Official End of Mt Gox thread

[wobber]

Bitstamp is holding up rather well, although we might see a sell off there too.

Imo Mark and gox are damaging bitcoin, either through incompetence or conspiracy. I can't decide.

Why is stamp holding up?

BitStamp is trading at $600, although dropping.

I'm surprised we haven't seen copycats on bitstamp panic selling and driving down the price.

Perhaps they will.......

Question is, why Bitstamp should go down?

Think of this: Me buys hillgox.com, do some design with Bootstrap, some PHP/MySQL and presto! New exchange. You cannot withdraw, cause no bank will work with me but you can put all the money you want.

Me also engineers the price to be low or just let the wolves kill each other will I get blown by Asian girls and drinking frappucino. Would your trades, your bitcoins and the bitcoin price be real? No. The only thing real is me getting rich.

[pietje]

I hope they die today instead of dragging the same shit in the following weeks.
Gox can't do shit. They announched ltc 1 year ago still nothing. Will be same story for withdrawals.

[traderwin]

So people - it's likely the gox price will go below $100 - that's a given. The question is what's the floor? $75? $50? $25? Even $10? Any thoughts?

[pietje]

So people - it's likely the gox price will go below $100 - that's a given. The question is what's the floor? $75? $50? $25? Even $10? Any thoughts?

$0?

Still amazing how the other exchanges are holding up with all this gox crap.

[Rygon]

It's about damn time. The red flags have been numerous here, and the evidence grows stronger everyday that MtGox is scamming folks. Reminds me of the Pirate scheme collapsing. Anyone wiring money to MtGox with the intent to buy coins cheap is taking a huge risk now. Not only is there a risk that they will never be allowed to withdraw those coins, but there's a class action suit forming and probably others on their way. I'd say there's at least a 50% chance that their operations are shut down, or at least their fiat bank accounts, within the next month.

It'll be ugly, and I feel bad for anyone who has funds trapped at Gox, but this will be best for bitcoin in the long run. Nearly every major exchange crisis in the last 3 years has been because of a Gox screwup. Looking forward to happier days with more reliable and professional exchanges.

On the plus side, prices on other exchanges should rise after Gox collapses, as soon as the market realizes the coins on Gox either a) don't exist or b) have been stolen. Then eventually customers will get some fiat out from the lawsuits and likely go to other exchanges to buy back into bitcoin.

[MakeBelieve]

We should have a party that this scamming exchange is now gone from our community.

[Oblodo]

By Takashi Mochizuki and Eleanor Warnock

TOKYO--Just six months ago, Mark Karpelès was sitting on top of the world. Mt. Gox, his Tokyo-based platform that had started as an exchange for Magic trading cards, had in a short time become the world's dominant platform for exchanging the new big thing--bitcoins.

Cut to a snowy February morning in Tokyo, and you find Mr. Karpelès trying to walk past a bitcoin trader holding a sign outside Mt. Gox's offices in the hip Shibuya neighborhood, asking: "MT. GOX--WHERE IS OUR MONEY?"

The trader, Kolin Burges, who had flown in from London, was only one of many customers of the company who have been pressing the trading platform to disclose more about its financial health after it froze customer withdrawals on Feb. 7.

The travails of Mt. Gox illustrate the convulsions of the bitcoin market as the first generation of companies trading the virtual currency face growing technical and security challenges.

Chris Larsen, chief executive of San Francisco-based Ripple Labs Inc., a startup associated with another virtual currency, ripples, likened the convulsions as the bitcoin market expands to the early days of the Internet, when it wasn't clear that the World Wide Web would really catch on.

Then, "it all just seemed like the craziest stuff--who would ever use this?--and now it's absolutely in the fabric of every enterprise on earth," he said.

Mr. Larsen developed Ripple with another bitcoin entrepreneur, Jed McCaleb, the founder of Mt. Gox, who sold it to Mr. Karpelès in 2011. The name Mt. Gox, which came from the Magic card game the company originally dealt in before Mr. McCaleb turned it onto bitcoins, is short for Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange.

