Let's think about what's led up to this.... Once upon a time, Mt. Gox owned a cache of coins and a cache of cash and opened the doors to negotiating btc trades. User's deposit money or coins and they trade the two amongst themselves, with Gox taking a tiny cut of the coins and of the cash. In theory, this model does not require Gox to have any coins...
That is, unless the bulls and the bears have both taken hard stands and are waiting for the next move. This is where MtG begins living off of it's cash reserve - server fees, salaries, payment processor fees, overhead. Just paying and waiting. Now Gox needs to also pay off its venture capital, and really need to show profit to continue rounds of venture cap funding. So you're the CEO, what do you want? You want volatility and you want btc to be priced as high as is possible, maximizing commission revenue. How do you keep it volatile? Buy up enough coins to move the price when the depth is thin. Cash out - coins in. Dump coins down to resistant buyers. Coins out - cash in. Little by little, buying a little deeper than selling to drive the price up. More cash out. Still paying server costs, repaying loans. They gradually accumulate a cache of coins with actual cash always being pulled down - they're not paying anybody in coins, but the cash is always being drained (coin buying, investor payback, overhead, etc..). This seems like a safe bet because they are making steady revenue from commissions and they're financially backed by a growing cache of coins with growing value. But gradually, something starts to happen that they didn't foresee...
Since Gox was leading the way, driving the price up, nobody wants to deposit cash and buy coins at Gox. That would be crazy. Instead, coins are bought elsewhere (coinbase, other exchanges), and brought in to Gox to sell... and then cash out. But Gox has trouble getting a payment processor to deal with a bitcoin-backed company with limited and draining cash reserves - especially with some of the bad press and legislative uncertainty surrounding bitcoins. They pay higher payment processing feeds to "low-end processors" (see this great article:
http://www.coindesk.com/mt-gox-may-headed-bankruptcy/). Then the price of btc crashes. The company suddenly has much lower net assets, commissions are falling, and though they may acquire cash through the sell-off of their coin reserve, they would be doing so at a net cash
loss since they purchased many of their coins at higher prices. They begin selling off coins to cover expenses, losing currency faster and faster. They continue buying up coins periodically to halt the crashes, and to keep from going in the red, they begin selling fake coins - which cause no net-loss (as selling their real coins would). They begin sliding down the slippery slope, feeding pseudo-coins to get cash... besides, when the price finally reverses, they can always just buy the coins back up cheaper and hand them out to investors when they move their coins out of Gox. They have been in financial trouble for a while at this point, but promise their investors that when the market regains strength and returns to its original price, they will have plenty of assets to be stable. Through this all, another phenomenon was occurring in the background.
Since no one was depositing cash into Gox (because of their crappy processors and the Gox btc premium), the total revenue of Gox was being drawn through commissions on the relatively static total cash deposited in the past. Everyone brings coins in, trades up or down, and takes coins back out.
There's no real money entering Gox. When the prices were going up before the crash, the profits earned by traders came from the static pool of long-ago user deposited cash, and from Gox's own commission revenue. They give free and discounted commission rates (the Merry Christmas stunt) to try to attract new money, but with no luck. As people continue to withdraw, Gox is forced to borrow from other user's accounts to cover withdrawals. After the two big crashes wrecked Gox and the price never rebounded fully, Gox was left with coins they were "upside down in," heavy overhead, debt, and no new incoming cash. They continue to delay withdrawals to discourage the draw on their dwindling cash reserves. They sell off coins at a loss to regain liquidity... but now they are oversold on both user cash balances
and user coin balances.As the prices started dropping again recently, Gox could no longer cover operating expenses and allow withdrawals, so they identified some "questionable transactions" (where they had - as they had been for some time - given coins to an investor's withdrawal by borrowing from other investor's balances), and issued a statement saying that they needed to halt withdrawals (citing the well known btc malleability issue as something they were looking at.) They probably did address that, but it gave a convenient reason to do what they desperately needed to do - take inventory. They needed to see exactly what they had in cash and coins, and what they owed in cash and coins, and create a business plan to get out of the hole.
In our efforts to resolve the issue being encountered by various bitcoin withdrawals, it was determined that the increase in the flow of withdrawal requests has hindered our efforts on a technical level. To understand the issue thoroughly, the system needs to be in a static state. In order for our team to resolve the withdrawal issue it is necessary for a temporarily pause on all withdrawal requests to obtain a clear technical view of the current processes.
They are careful to never mention malleability as the true issue they are looking at, but rather as
one of the items they are addressing (as I'm sure they have). This explains why he does not say they are solvent (which any solvent company would readily assure), and why he makes this cryptic reference to meetings with the government:
In his email interview with the Journal, Karpeles repeatedly said the company's solvency was confidential but that it had discussed its business model with Japanese authorities "to ensure that we are operating within the law here."
