Can someone answer a few gox questions?

[dynodog]

1.  Is it true that gox has a single (omnibus-type) wallet where it holds all the bitcoin of its customers?  It is my understanding that the customers do not have their own segregated bitcoin wallet when they have bitcoin with gox - instead, gox keeps its own ledger of which customers have what amount of bitcoin.   

2.  If there is a gox wallet, it would seem that gox would be regularly checking to make sure that the amount of bitcoin it holds is always balancing with the ongoing deposits and withdrawals taking place.  A double issuance (with the first supposedly invalid transfer NOT being credited back to the gox wallet) would result in a failure to balance.  In other words, our customers' accounts show a total of X bitcoin, yet the amount of bitcoin in our wallet is consistently less than X and the difference is consistently getting worse over time (bc of the double issuances).  What was the straw that broke camel's back in gox so that it is only now stopping transfers of bitcoin (when apparently this problem has been around for years)?

3.  Is there any information about how many bitcoin may have been mistakenly transferred?

4.  Any idea how many bitcoin gox has to cover stolen bitcoin?  I figure that they have been making a s**tload of money these past couple of years.  Being mysterious about the problems causes bitcoin's price to decline, enabling them to buy the necessary bitcoin at a better price???

5.  Is the previous theory (that gox was having problems bc it was trying to transfer freshly mined bitcoin which had not received 100 confirmations) have anything to do with gox's problems?

Thanks for answering any or all of these questions.  I have read the comments of Andresen, Garzik and Maxwell, but I have not read a good, lengthy article which takes the lay person from explaining how gox is set up to hold customers' bitcoin through the transfer ultimately to the customer, and how that is different from the way a bitstamp does it.  Probably over my head, but my guess is that there are plenty of us out here who would love to read a good explanation about what the F is going on.  If there is one, pls provide link - thx
 

[Maged]

1.  Is it true that gox has a single (omnibus-type) wallet where it holds all the bitcoin of its customers?  It is my understanding that the customers do not have their own segregated bitcoin wallet when they have bitcoin with gox - instead, gox keeps its own ledger of which customers have what amount of bitcoin.

Yes, and for good reason: MtGox's primary purpose is to act as an exchange, not a bank. Because of that, funds move between people very quickly. Keeping track of that on the blockchain would be almost impossible.

2.  If there is a gox wallet, it would seem that gox would be regularly checking to make sure that the amount of bitcoin it holds is always balancing with the ongoing deposits and withdrawals taking place.  A double issuance (with the first supposedly invalid transfer NOT being credited back to the gox wallet) would result in a failure to balance.

You would think that. It turns out that no such auditing is taking place.

In other words, our customers' accounts show a total of X bitcoin, yet the amount of bitcoin in our wallet is consistently less than X and the difference is consistently getting worse over time (bc of the double issuances).  What was the straw that broke camel's back in gox so that it is only now stopping transfers of bitcoin (when apparently this problem has been around for years)?

The fact that this was publically being abused, albeit completely by accident. You see, people thought that they were being helpful by fixing the broken transactions, but they happened to also reveal a flaw in how MtGox recognizes and refunds failed transactions, causing them to get their original withdrawal PLUS a refund to their account. Fortunately, this isn't as bad as it sounds, because this process of fixing the transactions left the old transactions in the Mt. Gox system, causing transactions to virally fail.

3.  Is there any information about how many bitcoin may have been mistakenly transferred?

No, but I'm sure it's not terrible.

5.  Is the previous theory (that gox was having problems bc it was trying to transfer freshly mined bitcoin which had not received 100 confirmations) have anything to do with gox's problems?

That was a problem that was mostly mitigated some time ago, but wasn't ever fully fixed.