Mt. Gox has been wrestling with problems since earlier this year, when it halted withdrawals in dollars.

Also in May, some of Mt. Gox's funds were seized by U.S. regulators, who said the exchange wasn't properly registered in the U.S. Mt. Gox said in a statement last month that it is has been properly registered as a money-services business in the U.S. since the end of June.

After Mt. Gox again abruptly halted customer withdrawals on Feb. 7, it blamed its issues on a glitch in the bitcoin software.

On Feb. 10, Mt. Gox said it had been hit by fraudulent requests for payment by users exploiting a feature in the core protocol known as "transaction malleability."

Initially, many in the bitcoin community argued that Mt. Gox had simply failed to use the correct internal procedures to protect its accounts. The next day, however, a hacking attack crippled other bitcoin-exchange platforms and raised questions about the security of the global network for trading the virtual currency.

Asked why the company hadn't addressed customers' concern sooner, Mr. Karpelès responded in an email interview with The Wall Street Journal on Monday: "I assume you refer to the malleability issue. We sincerely apologize for this incident; however, please understand that we are NOT the developers of Bitcoin." He added, "We are very surprised that anyone could fault MtGox instead of the bitcoin software."

However, he said, "We deeply apologize for any delays in our responses."

After Mr. Karpelès, who was running an IT company in Tokyo, bought Mt. Gox from Mr. McCaleb in 2011, Mt. Gox became the world's biggest bitcoin exchange by volume, with more than 80% of bitcoin trades, according to Bitcoinity.org, a service that tracks rates on various exchanges. During that time, the price of a single bitcoin rose from 92 cents to a peak of more than $1,147 last December, based on figures from CoinDesk, a bitcoin-data provider based in London.

Amid the turmoil surrounding Mt. Gox, CoinDesk removed Mt. Gox from its benchmark bitcoin index early last week. The index, which now includes just Slovenia-based Bitstamp and BTC-e of Bulgaria, stood at $624.63 in New York afternoon trading Monday, while Mt. Gox-traded bitcoin was valued at just $294.20. Its share of bitcoin trades had dropped to 25% on Monday, according to Bitcoinity.org.

But aside from the lower value of its bitcoins, investors are increasingly concerned about the status of their Mt. Gox accounts. The company's halt of bitcoin transfers to outside accounts led investors to speculate on online forums that the company had its bitcoins stolen by hackers or that it was out of cash and would default.

Tomoaki Ushida, who runs an IT consulting firm in Tokyo, has given up hope of recovering the two bitcoins he had in his Mt. Gox account. "I try to convince myself that I paid for a good lesson," he said. "If I ever get them returned, I'm lucky."

In the email interview, Mr. Karpelès responded to questions about the company's solvency or protection for customers' funds by saying that the matter is confidential. However, he said the company had discussed its business model with Japanese authorities "to ensure that we are operating within the law here."

At a weekly meeting Thursday of Mt. Gox investors and other members of Tokyo's small, tightknit bitcoin community at a bar about a 10-minute walk from Mt. Gox's headquarters, some 30 bitcoiners talked about bitcoins and exchanged the currency using cellphone-readable bar codes. Some members reminisced about tipping burlesque dancers in bitcoins at a bar called the Pink Cow in Tokyo's foreigner-rich Roppongi neighborhood that accepts bitcoins for payment.

But the conversation revolved mostly around Mt. Gox and whether the exchange would be able to honor deposits. Organizers had extended an invitation to Mr. Karpelès but said they didn't receive a response.

Ken Shishido, one of the group's organizers who works in the telecom industry, said, "Everyone's question is whether the company still has everyone's bitcoin and cash. That's a very critical thing we need to know."

