Do you really believe gox has lost 740,000 BTC and has only 2,000 left?

[jl2012]

http://two-bit-idiot.tumblr.com/post/77760399932/update-on-mt-gox-this-document-appears-to-be

This document claims that gox has lost 740,000 BTC and has only 2,000 left

This sounds really ridiculous. 2000BTC could not even cover 10% of the ask wall on gox. How could Mark not realize it far before the cold wallet becomes 0?

[1715153449]

1715153449

[1715153449]

1715153449

[1715153449]

1715153449

[1715153449]

1715153449

[1715153449]

1715153449

[1715153449]

1715153449

[jl2012]

If you have other theory, please reply

[Luno]

As a fact. Mark had thousands of BTC which he used some of to stabilise price on GOX in the early 2012 when Bitcoin needed supportive buying / selling to look good.

He transferred from a wallet through a server with a Paris IP number. I'm gonna look if I still have the note on the wallet address in some of my old posts.

Guy is loaded, lying is too easy. Gox is unimportant, Bitcoin follows the guy with the keys.

Just for the info: He was not alone back then, coordinated buying was taking place he was part of a cartel, Spain Uk Germany IP together in this.

things are not what they seem. proclaiming news about BTC assets would require some documentation, i.e. the address which they are stolen from, and the addresses they have been deposited to. A mere re branding won't cut it legally.

(nope, don't have the wallet public address anywhere)

[BlackHayate]

I think that gox should have a withdraw log, so they should have list of guys, who asked bitcoins twice.

[twolifeinexile]

Now it looks more real than ever.(Not saying it is)

[Ekaros]

Losing 740 000 BTC seems unbelivable achievement.

On other hand having that much in exchange in the late times seems also dubious...

[seleme]

No.

Nobody is stupid enough to lose 750 000 BTC without noticing it.

[jl2012]

No.

Nobody is stupid enough to lose 750 000 BTC without noticing it.

That's why one of my choice is Mark having serious mental illness. That would explain it

[NUFCrichard]

I don't buy it, the presentation seems odd if it is internal, it is a bit simplistic.
If I have a meeting I don't expect a presentation to start with a simple overview of the company, that is for external presentations.

[thelema93]

"The cold storage has been wiped out due to a leak in the hot wallet."

BULLSHIT ALERT

[Salivan]

I start to think that  they(mt.gox) prolong withdrawals by purpose.
Do simple math
let say  you have 1000USD
buy mt.gox bitcoin using them than sell on bitstamp
now you have
4000USD
repeat process

soon you have more bitcoin and USD than  ever before

and this procedure  will end when  withdrawal will be  resumed eventually so no need for rush
 

[coinnewbit]

"The cold storage has been wiped out due to a leak in the hot wallet."

BULLSHIT ALERT

Mark:Time's Douchebag of The Year

[anu]

http://two-bit-idiot.tumblr.com/post/77760399932/update-on-mt-gox-this-document-appears-to-be

This document claims that gox has lost 740,000 BTC and has only 2,000 left

This sounds really ridiculous. 2000BTC could not even cover 10% of the ask wall on gox. How could Mark not realize it far before the cold wallet becomes 0?

The trading engine does not operate on the blockchain - its only working on Bitcoin representations in a database.

That said, this looks like an attempt to crash the price. I would expect them to run a simple SQL query finding out how many Bitcoins customers own and compare it with the amount in their wallets as part of their daily reconciliation.

[Luno]

When there is an official look into this, legal or journalistic, we are very apt here in this forum to correct anything overlooked by authorities or reporters.

A German university do mass tracings of transactions (for research purposes) and there are now forensic tools to backtrack BTC's.

We will get to the bottom of the "whom stole which coins" part!

[Mythul]

This is going to be one shitty week...

[600watt]

This is going to be one shitty week...

no, the shitty weeks are behind us...

[rebuilder]

This doc looks very fishy to me.

-Written from an outsider's perspective, but no mention of who wrote it, or for what purpose. Could just as well never have been used internally, but by a third party planning a takeover, assuming they had access to Gox data.

-Also arguing against internal Gox use is the writer saying Gox "deserves" to go bankrupt, general brutality.

-The claim of the cold wallets getting entirely wiped due to coin leakage seems very hard to credit. They would have had to manually empty the wallets, they're cold after all. I don't see how you accidentally lose *everything* in your cold wallet without realizing, when someone is manually transferring funds from said wallet.

-The CEO's apology draft - temp graphic of a scapegoat on the gox mountain? Really?

[Miz4r]

This is going to be one shitty week...

no, the shitty weeks are behind us...

