorganized and discordant organization, with poor security procedures, serious issues relating to the source code of the website and a number of serious issues arising in relation to the operation of the business.

January 6, 2015 In a interview, Kraken bitcoin exchange CEO Jesse Powell discussed being appointed by the bankruptcy trustee to assist in processing claims by the 127,000 creditors of Mt. Gox.

January 16, 2015,Karpeles the real DPR?
Revealed in testimony in the Silk Road case.
Quote
Homeland Security Investigations agent Jared Der-Yeghiayan testified on day 3 of the Silk Road hearing that he had actively pursued Mark Karpeles, the CEO of failed Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, as a suspect for the Dread Pirate Roberts
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahjeong/2015/01/16/dhs-agent-thought-mt-gox-ceo-was-dpr/#6645646e2c29
Quote
“While Mark Karpeles was terrible at following well-established web development practices, he did have the proficiency to run a website like Silk Road,” Emin Gün Sirer, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahjeong/2015/01/16/dhs-agent-thought-mt-gox-ceo-was-dpr/#6645646e2c29
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=926348.0


Jared Der-Yeghiayan claims Karpeles was tipped off that he was under investigation for Silk Rd  by rogue agents.
https://freeross.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Day_3-2015-Jan-15_Trial_347-560.pdf#page=151


April 19, 2015, [2015-04-19] wizsec.jp: The missing MtGox bitcoins

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1031430.0

April 2015, New evidence presented by Tokyo security company WizSec led them to conclude that "most or all of the missing bitcoins were stolen straight out of the Mt. Gox hot wallet over time, beginning in late 2011."


Link to chart if the image doesn't load:
https://i.imgur.com/NZ0A0b9.jpg

April 14, 2015, Mt. Gox lawyers said that Karpelès would not appear for a deposition in a Dallas court, or heed a subpoena by FinCEN.

August 2015 CEO Karpelès was arrested by Japanese police and charged with fraud and embezzlement, and manipulating the Mt. Gox computer system (willy bot) to increase the balance in an account -- this charge was not related to the missing 650,000 bitcoins

Karpeles loses 35 kg in Japanese prison in four months

November 03, 2015, [2015-11-03] The Mt. Gox Bitcoin Debacle: An Update
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1236467.0

May 26, 2016, Mt. Gox Creditors Seek Trillions Where There Are Only Millions
By May 2016, creditors of Mt. Gox had claimed they lost $2.4 trillion when Mt. Gox went bankrupt, which they asked be paid to them.The Japanese trustee overseeing the bankruptcy said that only $91 million in assets had been tracked down to distribute to claimants, despite Mt. Gox having asserted in the weeks before it went bankrupt that it had more than $500 million in assets.The trustee's interim legal and accounting costs through that date, were $5.5 million.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1485693.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1485703.0


July 10, 2017, Mark Karpeles of Mt. Gox trial starts in Japan
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2012824.0

July 27, 2017    [2017-07-27] WizSec disclose The Interaction Between BTC-e & Mt.Gox
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2049335.0


July 2017, the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced a $110 million fine against BTC-e for facilitating crimes like drug sales and ransomware attacks along with a separate $12 million fine against its owner, Alexander Vinnik.

The charges against Vinnik also accuse him of helping to orchestrate the hack of Mt. Gox.
Quote
BTC-e .. was heavily reliant on criminals, including by not requiring users to validate their identity, obscuring and anonymizing transactions and source of funds, and by lacking any anti-money laundering processes. The indictment alleges BTC-e was operated to facilitate transactions for cybercriminals worldwide and received the criminal proceeds of numerous computer intrusions and hacking incidents, ransomware scams, identity theft schemes, corrupt public officials, and narcotics distribution rings.
Instead of acting to prevent money laundering, BTC-e and its operators embraced the pervasive criminal activity conducted at the exchange. Users openly and explicitly discussed criminal activity on BTC-e’s user chat.

Computer security firm WizSec found an old post http://archive.is/6cFcY on Bitcointalk in which user WME had complained that another cryptocurrency exchange had frozen his funds. “Give [me] my CLEAN MONEY!” he stated in the post. WME gave clues that he owned some of the Bitcoin wallets. The same user posted a letter from his lawyer, his first and last name visible for the whole world to see. Nilsson from WizSec sent an email to Gary Alford, a special agent with the IRS in New York who has helped catch cybercriminals.

