Mt.gox story

[TheFootMan]

1. Purposely raise the price of BTC, attract traders come to Mt.gox and deposit BTC. Market situation: Sell >> buy;
2. Block cash withdrawing, most of traders found it's not easy to get out money even they can sell BTC with higher price.;
3. Some of traders will buy back BTC, sell == buy, price was going stable and higher than other exchange markets;
4. Mt.gox sold customer's 40,000 BTC, and block withdrawing BTC;
5. The price of BTC dropped accordingly
6. Mt.gox to open cash withdrawing and continue to block BTC withdrawing, traders will trend to sell BTC by lower price and get cash back;
7. Mt.gox will buy back 40,000 BTC to balance account

It's not surprised to see announcement tomorrow: BTC withdrawing will continue stopped but cash withdrawing will be quickly and smoothly

You seem to attribute a lot to cleverness.

Hanlon's razor:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.


It will be interesting to see how many will stay with MtGox now...

[guybrushthreepwood]

1. Purposely raise the price of BTC, attract traders come to Mt.gox and deposit BTC. Market situation: Sell >> buy;
2. Block cash withdrawing, most of traders found it's not easy to get out money even they can sell BTC with higher price.;
3. Some of traders will buy back BTC, sell == buy, price was going stable and higher than other exchange markets;
4. Mt.gox sold customer's 40,000 BTC, and block withdrawing BTC;
5. The price of BTC dropped accordingly
6. Mt.gox to open cash withdrawing and continue to block BTC withdrawing, traders will trend to sell BTC by lower price and get cash back;
7. Mt.gox will buy back 40,000 BTC to balance account

It's not surprised to see announcement tomorrow: BTC withdrawing will continue stopped but cash withdrawing will be quickly and smoothly

You seem to attribute a lot to cleverness.

Hanlon's razor:

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.


It will be interesting to see how many will stay with MtGox now...

I think people only 'stayed' with them by choice as their money was stuck there.

[jemenake]

1. Purposely raise the price of BTC, attract traders come to Mt.gox and deposit BTC. Market situation: Sell >> buy;

... and how did they do this, exactly? They could try to buy BTC with their own cash reserves (which I'm not sure they had enough cash to do), or they could adjust everybody's buy/sell orders up a bit, but someone would notice and call attention to it, and I haven't seen *that* happen, either. So, explain to me how they can magically cause BTC sellers to have more cash in their pockets after selling at MtGox.

Keep in mind that what you're describing is the same as when countries try to enforce a certain exchange rate for their currency versus another country's currency. In just about every case, it fails. The central bank just isn't big enough to outweigh the whims of the rest of the market.

4. Mt.gox sold customer's 40,000 BTC, and block withdrawing BTC;

Where's the record of this sale in the blockchain? How do you know it's 40,000 BTC? Where's the evidence that they've sold any depositors' BTC or that 40,000 BTC was what they had to sell?

I'm not sure Karpeles is insane enough to gamble like that with depositors' assets. Keep in mind that BTC is a preferred currency for those who don't care much for laws (Silk Road, anybody), and, in this age of the internet, it's getting increasing difficult to hide from people who want to track you down. Surely, Karpeles woud know that, if he went down that road (of gambling with other people's money), it would end with him bleeding out in a dark alley somewhere.

Like I said... I can't imagine that he's that crazy.

[Bitnicity]

1. Purposely raise the price of BTC, attract traders come to Mt.gox and deposit BTC. Market situation: Sell >> buy;

... and how did they do this, exactly? They could try to buy BTC with their own cash reserves (which I'm not sure they had enough cash to do), or they could adjust everybody's buy/sell orders up a bit, but someone would notice and call attention to it, and I haven't seen *that* happen, either. So, explain to me how they can magically cause BTC sellers to have more cash in their pockets after selling at MtGox.

Keep in mind that what you're describing is the same as when countries try to enforce a certain exchange rate for their currency versus another country's currency. In just about every case, it fails. The central bank just isn't big enough to outweigh the whims of the rest of the market.

4. Mt.gox sold customer's 40,000 BTC, and block withdrawing BTC;

Where's the record of this sale in the blockchain? How do you know it's 40,000 BTC? Where's the evidence that they've sold any depositors' BTC or that 40,000 BTC was what they had to sell?

I'm not sure Karpeles is insane enough to gamble like that with depositors' assets. Keep in mind that BTC is a preferred currency for those who don't care much for laws (Silk Road, anybody), and, in this age of the internet, it's getting increasing difficult to hide from people who want to track you down. Surely, Karpeles woud know that, if he went down that road (of gambling with other people's money), it would end with him bleeding out in a dark alley somewhere.