Exactly, I actually feel a lot of relieve right now that MtGox is gone. I wish they could have fixed their shit instead but at least we have clarity now and the market can find a new equilibrium and move on.

[Mythul]

This is going to be one shitty week...

no, the shitty weeks are behind us...

Exactly, I actually feel a lot of relieve right now that MtGox is gone. I wish they could have fixed their shit instead but at least we have clarity now and the market can find a new equilibrium and move on.

Yeah but I feel bad for the people that lost their money....there are a lot of them you know.

[Miz4r]

This is going to be one shitty week...

no, the shitty weeks are behind us...

Exactly, I actually feel a lot of relieve right now that MtGox is gone. I wish they could have fixed their shit instead but at least we have clarity now and the market can find a new equilibrium and move on.

Yeah but I feel bad for the people that lost their money....there are a lot of them you know.

After all the warning signs they got since June 2013, I feel they have had plenty of time to get out of there. So I really can't feel a whole lot of sympathy for them to be honest. But I don't think those still with funds stuck in Gox have lost it all, I've read and heard Gox got bought out and there are bigger parties involved now and they will insure that everyone will get back what they are owed.

[bennybong]

I don't understand why any hacker/scammer would attack gox to death like this. Their stash of stolen coins are all of a sudden worth a whole lot less! It's like when ghash.io was nearing 50% hash rate and everyone started worrying what they would do. Of course theyy would not attack their own primary source of income! Why would anyone that makes money from Bitcoin sabotage the network like that!?

[600watt]

I don't understand why any hacker/scammer would attack gox to death like this. Their stash of stolen coins are all of a sudden worth a whole lot less! It's like when ghash.io was nearing 50% hash rate and everyone started worrying what they would do. Of course theyy would not attack their own primary source of income! Why would anyone that makes money from Bitcoin sabotage the network like that!?

right question: coi bono ?


banks ?
governments
alts ?
payment processors ?
goldbugs ?

[T.Stuart]

The document is utterly, without doubt, fake!

No clue about the real balances though.

[Miz4r]

These 'thieves' have probably silently been profiting from this MtGox exploit for years now, and I guess they wanted to keep it silent. No reason to think there are governments behind this, the incentives are all there for anyone to exploit this loophole once they find it and keep it silent as long as possible.

[anu]

banks ?
governments

If its governments or banks, great. If they made such a mistake, we'll be able to prove it. We'll put them in a pillory in a burning pit and nail Nietzsches eternal truth to their forehead:

Aber der Staat lügt in allen Zungen des Guten und Bösen; und was er auch redet, er lügt – und was er auch hat, gestohlen hat er's.
Falsch ist Alles an ihm; mit gestohlenen Zähnen beisst er, der Bissige. Falsch sind selbst seine Eingeweide.

[Chronikka]

[st4nl3y]

where did you get this picture? this guy looks like mark! i think it's really him! oh..ok no worries we are saved!

[spiderbrain]

I find it very hard to believe that a group of people could fail to notice that they were bleeding that many coins from cold storage. That said, not my problem, got my coins out of gox months ago.

[Salivan]

This is going to be one shitty week...

no, the shitty weeks are behind us...

Exactly, I actually feel a lot of relieve right now that MtGox is gone. I wish they could have fixed their shit instead but at least we have clarity now and the market can find a new equilibrium and move on.

Yeah but I feel bad for the people that lost their money....there are a lot of them you know.

After all the warning signs they got since June 2013, I feel they have had plenty of time to get out of there. So I really can't feel a whole lot of sympathy for them to be honest. But I don't think those still with funds stuck in Gox have lost it all, I've read and heard Gox got bought out and there are bigger parties involved now and they will insure that everyone will get back what they are owed.

I am one of those happy suckers
I will most probably lose about 25BTC
Why I didn't get out on time?
Well I used two exchanges one among those was gox. Although I knew that they have some  problems, it was hard to imagine that company  with longest experience in this business and operating on  millions can simply disappear over night. Every time I  was  withdrawing money from them  I had to wait so I was used to that as well. I was patient and forgiving.
To be specific I have made some  withdrawals in november,   first and second one arrived  at begin of  january , after that nothing.  I  started to loose my patience and  finally I ordered to cancel my cash transfers one  by one , than I started to buy  bitcoin and withdraw them. This I started few days before they stop process withdrawals. As the result  I get some of my bitcoins out, but  more then  half  stuck  there

[porcupine87]

At this point 744,408 BTC are missing due to malleability-related theft which went unnoticed for several years.