Bitcointalk user WME was identified as Vinnick when he made this post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=85977.msg1037908#msg1037908

Other online activities by the same user account are alledged to link it to the hack on MtGox.
Investigations by Wizsec, a group of bitcoin security specialists, had identified Vinnik as the owner of the wallets into which the stolen bitcoins had been transferred, many of which were sold on BTC-e.
In September 2011, the MtGox hot wallet private keys were stolen, in a case of a simple copied wallet.dat file. This gave the hacker access to a sizable number of bitcoins immediately, but also were able to spend the incoming trickle of bitcoins deposited to any of the addresses contained.

Quote
Over time, the hacker regularly emptied out whatever coins they could spend using the compromised keys, and sent them to wallet(s) controlled by Vinnik. This went on for long periods, but also had breaks — a prominent second phase of thefts happened later in 2012 and 2013.
By mid 2013 when the funds spendable from the compromised keys had slowed to a near halt, the thief had taken out about 630,000 BTC from MtGox.
In addition, the shared keypool of the wallet.dat file lead to address reuse, which confused MtGox's systems into mistakenly interpreting some of the thief's spending as deposits, crediting multiple user accounts with large sums of BTC and causing MtGox's numbers to go further out of balance by about 40,000 BTC. The majority of these funds were hurriedly withdrawn by their recipients rather than being reported.
After the coins entered Vinnik's wallets, most were moved to BTC-e and presumably sold off or laundered (BTC-e money codes were a popular choice). In total some 300,000 BTC ended up on BTC-e, while other coins were deposited to other exchanges, including MtGox itself.
Some of the funds moved to BTC-e seem to have moved straight to internal storage rather than customer deposit addresses, hinting at a relationship between Vinnik and BTC-e.
The stolen MtGox coins were not the only stolen coins handled by Vinnik; coins stolen from Bitcoinica, Bitfloor and several other thefts from back in 2011 and 2012 were all laundered through the same wallets.
Moving coins back onto MtGox was what let us identify Vinnik, as the MtGox accounts he used could be linked to his online identity "WME". As WME, Vinnik had previously made a public outcry that coins had been confiscated from him (the coins in question coming from Bitcoinica).
There were other thefts and incidents explaining other missing funds from MtGox. More on that in later posts.
https://blog.wizsec.jp/2017/07/breaking-open-mtgox-1.html

Below is a summarized illustration highlighting the theft coin flow of September 2011 onwards:

The top area of the graph includes clusters unrelated to Vinnik, and appear to be part of a different theft.
Source: https://blog.wizsec.jp/2017/07/breaking-open-mtgox-1.html

August 03, 2017, MtGox Bitcoin Cash
Who owns that Bitcoin Cash?
Can it be sold to aid in the compensation of the MtGox users?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2062909.0

March 2018, the trustee Kobayashi said that enough BTC has been sold to cover the claims of creditors.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179586.msg37684073#msg37684073

Critical of MtGox trustee dumping coins.

https://i.imgur.com/jSYVSfj.png
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179586.msg31806992#msg31806992

Quote
Karpeles said that running the bitcoin exchange, which started as a way to buy and sell “Magic: The Gathering” cards, was a “daily nightmare of dealing with banks, governments, people I never knew existed. Running Mt Gox was basically a constant race.”
Quote
“I would say it’s probably very close to like when you’re falling from a building,” Karpeles told BBC Radio 4’s “File On 4” show. “Obviously, the floor [was] getting close. It felt like I was about to die.”

May 13, 2018,  Greek law enforcement uncovered the plot to murder Alexander Vinnik
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2181023.msg37147405#msg37147405

May 18, 2018,We’re coordinating legal action
Quote
Creditors of the Mt Gox bankruptcy proceedings. We’re coordinating legal action to stop more than $2,000,000,000 surplus from going to the people responsible for the exchange when it was hacked, and instead have it shared among creditors who were victims of crime.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179586.msg24392977#msg24392977
https://www.mtgoxlegal.com/

June 22, 2018,MtGox Trustee Halts Bitcoin Sell-Offs
Kobayashi: “The power and authority to administer and dispose of MTGOX’s assets is still vested exclusively in me, and I will implement the civil rehabilitation proceedings, including the administration of MTGOX’s assets and the investigation of claims, subject to the Tokyo District Court’s supervision,”
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4517222.0


Mt. Gox official says they may start paying back their creditors as soon as next year. They claimed the initial discovery of the missing/hacked 850,000 Bitcoin in the year 2014, Mt. Gox has found 200,000 Bitcoin of them.

At the time of the Mt. Gox hack event in 2014, Bitcoin price was $483 which has a value of $96.6 mln for 200,000 Bitcoin.
The recovered funds have been frozen in the Mt Gox bankruptcy estate for four years, The recovered 200,000 Bitcoin is now worth an estimated $1.2 Bln in Bitcoin
 (at 1BTC=$6,100) without its forks, Bitcoin Cash.
Quite impressive investment, huh?