Like I said... I can't imagine that he's that crazy.

they don't need to have cash reserve to buy your coins, and the same applies that they don't need to have btc reserve to sell you btc. that's the grand magic and beauty of running an exchange where you can play around 'fractional reserve' trick, so long as you could estimate the relative inflow/outflow of fiat and btc into the system, you can very easily manipulate the system, because you as an Exchange have all the information regarding your actual clients fiat/btc balance. All the trades can be manipulated (give you an example, assuming I am the Exchange, I don't have any dollar but I create a buy order to purchase 1BTC from you for $700, I credit that $700 into your account, so long as you don't withdraw that dollar balance, you will not notice that I don't have the fund and the trade is actually fake) . But often times, it fails to work because your estimate may deviate when some unexpected inflow/outflow cause systematic  imbalance, hence lead to "bank run" and screw up your scheme, i believe this is what happening now at Gox.  

[stompix]

1. Purposely raise the price of BTC, attract traders come to Mt.gox and deposit BTC. Market situation: Sell >> buy;

... and how did they do this, exactly? They could try to buy BTC with their own cash reserves (which I'm not sure they had enough cash to do), or they could adjust everybody's buy/sell orders up a bit, but someone would notice and call attention to it, and I haven't seen *that* happen, either. So, explain to me how they can magically cause BTC sellers to have more cash in their pockets after selling at MtGox.

Keep in mind that what you're describing is the same as when countries try to enforce a certain exchange rate for their currency versus another country's currency. In just about every case, it fails. The central bank just isn't big enough to outweigh the whims of the rest of the market.

4. Mt.gox sold customer's 40,000 BTC, and block withdrawing BTC;

Where's the record of this sale in the blockchain? How do you know it's 40,000 BTC? Where's the evidence that they've sold any depositors' BTC or that 40,000 BTC was what they had to sell?

I'm not sure Karpeles is insane enough to gamble like that with depositors' assets. Keep in mind that BTC is a preferred currency for those who don't care much for laws (Silk Road, anybody), and, in this age of the internet, it's getting increasing difficult to hide from people who want to track you down. Surely, Karpeles woud know that, if he went down that road (of gambling with other people's money), it would end with him bleeding out in a dark alley somewhere.

Like I said... I can't imagine that he's that crazy.

Your post does make a lot of points , since there is no actual evidence on part of the op.
But , if you're questioning the sanity or should I say the insanity of the guy running the magical tux , well, .....

[roslinpl]

Another thread with a lot of asstalk :-)

It seems like many of members don t realy like bitcoins.

[xjpoper]

1. Purposely raise the price of BTC, attract traders come to Mt.gox and deposit BTC. Market situation: Sell >> buy;
2. Block cash withdrawing, most of traders found it's not easy to get out money even they can sell BTC with higher price.;
3. Some of traders will buy back BTC, sell == buy, price was going stable and higher than other exchange markets;
4. Mt.gox sold customer's 40,000 BTC, and block withdrawing BTC;
5. The price of BTC dropped accordingly
6. Mt.gox to open cash withdrawing and continue to block BTC withdrawing, traders will trend to sell BTC by lower price and get cash back;
7. Mt.gox will buy back 40,000 BTC to balance account

It's not surprised to see announcement tomorrow: BTC withdrawing will continue stopped but cash withdrawing will be quickly and smoothly

It's step 6 & 7 now,

"the MtGox team has been working hard to address an issue with the way that bitcoin withdrawals are processed. By "bitcoin withdrawal" we are referring to transactions from a MtGox bitcoin wallet to an external bitcoin address. Bitcoin transactions to any MtGox bitcoin address, and currency withdrawals (Yen, Euro, etc) are not affected by this issue"

[FuzzyBear]

withdraws are open.
So MtGox  back to "normal"

Now we must just wait for settle the whole mess.

For mtgox back to "normal" means back like they were before , a total mess.

I'm sure they'll continue to operate exactly as before. People need to learn from this and get their money and coins out ASAP and take their custom elsewhere.

Good luck hoping for that. People tend to not learn form the first mistake , and when being lured by high prices they seem to forget everything.
They don't need just to be burned but also grilled , deep fried and iced before they learn a lesson and not use gox again

Yeah look how many still order from... sorry Pre-order from Butterfly Labs...