[eldentyrell]

This sounds really ridiculous. 2000BTC could not even cover 10% of the ask wall on gox. How could Mark not realize it far before the cold wallet becomes 0?

Indeed, the document is a hoax.

The fact that mtgox is dead meat does, however, appear to be true.

[oda.krell]

When there is an official look into this, legal or journalistic, we are very apt here in this forum to correct anything overlooked by authorities or reporters.

A German university do mass tracings of transactions (for research purposes) and there are now forensic tools to backtrack BTC's.

We will get to the bottom of the "whom stole which coins" part!

Exactly my thought.

Just read an article, not even completely incompetently written in general, on Forbes that more or less believes the "740k coin leak through hot wallet" bullshit explanation, and I got really depressed for a second.

But we're not idiots. Those bullshit excuses didn't work for pirate40, nor sheep marketplace owners, nor anyone else. And with Mark, at least his identity is know -- there's no way he's simply going to get away and sip margaritas on his own private island while his company still has liabilities in the range of a few hundred million.

I fully expect that the current events will spawn the, so far, biggest lawsuit in Bitcoin history.

[JimboToronto]

"The cold storage has been wiped out due to a leak in the hot wallet."

BULLSHIT ALERT

That made me wonder too.

How do paper wallets get wiped out unless their private keys are exposed to the internet?

I thought "cold storage" meant creating offline wallets.

[Salivan]

"The cold storage has been wiped out due to a leak in the hot wallet."

BULLSHIT ALERT

That made me wonder too.

How do paper wallets get wiped out unless their private keys are exposed to the internet?

I thought "cold storage" meant creating offline wallets.

they experienced security issue recently, at least they claim so

[bennybong]

Just dropping this here:

Brendan Support, Feb 15 08:37:

Dear Valued Customer,

Sorry for the inconvenience that have may caused. Our technical team is working hard to fix this issue and it will be fixed as soon as possible. All your BTC's are very safe and secured. Once the issue is fixed you will be able to initiate the BTC withdrawal and there is no time measure at this moment, we will be able to provide a clear picture soon.

We deeply apologize for the inconvenience caused, and thank you for your kind support and considerations.

Best regards,

MtGox Team
https://www.mtgox.com

[thelema93]

FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE FAKE

[jamesc760]

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.

Mark Klueless and his cohorts mis-managed mtgox from the beginning. Their incompetence alone killed mtgox, nothing else. There is no malicious hacker(s) involved, it's just a convenient excuse. Just lame.

[Mythul]

This is going to be one interesting week for sure.

[WompRat]

"The cold storage has been wiped out due to a leak in the hot wallet."

BULLSHIT ALERT

That made me wonder too.

How do paper wallets get wiped out unless their private keys are exposed to the internet?

I thought "cold storage" meant creating offline wallets.

I am voting for real.  Some of it is a bit over the top, but if you found out that a company had 'lost' 750,000 coins you would be shocked too.  That bit about the cold storage would probably be clarified when final.  My interpretation is that due to the malleability leak,  Gox have been topping up the hot wallet with funds from cold storage and then losing them too.

[T.Stuart]

Thinking about it carefully I actually do think that they have lost everything. I don't know how exactly - probably via malleability hacks - but think about this:

A few weeks ago Mark Karpeles came out all guns blazing against Bitcoin, saying that some funds might have been lost due to malleability.

But he had been warned about malleability a long time ago.

If your company, holding hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin, had lost a few thousand Bitcoin via a trick you had been warned of, would you come out publicly like MK did, knowing there would be an immediate backlash and you would be ridiculed for not having fixed the problem despite warnings? I wouldn't - I would try to get the issue fixed quietly and take the loss.

But if you realised that everything was gone, then what?

At this point you would have to think "exit strategy". And so, to make it a case of force majeur from the outset, you make a bold public claim blaming Bitcoin, regardless of the fact that you know you will face ridicule. In this way you are starting off with a clear position - a position you will not go back on: that it was not your fault and that this is written into your terms and conditions. This is an important claim as it is your defence strategy for all future lawsuits brought against you by customers who have lost their funds.

It now seems obvious why MK would make such a strong public statement, very out of character and actually bordering on angry and panicked, several weeks ago.

He already knew then that everything was gone.

My opinion only but...

Shit.

[gambit1]

No, we couldn't get our money out. It fine you don't have sympathy; bitcoin is over as anything mainstream. Miners and hoarders from now on.

[MatTheCat]

If you have other theory, please reply

Yeah.

Loads of Bitcoin were stolen. Karpeles realised he was fucked and was going to get dragged through the mud. So he stole the rest before letting his exchange go under with everyone's Geld. 10K whale was Karpeles. Perhaps more of that fun to come.