Kobayashi was responsible for selling vast tranches of Bitcoin reserves beginning Q4 last year to reimburse Mt. Gox users who lost money in the exchange’s mass hack in late 2013.

this is the only part of this all that matters! the START of the sale was last year DURING THE RISE. and people keep on focusing on the drop part. they literary started selling when price was $4000+ and while they were selling price kept on going up and reached $10k then $20k and all that time they were selling a lot of coins!

here is how it looks like:



Quote
“I wouldn’t dare say that the person who architected the Titanic should never again architect another ship.”
“Mark fought and fell. And although he fell, his skills, experience and know-how unarguably continue to exist,”
Andrew Lee, cofounder, chairman and chief of lab division at London Trust Media.

I tend to agree with this analysis:
March 02, 2014, Peter R Rizun’s Theory on the Collapse of Mt. Gox

Note:
A lot of people have unfairly lost money due to the actions of the hackers and ineffective security of MtGox. But I can’t help but still feeling a little bit sorry for Karpeles. He was young, made poor choices, tried but failed catrostophically.  He inherited a flawed system that was insolvent and poor record keeping allowed a hacker to siphon the accounts undetected. I would be keen to chat with people who know / knew Karpeles via PM.

Also, it might be noteworthy that for some time, DDOSing this forum coincided with dumps on then dominant Bitcoin exchange MtGox. I.e., you could DDOS this forum, which in turn made the price of Bitcoin drop. Market manipulation wild Wild West Cool

Lol, this is just toooooo funny

Kobayashi sells some bitcoins, price drops 10%
Kobayashi moves some bitcoins, price drops 10%
Kobayashi says he won't sell any coin anymore, price drops 10%

We should really be careful if this guy tweets he will go to the toilet we might see a drop of 20%

Main sources:
http://fortune.com/longform/bitcoin-mt-gox-hack-karpeles/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mt._Gox
https://www.businessinsider.com/mt-gox-ceo-mark-karpeles-hacked-i-was-about-to-die-2018-3#OBDQt7MrmmMhr2Hh.99

This is an ongoing project and this post will be edited regularly. Corrections, additions and comments are welcome.

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xtraelv (OP)
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฿ear ride on the rainbow slide


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June 12, 2018, 05:48:03 AM
 #2

https://hacked.com/crypto-roundup-bitcoin-whales-eos-launch-and-mike-novogratzs-bullish-forecast/

The Tokyo Whale, (Mt. Gox trustee) has sold roughly 40,000 units of BTC and in my opinion is responsible for the bear market at the moment.

I doubt that the Coinrail hack had much of an effect on the bitcoin price.


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June 12, 2018, 06:31:40 AM
 #3

<...>
This is an interesting archive fact finding chronological layout of the events that took place. Long but interesting to read. I recently read a nice post on the same topics by theyoungmillionaire called The Silk Road seized and the downfall of Mt.Gox (Bitcoin Discussion section), from early May 2018. Both approaches are different in style so reading both is no issue at all.
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June 12, 2018, 07:24:04 AM
Last edit: June 12, 2018, 02:51:24 PM by xtraelv
 #4

<...>
This is an interesting archive fact finding chronological layout of the events that took place. Long but interesting to read. I recently read a nice post on the same topics by theyoungmillionaire called The Silk Road seized and the downfall of Mt.Gox (Bitcoin Discussion section), from early May 2018. Both approaches are different in style so reading both is no issue at all.


I read most of theyoungmillionaire posts. He has also translated one my posts into Filipino to prevent phishing scams.

Mt.Gox is one of the biggest disasters in Bitcoin history and the story is not yet complete.

For those that lost bitcoins in the Mt.Gox collapse it is only a disaster but for the bitcoin community some really valuable lessons were learned.  It also showed what speculative mania can do to the Bitcoin price.

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June 13, 2018, 09:59:25 AM
Merited by xtraelv (1)
 #5

I heard the bitcoin dump is not the first time on this June but also several weeks ago when Bitcoin is heading to reach USD 10,000. On that time, actually bitcoin is heading to exceed USD 10,000 but this Mt Gox releasing their bitcoin to the market in big numbers then impacted to price decreasing until less than USD 8,000. Now, they releasing other bitcoin to press bitcoin price to be lower than USD 7,000.