Mr. Burges, the London investor, was among the bitcoiners Thursday night. The next morning, outside Mt. Gox's offices, he managed to get in a brief confrontation with Mr. Karpelès. "You still have everyone's bitcoin?" Mr. Burges asked while Mr. Karpelès tried to navigate around him holding a Starbucks cup and an umbrella.

In the wider Japanese business community, bitcoins aren't widely used or even well-known. Japanese officials are cautious about making any comments about bitcoins as they wait for the Bank of Japan to finish a study about the virtual currency. Still, some Japan-based lawyers say certain restrictions, especially on exchange platforms, should be considered in order to prevent criminal use of the currency, such as for money-laundering.

"I believe that regulating exchanges would be the best way to address these problems," said So Saito, a lawyer at the Tokyo law firm of Nishimura & Asahi.

Meanwhile, the turmoil at Mt. Gox has even touched the Pink Cow, home to the burlesque dancers, which has switched to another bitcoin payment process called BitPay.

Mt. Gox transactions are "taking an unacceptable length of time right now, so we are taking another route," said owner Traci Consoli. "Hopefully, a more stable system will evolve as it grows." [Suspicious link removed]j.com/article/BT-CO-20140217-704805.html

[igorr]

I think it will look like a fat guy in cuffs. No way can they be acting legally.

Bitcoin has not legal currency anywhere in the world.

[WompRat]

I think it will look like a fat guy in cuffs. No way can they be acting legally.

Bitcoin has not legal currency anywhere in the world.

It could still be fraud - doesn't matter what you are selling.  There could be dozens of charges you could bring, but fraud is probably the easiest to justify and is treated most harshly under Japanese law.

[segeln]

why don`t we have any whistleblowers at Gox.which can "whistle" what is going on ?

[igorr]

Mtgox is the same as the Edward Snouden, It is not possible in another country.

[iBug]

"Official End of Mt Gox" ?
With "official" you must mean "unofficial". And with "End" you must mean "possible end".
I shouldn't spend so much time in the speculation forum ... nothing here makes any sense. 

[NUFCrichard]

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but if people buy bitcoins on Gox now at $100, they are actually buying bitcoins aren't they?
It is off blockchain so there is no way of knowing if Gox are naked shorting...

[eoJ]

I think it will look like a fat guy in cuffs. No way can they be acting legally.

Bitcoin has not legal currency anywhere in the world.

Yes it is. Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, USA, etc. I think you mean legal tender.

[Rygon]

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but if people buy bitcoins on Gox now at $100, they are actually buying bitcoins aren't they?
It is off blockchain so there is no way of knowing if Gox are naked shorting...

Not bitcoin but IOU-Coins

I haven't seen this brought up yet, but has anyone done a blockchain analysis to venture a guess at how many bitcoins are under control of Gox? It probably won't be simple because they've been around a while, but bitcoins have been flowing in for a few months now, so I wouldn't be surprised if some of them have ended up in cold storage in a handful of large addresses.

[nopedope89]

Although MtGox is damaging bitcoin, I am not sure it is going to crash. It is still have a big chance to survive.

[wobber]

Hey MtGox users,

Why panick? Bitcoin price is where it was 6 months ago.

[phatsphere]

I don't get it, yet another drop to $130 ? how is this even possible given the current price on other markets?

I suspect, there are coins sold which only exist in their database. Does anybody have experience with a similar situation? Or knows of an example in history where we can look at? In my eyes it's completely insane, that trading hasn't been halted -- it should have been a few minutes prior to the first announcement, that bitcoin withdrawals are suspended!

[Tzupy]

In my eyes it's completely insane, that trading hasn't been halted -- it should have been a few minutes prior to the first announcement, that bitcoin withdrawals are suspended!

A honest business would have done that (suspend trading), but MTGox chose to defraud its customers.
When the MtGox price is 75% lower than Bitstamp, I think defraud is the right verb describing the situation.

[Money Raccoon]

Hey MtGox users,

Why panick? Bitcoin price is where it was 6 months ago.

It's not the price they're worried about.