[Miz4r]

No, we couldn't get our money out. It fine you don't have sympathy; bitcoin is over as anything mainstream. Miners and hoarders from now on.

Ofcourse not, Bitcoin will rise stronger from the ashes as it has always done. Soon enough these exchanges will no longer be the bottleneck that holds BTC back. You have seen absolutely nothing yet of the potential of cryptocurrencies, but you will in a few years from now. Growing pains like this are sadly unavoidable, as well as the victims it makes. Good risk management can help minimize the damage it will do to you though.

[eoJ]

I don't understand why any hacker/scammer would attack gox to death like this. Their stash of stolen coins are all of a sudden worth a whole lot less! It's like when ghash.io was nearing 50% hash rate and everyone started worrying what they would do. Of course theyy would not attack their own primary source of income! Why would anyone that makes money from Bitcoin sabotage the network like that!?

Because even at $100 a coin, 740k BTC is $74 million.

[JCviggen]

Thinking about it carefully I actually do think that they have lost everything. I don't know how exactly - probably via malleability hacks - but think about this:

A few weeks ago Mark Karpeles came out all guns blazing against Bitcoin, saying that some funds might have been lost due to malleability.

But he had been warned about malleability a long time ago.

If your company, holding hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin, had lost a few thousand Bitcoin via a trick you had been warned of, would you come out publicly like MK did, knowing there would be an immediate backlash and you would be ridiculed for not having fixed the problem despite warnings? I wouldn't - I would try to get the issue fixed quietly and take the loss.

But if you realised that everything was gone, then what?

At this point you would have to think "exit strategy". And so, to make it a case of force majeur from the outset, you make a bold public claim blaming Bitcoin, regardless of the fact that you know you will face ridicule. In this way you are starting off with a clear position - a position you will not go back on: that it was not your fault and that this is written into your terms and conditions. This is an important claim as it is your defence strategy for all future lawsuits brought against you by customers who have lost their funds.

It now seems obvious why MK would make such a strong public statement, very out of character and actually bordering on angry and panicked, several weeks ago.

He already knew then that everything was gone.

My opinion only but...

Shit.

It's obvious that something is very rotten in the land of Gox, but none of it adds up very well.


It's worth keeping in mind that Gox has had fiat liquidity issues since before last summer. Probably the root cause was the seizure of funds by the US government due to carelessness on the part of Gox. Once USD withdrawals were put on "temporary hiatus" a situation was created where Gox coins carried a significant premium price over other exchanges. Up until that point Gox had dominated the market to such an extent that most of the fiat coming into the BTC ecosystem went through them anyway.
Suddenly, that was no longer the case and because of the price premium it made no sense for any informed person to send fiat currency to Gox. You'd send it to Stamp or wherever. It's fair to say that fiat withdrawals were no more than a trickle since May, that's about 9 months now. Up to this point it makes sense.

BTC withdrawals were never an issue. The explanation that the cold wallets were drained by the hot wallets would imply there were no actual cold wallets, which is hard to believe and runs counter to many statements made in the past. Moving coins from cold wallets to hot wallets requires manual intervention. Even a bone headed idiot would figure out before long that he's trying to fill an apparently bottomless pit. Even more so when the problem at Gox was so clearly fiat related. People would transfer BTC to them because they wanted to cash out at a premium price. The imbalance would mean they have too many coins to cover with their (partially confiscated) cash reserves.

In such a situation it would make zero sense to anyone that the BTC hot wallets went down rapidly while they should be increasing. Certainly going down by the tune of hundreds of thousands is impossible to miss. So no, I don't believe that they could have lost that much over a lengthy amount of time as suggested by the document. No exchange can hemorrhage both coins and fiat at the same time unless their books are thinning equally quickly. I only believe it could be lost via gross incompetence (destroying the coins) or a huge amount in a very short time (would leave pretty clear evidence behind)

MK clearly has some issues himself, one of them apparently that he doesn't take blame for anything no matter what. Shoving the blame onto the BTC developers fits into his profile pretty well. Alternatively, it cannot be ignored that his statements and actions did manage to tank the exchange rate on his exchange to the point it became a farce. This is something that would make sense when you don't have nearly enough $$$ to cover all the chips in play: make them worth less. At the same time you attract some risk seeking capital looking to buy those cheap coins. Where this story stops making sense is the part where they are shutting down. If they had enough coins, there's nothing stopping them from re-opening limited withdrawals. Their coin/$ imbalance should have been massively reduced by now, and even a 10 BTC/day limit on withdrawals would probably keep people happy for quite a long time. It's difficult to believe they lost ALL of their coins. And in any case, why now? They've been fairly stable the past few days and I can't see what changed to force Mark's hand all of a sudden. If he was going to make a run for it, all the other stuff wasn't necessary, he could've just buggered off without all this nonsense and without leaving weird comments in the HTML.