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June 13, 2018, 01:55:52 PM
Merited by xtraelv (1)
 #6

Well is 40,000 bitcoin enough to suppress an entire global market, if theres 17 million bitcoins available I dont think thats significant enough by itself.   Perhaps only bitcoin float on exchanges is relevant in comparison for that figure and introducing 40,000 new coins previously considered 'gone' is the effect.    I dont think we can say it helps or is the majority of the reason for a trend.
Quote
while McCaleb owned it. He had sold Karpèles an insolvent exchange.
Thats a big deal and McCaleb is not sharing any responsibility apparently.  Is that legally correct because the sale was final I dont know

Quote
remained a minority owner in the company until its collapse in 2014
not final then

Good summary only thing is the price on each date is relevant and should probably be stated, explaining why previous losses can be repaid in full now

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June 25, 2018, 02:15:27 AM
Last edit: June 25, 2018, 02:39:49 AM by xtraelv
 #7

Well is 40,000 bitcoin enough to suppress an entire global market, if theres 17 million bitcoins available I dont think thats significant enough by itself.   Perhaps only bitcoin float on exchanges is relevant in comparison for that figure and introducing 40,000 new coins previously considered 'gone' is the effect.    I dont think we can say it helps or is the majority of the reason for a trend.
Quote
while McCaleb owned it. He had sold Karpèles an insolvent exchange.
Thats a big deal and McCaleb is not sharing any responsibility apparently.  Is that legally correct because the sale was final I dont know

Quote
remained a minority owner in the company until its collapse in 2014
not final then

Good summary only thing is the price on each date is relevant and should probably be stated, explaining why previous losses can be repaid in full now

Thank you for your comments. I will work on adding more prices (I've started adding some already) and have found a good post byshadyrifles and some others that explains why the losses can now be repaid . I've tried to list the threads that provide detailed information rather than duplicating it. Some of the original threads that I've linked to show the frustration and opinions of the victims of MtGox.

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June 25, 2018, 02:55:55 AM
 #8

"In addition, the shared keypool of the wallet.dat file lead to address reuse, which confused MtGox's systems into mistakenly interpreting some of the thief's spending as deposits, crediting multiple user accounts with large sums of BTC and causing MtGox's numbers to go further out of balance by about 40,000 BTC. The majority of these funds were hurriedly withdrawn by their recipients rather than being reported."
That's pretty disturbing.Sad
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June 25, 2018, 03:31:26 AM
 #9

Mt.Gox is one of the biggest disasters in Bitcoin history and the story is not yet complete.
Based on the available evidence, it appears that Gox lost a fairly modest amount of money (in terms of USD) in 2011 that compromises a decent bulk of the missing money. They were subsequently hacked a number of times that have been publicly reported, during which they likely lost some amount of money.

I am not entirely sure why the losses compounded over time, maybe Gox was not a profitable operation, and they took customer money to fund the losses.

Security did not seem to be a strength of Gox's. If they had been honest about the loss in 2011, it would likely have been not a very big deal, but Gox would have closed and some other exchange would have taken the spot of having the majority of trading volume.

I heard the bitcoin dump is not the first time on this June but also several weeks ago when Bitcoin is heading to reach USD 10,000. On that time, actually bitcoin is heading to exceed USD 10,000 but this Mt Gox releasing their bitcoin to the market in big numbers then impacted to price decreasing until less than USD 8,000. Now, they releasing other bitcoin to press bitcoin price to be lower than USD 7,000.
The Gox trustee did in fact sell a lot of coins on the market starting from the mid teen's down to near the February low.

In January the price was about $17k, and in Feb the low as $6k, and quickly bounced back to just under $12k. The trustee stopped selling before the price hit $6k, and the price has since declined back down to $6k multiple times, and breaching that low this past weekend. 

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June 25, 2018, 07:41:52 AM
 #10

Mt.Gox is one of the biggest disasters in Bitcoin history and the story is not yet complete.
Based on the available evidence, it appears that Gox lost a fairly modest amount of money (in terms of USD) in 2011 that compromises a decent bulk of the missing money. They were subsequently hacked a number of times that have been publicly reported, during which they likely lost some amount of money.

I am not entirely sure why the losses compounded over time, maybe Gox was not a profitable operation, and they took customer money to fund the losses.

Security did not seem to be a strength of Gox's. If they had been honest about the loss in 2011, it would likely have been not a very big deal, but Gox would have closed and some other exchange would have taken the spot of having the majority of trading volume.




That graph by WizzSec explains the losses quite well.

It appears that some hacks were discovered but others were not.
From accounts by former staff it doesn't appear that regular audits were done to ensure that the exchange ledger balance matched the total wallet balances.