(
http://www.upi.com/Business_News/2014/02/17/Mt-Gox-CEO-apologizes-for-bitcoin-withdrawal-freeze/UPI-99051392667941/#ixzz2tjyv6jZc).
So why are they allowing trading to continue during the no-withdrawal period? There would no doubt be a rush on coins and cash withdrawals upon re-opening. If they continue to release cash slowly, they can avoid the inflicted financial pain from those, but coin withdrawals must be instant... and they don't have enough coins to keep letting people withdraw. Due to the instability they showed by the "hacking attack" that they never really confess to, nobody is rushing to bring in new coins (to help them continue the borrow-and-pay practice). So they need cash. With cash, they can buy coins. How do you raise cash? You sell a boatload of non-existant coins, taking both the coin price, and the commission (essentially robbing the cash account of the investors). Think about this: When the doors were closed for withdrawals, why did the price of coins go
down? I know, I know - consumer confidence / what they're worth... but really think about it. Everyone is "locked in the room," unsure if they will ever get their coins or cash back out. What percentage of those investors are really thinking, "If I can just get my coins into cash, surely Gox will let me cash out... in a few weeks."? What everyone is really thinking is, "####! I need to turn my money into coins and get the #### out of here as soon as the door cracks open!" That would make the price go up, not down. Down suggests that everyone has either liquefied their coins with hopes of squeezing an eventual bank withdrawal out of shady Mc'Gox, only to redeposit the physical cash in a new exchange later (doubtfully the majority's sentiment), or, down suggests that there is such a supply of coins available, that everyone who was able to buy coins has already bought them and everyone's out of cash (and at that low price, I'm pretty sure everyone's fully invested). Additionally, driving the price down (and leeching out everyone's cash accounts) is encouraging a huge influx of new cash being deposited (as difficult as it may be), which is exactly what Gox needs. They are trying to regain their financial footing at the expense of a huge debt of bitcoins. Now what?
They know that there will be a run on the coins as soon as they open the doors, and that they can't afford to buy that many coins. So they implement a "queue" system (which is surprisingly not being talked about more - since it couldn't
possibly relate to the malleability facade.) In other words, "Get in line, and when it's your turn, you will get your rationed amount of coins back too." But they can't say it like that or the company goes under (as all trading ceases completely). They need to regain traction - to restore transaction (and commission) volume. They need their trading price to come back up to restore legitimacy and investor confidence - but ideally pulling
down the global btc price so Gox can more easily afford to buy them and ration them back out. So what will they say?
They'll say this: "We have thoroughly evaluated our withdrawal system and the malleability bug is no longer an issue. You can have confidence that Mt. Gox is as strong and secure as ever, and we thank you for your patience through this examination period. We are grateful to our partners, <blah blah blah>. We are happy to announce that trading, withdrawing, and depositing are fully functional once again and the market is open for trading. As a precaution, the withdrawal system will now implement temporary security measures including daily/weekly withdrawal limits and a queuing system, but once the system proves to be technically sound, these measures will be removed. To ensure the safety of our investors, we will be giving away $50 to all new accounts, but all new accounts will require contact details and a minimum initial deposit of $200. We are grateful <blah blah>. Happy trading!"
Remember, nobody locked in Mt. Gox right now is selling their low priced coins to each other - that would be dumb when the price is so much higher outside the gates. Also, nobody has cash to spare to buy up new coins. What does this mean? Just after the announcement, Gox will sell,
to itself, loads and loads of fake coins, purchasing them with fake money - creating tremendous volume and boosting the price closer to the other exchanges (but still under so nobody makes a cash run on Gox). This sudden surge will appear to indicate that the public must be rejoicing over the news that they can trust Gox again! Keeping the price a little lower than the other exchanges for a while (and possibly charging an "entrance fee" to come get the "cheap coins") will allow them enough cash liquidity to purchase real coins for those cashing out. It will be a slow process of withdrawal though, hopefully letting no one out, but welcoming fresh new blood in the door, with each new investor putting cash on the table. They will reinstate their artificially stimulated volatility because it's like roach bait for investors, and it creates high transaction (and commission) volume. Over time, they will allow the price to return to matching other exchanges and the run on coins will be over. They will release the withdrawal restrictions with some more fanfare, do a low commission trading celebration, and resume business as usual.
At least, that's the plan. Let's see if they can pull it off. But yes, if they can pull it off, you'll get to keep your cheap coins and make some money off them - so long as the price of btc hasn't dropped significantly a month from now when it's your turn in line for a coin withdrawal...
I wish it wasn't so, but I strongly suspect this is all true. It fits every press release and every action they've taken. It's consistent.
Good luck, and we'll see.
ericmoulton