Add to this that there appears to be massive insider trading going on. What happened yesterday at bitcoinbuilder in retrospect was more likely than not someone running from the only exit left because they knew what was coming. Worth pointing out however that anyone with fiat on Gox could buy coins, send them to builder and sell them for about the same price they bought them at Gox. So it was an effective way of getting out. I could guess things were closed down to put a stop to that, but merely closing internal transfers would've had the same effect.

So yeah, I dunno.

[pera]

lol

[Fiyasko]

"The cold storage has been wiped out due to a leak in the hot wallet."

BULLSHIT ALERT

Yeah, Wow, Nothing related to the "hot wallet" could have caused a "cold storage" wallet to malfunction in any way shape or form
He's running with the "cold storage" money

[zhangweiwu]

No.
Nobody is stupid enough to lose 750 000 BTC without noticing it.

Did you read that leaked document? I did. The document says they (knew) have leak for years and they could bankrupt any time, and they let it leak with the concern that MtGox drags down the bitcoin world with its fall - that is hubris.

Quote: "The reality is that MtGox can go bankrupt at any moment, and certainly deserves to as a company. "

There are some who point out MtGox would not say this, hence the document is fake. But they are known blatant.

[jl2012]

If you have other theory, please reply

Yeah.

Loads of Bitcoin were stolen. Karpeles realised he was fucked and was going to get dragged through the mud. So he stole the rest before letting his exchange go under with everyone's Geld. 10K whale was Karpeles. Perhaps more of that fun to come.

So this fits the last option: There are some criminal insider actions

[T.Stuart]

Add to this that there appears to be massive insider trading going on. What happened yesterday at bitcoinbuilder in retrospect was more likely than not someone running from the only exit left because they knew what was coming. Worth pointing out however that anyone with fiat on Gox could buy coins, send them to builder and sell them for about the same price they bought them at Gox. So it was an effective way of getting out. I could guess things were closed down to put a stop to that, but merely closing internal transfers would've had the same effect.

So yeah, I dunno.

Without doubt.

[nakaone]

"The cold storage has been wiped out due to a leak in the hot wallet."

BULLSHIT ALERT

Yeah, Wow, Nothing related to the "hot wallet" could have caused a "cold storage" wallet to malfunction in any way shape or form
He's running with the "cold storage" money

can some senior/ advanced member try to explain that?

i do not get how the cold wallet can be affected?

[Carra23]

What happened yesterday at bitcoinbuilder in retrospect was more likely than not someone running from the only exit left because they knew what was coming.

What happened at bitcoinbuilder? Missed that.

[boumalo]

No.
Nobody is stupid enough to lose 750 000 BTC without noticing it.

Did you read that leaked document? I did. The document says they (knew) have leak for years and they could bankrupt any time, and they let it leak with the concern that MtGox drags down the bitcoin world with its fall - that is hubris.

Quote: "The reality is that MtGox can go bankrupt at any moment, and certainly deserves to as a company. "

There are some who point out MtGox would not say this, hence the document is fake. But they are known blatant.

Why would they let it leak?? They didn't know how to avoid the leaks technically?

You would think they had the money to buy some good techs!

[mp420]

lol

That does not add up at all. Their trading fees from Apr 1 2013 to today were WAY more than $1.3 million. $13 million would be more believable.

Either these figures are fake or Gox has been scamming everyone and only 10% of trades have been real.

[T.Stuart]

What happened yesterday at bitcoinbuilder in retrospect was more likely than not someone running from the only exit left because they knew what was coming.

What happened at bitcoinbuilder? Missed that.

A few trades were going on around 0.33 real BTC per GOX BTC when suddenly dozens of sell orders jumped in at 0.19.

The first few hundred coins were snapped up but then there were no more bids left; 5000 coins just sat there on offer at 0.19 for a minute or two getting nibbled before some whale logged in and snapped them up!

Then some more thousands got bought.

For the rest of the day 100-coin sells up a lot of the time every .05 from about .29 up to .4.

[JCviggen]

What happened yesterday at bitcoinbuilder in retrospect was more likely than not someone running from the only exit left because they knew what was coming.

What happened at bitcoinbuilder? Missed that.