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September 20, 2018, 06:43:22 AM
 #11

Another update in the MtGox saga:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-loses-extradition-battle-with-russia-for-bitcoin-kingpin/

Quote
The case eventually reached Greece's Supreme Court, and today, it was decided that Vinnik should face charges in Russia, the suspect's native country, and where he expressed his desire to be trialed, mainly because of the thinner charges brought against him.

Quote
On the same day Greek authorities were arresting Vinnik, a team of researchers that also included Google staffers, presented findings at the Black Hat USA 2017 security conference, revealing that 95 percent of all ransomware ransom payments were cashed out and converted into fiat currency through Vinnik's BTC-e portal.

Also on the same day, a group of Bitcoin security specialists calling themselves WizSec published the results of an investigation that linked Vinnik's Bitcoin accounts to laundering funds stolen from the Mt. Gox exchange.

Researchers said that Vinnik was also involved in laundering funds stolen from other cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Bitcoinica, Bitfloor, and other platforms they did not name at the time.

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December 06, 2018, 09:59:45 AM
 #12

Here is an old video that covers the Mt. Gox bankruptcy.

https://coincodex.tv/videos/468/mark-karpeles-talks-about-mt-gox-bankruptcy
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July 02, 2020, 04:07:20 PM
Merited by marlboroza (2), nutildah (1), DdmrDdmr (1)
 #13

The Kleiman case against Craig S Wright has brought up a few new MtGox references.

Most notably the Claim by Craig S Wright that he is the owner of the bitcoin address where bitcoins from the first MtGox hack ended up.

This was followed by a letter sent by Craigs lawyers to blockstream claiming the addresses.








Last week the New Zealand police seized us$90 million in assets controlled by Alexander Vinnik. (The Russian accused of laundering the proceeds of the second MtGox hack ).


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July 02, 2020, 08:56:59 PM
 #14

This means that CSW can be held responsible for recovering the funds stolen in the first hack, but not the second one which would be irrelevant as the suspect for that one has already been caught. Since the hack happened during the time Jed McCalib owned the exchange, with no shares from Mark Karpeles, authorities should be asking McCalib the questions on what he was doing at the time of the hack, with the time the bitcoins being stolen known by virtue of the blockchain so only Mt. Gox events that happened before that time will be relevant to the situation.

Craig Wright just dug himself into a deep hole.

It would also be useful to know more details about how Mt. Gox was operating while McCalib owned it.

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July 02, 2020, 10:11:50 PM
 #15




April 18, 2013, Increased Trading Volume Breaks Mt. Gox BTC $181.66 over 10 days drops to $122.90

April 18, 2013,MtGox withdrawal delays [Gathering]
Customer complaints about long delays were mounting as of February 2014, with more than 3,300 posts in a thread about the topic on the Bitcoin Talk online forum.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179586.0

May 2, 2013 CoinLab filed a $75 million lawsuit against Mt. Gox, alleging a breach of contract

May 14, 2013, Mt. Gox Dwolla account frozen by DHS BTC $114.33 over 10 days rises to $128.80
On 15 May 2013 the US Department of Homeland Security  seized money from Mt. Gox's U.S. subsidiary's account with payment processor Dwolla asserting  that the subsidiary was not licensed by the US Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), was operating as an unregistered money transmitter in the US.

During the negotiations Karpeles’s attorneys allegedly brought up Silk Road . They said that Mark Karpeles was willing to give up Silk Road operator “Dread Pirate Roberts” if he “could get a walk on his charges.”



Fantastic post,
A movie should be made about the Mtgox debacle!

I think I found a typo (in red), It should say 2013 instead of 2014

cheers

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July 03, 2020, 04:52:24 PM
 #16


March, 2011, MtGox sold by programmer (Ripple co-founder) Jed McCalib to to French developer and bitcoin enthusiast 26 year old Mark Karpeles.
The exchange allegedly had already lost 80 000 bitcoins but this was not disclosed to the public.
McCaleb also said that Mark Karpeles had rewritten the MtGox codebase back in 2011 after the sale was completed.

Quote
Although I knew that 80,000 BTC were already missing from Mt. Gox when Jed McCaleb sold it to Mark Karpèles — McCaleb suggesting to Karpèles “maybe you don’t really need to worry about it” — hackers had already cleaned out Mt. Gox while McCaleb owned it. He had sold Karpèles an insolvent exchange.
https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2017/09/17/kim-nilsson-of-wizsec-how-the-bitcoins-were-stolen-from-mt-gox/

Is this ~80k BTC stored at https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uF ?

Relevant Tx: https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/transaction/e67a0550848b7932d7796aeea16ab0e48a5cfe81c4e8cca2c5b03e0416850114
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July 03, 2020, 08:29:31 PM
 #17

Thanks for the work.


This story for sure will go into history books...

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