If I were mr. Gox I would buy Bitcoins on my system (closed for everyone else) and selling them on Bitstamp for a nice 100% or more gain, without taking any risk.
Why should I work to restore the normal operation of my system and lose this wonderful opportunity to make huge gains ?
Nick.
If gox is insolvent and doesn't have any bitcoins, then buying imaginary bitcoins from their customer's account ledgers wouldn't make a difference.
In the last few days daily volume on Mt. Gox was around 50K BTC/day (
http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/mtgoxUSD.html). With a rough income of 250 BTC/day of commission for Mr. Gox. Sold on BitStamp these 250 BTC are worth around 160K$.
If he's able to move this money back to Mt.Gox, he can buy 500 BTC or so, doubling he's wealth. Even if it takes 2 days for a whole loop, we are talking about big money.
In a week he's able to easily make around 5,000 BTC, and the money will double every week. If he's able to keep withdrawalk closed on his site for some weeks, he can buy back all the BTC that were stolen/lost/sold and be back on business.
Not a bad recovery plan, after all.
Nick.
In a scheme like that
1) you pretty much need the complicity of the CFO, and a staff of about 20 super loyal and confidential employees to work 12 hr days to pull that off.
2) you need the market to continue to rise on one side (non MG btc) and not the other side (MG btc),
3) the numbers you posted must also reflect the fact that the fees collected will only be from his customers,
4) he must have a stable supply of low price inventory to buy, if MG seller stop selling or only sell high then the scheme doesn't work
5) if he goes to another market place with a bucket full of CC the price at that market will fall, if they used accounts connected to them the paper trail will be too clear, so they would need many anonymous accounts at multiple exchanges to do multiple transactions a day such that that is doesn't reduce the market value, or trigger internal flags that may indicate improper market manipulation activity.
6) for the exchanges that have 'know your customer laws' policies it will be a major stumbling block.
7) for the exchanges with 2 layer authorization it will present a logistical nightmare
8 ) you could expect hacking activities to surge even more so that usual if the CC community feels such a scheme is a foot
9) if they use aged accounts that may have already been flagged in the past for inappropriate behavior but didn't materialize to any closure or investigation, a new trigger may result into multiple investigations of not just current but also past actions.
10) only MG, bitstamp and btc-e did the no withdrawal thing, if any other exchanges did it and if MG funds were stuck there the scheme suffers
real life often works a bit different than on paper