Out of nowhere someone dumped ~10K Goxcoins. We were at .35-.40 and dumping went straight for .19
For a place that had 5-6K volume per 24h it was fairly spectacular.

But, anyone who had fiat on Gox could perfectly get it out this way. The first ones to try it would even have made a profit. So it was always something that would get arb'd once the word got out. Guess we'll never know.

[zhangweiwu]

Why would they let it leak?? They didn't know how to avoid the leaks technically?

Ture, they don't know how to avoid the leaks, technically.

You would think they had the money to buy some good techs!

They have, but solving this requires the level of core bitcoin devs, any of these may disclose the current financial status. You can have a trusted guy and a proficient one, but not both. The trusted guys talked with the proficient ones many times to try to solve it without revealing too much details. I am too bad at remembering western names to give you google keywords, but this fact was discussed here before.

[zhangweiwu]

That does not add up at all. Their trading fees from Apr 1 2013 to today were WAY more than $1.3 million. $13 million would be more believable.

Either these figures are fake or Gox has been scamming everyone and only 10% of trades have been real.

When you say $1.3m, do you mean the number in first row, first column? That was the year 2012. 2013-2014 is on the second column, totalling $10m.

[zedicus]

So they are going to change their name to Gox and get a new CEO and add litecoin and re-openup .. with captial controls? haha My god, what kind of shinanigans st hooplah am i reading..

http://www.scribd.com/doc/209050732/MtGox-Situation-Crisis-Strategy-Draft

[wobber]

So they are going to change their name to Gox and get a new CEO and add litecoin and re-openup .. with captial controls? haha My god, what kind of shinanigans st hooplah am i reading..

http://www.scribd.com/doc/209050732/MtGox-Situation-Crisis-Strategy-Draft

Who the hell wrote that?

Part 2: switch off exchange temporarely (1month) --???

What? It's been 12 hours and people are freaking out already.

[zedicus]

^^ well it said other virtual currency's not litecoin but thats what i translated it as!

[WompRat]

"The cold storage has been wiped out due to a leak in the hot wallet."

BULLSHIT ALERT

Yeah, Wow, Nothing related to the "hot wallet" could have caused a "cold storage" wallet to malfunction in any way shape or form
He's running with the "cold storage" money

We know that they are not a very professional operation.  There are substantive claims that until recently they had very limited development and testing infrastructure and were making a number of patches directly to the production system.  In this environment is it hard to believe that a staff member tasked with continually having to go and retrieve bitcoins from cold storage, instead transferred in large amounts in one go to save himself a few trips?  I doubt it was Mark himself, but someone who was focused on a quick fix and not the cause.

[mybitcoincharts]

"The cold storage has been wiped out due to a leak in the hot wallet."

BULLSHIT ALERT

Yeah, Wow, Nothing related to the "hot wallet" could have caused a "cold storage" wallet to malfunction in any way shape or form
He's running with the "cold storage" money

can some senior/ advanced member try to explain that?

i do not get how the cold wallet can be affected?

Thats easy: Suppose they have

• automated withdrawals from cold wallet to hot wallet in case hot has less than X BTC
• automated deposits to cold wallet from hot wallet in case hot has more than X BTC
• due to the malleability problem hot wallet constantly shrinks
• they only check the BTC transactions in their database, and do not double check whether the real BTC holdings are equivalent

Done. With a system like this money from the cold wallet could automatically trickly down into the hot wallet, and nobody noticed anything until it was too late.

[MrPiggles]

This is what SilkRoad2 claimed isn't it??

[zby]

"The cold storage has been wiped out due to a leak in the hot wallet."

BULLSHIT ALERT

Yeah, Wow, Nothing related to the "hot wallet" could have caused a "cold storage" wallet to malfunction in any way shape or form
He's running with the "cold storage" money

can some senior/ advanced member try to explain that?

i do not get how the cold wallet can be affected?

Thats easy: Suppose they have

• automated withdrawals from cold wallet to hot wallet in case hot has less than X BTC
• automated deposits to cold wallet from hot wallet in case hot has more than X BTC
• due to the malleability problem hot wallet constantly shrinks
• they only check the BTC transactions in their database, and do not double check whether the real BTC holdings are equivalent

Done. With a system like this money from the cold wallet could automatically trickly down into the hot wallet, and nobody noticed anything until it was too late.

That would not be a cold wallet - but with MtGox anything goes.

[mp420]

That does not add up at all. Their trading fees from Apr 1 2013 to today were WAY more than $1.3 million. $13 million would be more believable.

Either these figures are fake or Gox has been scamming everyone and only 10% of trades have been real.

When you say $1.3m, do you mean the number in first row, first column? That was the year 2012. 2013-2014 is on the second column, totalling $10m.

Oopsie. $10M could actually be believable.

[st4nl3y]

Just viewed the source of mtgox again and I have just seen about 20 lines of code with the phrases "mark" ,"my account id: ,and my correct ip address showing in one of the lines, when i refreshed the page to make a screenshot it was gone and now back to this again:

<html>
   <head>
      <title>MtGox.com</title>
   </head>
   <body>
      <!-- put announce for mtgox acq here -->
   </body>
</html>

[Wilhelm]

"The cold storage has been wiped out due to a leak in the hot wallet."

BULLSHIT ALERT

Yeah, Wow, Nothing related to the "hot wallet" could have caused a "cold storage" wallet to malfunction in any way shape or form
He's running with the "cold storage" money

can some senior/ advanced member try to explain that?

i do not get how the cold wallet can be affected?

Thats easy: Suppose they have

• automated withdrawals from cold wallet to hot wallet in case hot has less than X BTC
• automated deposits to cold wallet from hot wallet in case hot has more than X BTC
• due to the malleability problem hot wallet constantly shrinks
• they only check the BTC transactions in their database, and do not double check whether the real BTC holdings are equivalent

Done. With a system like this money from the cold wallet could automatically trickly down into the hot wallet, and nobody noticed anything until it was too late.

If you can automate it, it is not cold since it is available.
If it is available and automated you could in theory hack it.

The only safe method for a cold wallet is an off-site safe where you go with an encrypted paper wallet. Preferably a bank or other secure location.
The guy transporting doesn't have the password and the dude with the password doesn't have the offline wallet. Password gets saved somewhere else offsite.

My 2 cents

[nmersulypnem]

I think the rampant obvious insider trading we've seen, along with the leaked documents, and a complete lack of communication point to one very obvious conclusion:  Inside job.  Either Mark himself, or someone on his senior staff was complicit with stealing the 700K coins, and covering it up for so long.

[WompRat]

I think the rampant obvious insider trading we've seen, along with the leaked documents, and a complete lack of communication point to one very obvious conclusion:  Inside job.  Either Mark himself, or someone on his senior staff was complicit with stealing the 700K coins, and covering it up for so long.

If you wanted to steal some bitcoins, getting a job at MtGox was definitely the way to go.

[crazy_rabbit]

I don't think they lost 740,000BTC in the sense of "they had it" versus maybe they were selling Bitcoins they never really had in the first place. :-/

[Voodah]

I don't think they lost 740,000BTC in the sense of "they had it" versus maybe they were selling Bitcoins they never really had in the first place. :-/

Yes but still... how can you not notice that amount?

If you've ever run any kind of website you know there's just no way...

[coinage]

I don't think they lost 740,000BTC in the sense of "they had it" versus maybe they were selling Bitcoins they never really had in the first place. :-/

Yes but still... how can you not notice that amount?

If you've ever run any kind of website you know there's just no way...

No, c_r is saying they might have intentionally sold fictitious coins to customers -- in other words, a fractional bitcoin depository. Many users (such as traders) left a lot of real coins on the exchange for long periods, so there was always a sizeable reserve gox could draw against to fill withdrawal requests.

Gox could have injected their own trades into the order book (violating their written promise to never take either side of any trade). They would then pocket the real fiat that had been deposited, and update the "coin" buyers' accounts to show bitcoins which were not actually on deposit. An extensive review of the blockchain (with access to company records) could probably tell whether they actually received all coins that were "held" by accounts.


A simple way would be to create regular trading accounts, held by them, that were credited at some point with fake bitcoin balances ... then using those accounts to trade fake coins for customers' fiat, perhaps via Tor or a VPN. With over a million customers in the database, this might be easy to hide even from any forthcoming auditors. Especially if the software & accounting was as disorganized as it seems.

At least one employee/contractor would realize many "coins" in the system were never in the wallets. That person would have been motivated to hide the imbalance by adjusting the internal bookkeeping software. That takes one line of code (or a handful to obfuscate it well). People later taking over the company could find the discrepancy, though.


So far we have no evidence this happened, and the claim instead is that many coins that were in wallets no longer are.

It does seem an easy theft for any current exchange to do -- except the decentralized ones which are just getting started. Future exchanges can be designed (using multisignature transactions) to give customers full control over their coins and the ability to track them at all times.

[coinage]

They would then pocket the real fiat that had been deposited, and update the "coin" buyers' accounts to show bitcoins which were not actually on deposit.

By the way, what do you think of the proposed Gox brand for a bitcoin wallet, Bitpocket?

That name may be the single most ridiculous plan listed in the document being circulated. Perhaps it doesn't suggest pickpocket in Japanese.

[eldentyrell]

My interpretation is that due to the malleability leak,  Gox have been topping up the hot wallet with funds from cold storage and then losing them too.

Until the cold wallet was nearly empty?

And nobody noticed this?  Remember, extracting coins from a cold wallet is, by definition, a manual operation that is not automated.  A human being would have to have done this, repeatedly, and not noticed.

Simply does not add up.

Thats easy: Suppose they have

• automated withdrawals from cold wallet to hot wallet in case hot has less than X BTC

That is, by definition, not a cold wallet.  It's just another hot wallet.

[eldentyrell]

I don't think they lost 740,000BTC in the sense of "they had it" versus maybe they were selling Bitcoins they never really had in the first place. :-/

Very interesting.

I think you've come up with just about the only way that 740,000BTC number could in any way be connected to reality.  In other words, they've been fractional reserving and 740,000 is their reserve ratio times their actual on-chain loss.  If they were levered 10:1 the numbers start to get believable.

It would also provide a believable explanation for why they knowingly and intentionally drew down their cold wallet to a 0 balance (the bullion banks are doing the same thing right now).

So it's more Madoff than Corzine.

[hostmaster]

 This document is simply a hoax

[padawan789]

hi guys

what s happened to the lawyer and the class suit action?

i ve sent a pm but never got replied


i have my family money invested in there and need to find a lawyer asap

let me know if someone has succeed in contacting and hiring a lwayer at tokyo

thanks

[gollum]

lol

I think they sold bitcoins they did not have, so the problem is not in their wallets but in their accounting.
Based on the numbers in the leaked document I think it is theoretically possible for a venture capital firm to buy MtGox for 560 MUSD and bail out all clients at 500 $/BTC


My valuation of MtGox:
Net income 14 million dollars
PE-ratio 100 (fast growth)
PE-Value = 14 x 100 M USD = 1400 MUSD

750 000 coins missing x $500/BTC = 375 M USD

PR-damage: 60% of theoretical value = 1400 MUSD * 60% = 840 MUSD

Acquisition price (to pay the owners of MtGox) = 1400 - 375 - 840 MUSD = 185 MUSD
Acquisition value = acquisition price + missing coins = 185 + 375 = 560 MUSD

[Zarathustra]

For me, the best explanation is this one:

Summary

1. A substantial amount of the missing 740k bitcoins are still in addresses that MtGox believed they had control over

2. Transaction malleability thefts did take place, but not nearly 740k coins

3. MtGox believed they were solvent because their watch-wallet continued and continues to show expected cold storage balances

4. MtGox’s deepest coldest-cold storage reserves were never tested until the transaction malleability situation

5. MtGox can not recover the keys to the coldest-cold storage. (possibly a software problem.. custom deterministic wallet? or some other hardware/organization failure)

6. Mark has reason to think that the keys might be recoverable

7. The 2,000 odd coins mentioned in the crisis document represent whats left of the first stage cold wallet/hot wallet coins

http://letstalkbitcoin.com/somethings-not-right-at-gox/

[Zarathustra]

For me, the best explanation is this one:

For me the best explanation is this one:

1. The leak was found years ago.

Which one?

[whatsthestory]

For me, the best explanation is this one:

Summary

1. A substantial amount of the missing 740k bitcoins are still in addresses that MtGox believed they had control over

2. Transaction malleability thefts did take place, but not nearly 740k coins

3. MtGox believed they were solvent because their watch-wallet continued and continues to show expected cold storage balances

4. MtGox’s deepest coldest-cold storage reserves were never tested until the transaction malleability situation

5. MtGox can not recover the keys to the coldest-cold storage. (possibly a software problem.. custom deterministic wallet? or some other hardware/organization failure)

6. Mark has reason to think that the keys might be recoverable

7. The 2,000 odd coins mentioned in the crisis document represent whats left of the first stage cold wallet/hot wallet coins

http://letstalkbitcoin.com/somethings-not-right-at-gox/

I  think that MtGox still control 740 000 bitcoins otherwise Mark Karpeles has a mental illness.

[thelema93]

No. IMPOSSIBLE

Mark wrote that phoney document himself - to serve his own agenda. Most probably to crash the price so he can buy up cheap coins and save Gox.
Good luck to him I say!

[MrPiggles]

People who don't know anyone involved are saying "it's impossible"

then people in the know are saying "worst run business in history"

Maybe it IS possible.

[thelema93]

People who don't know anyone involved are saying "it's impossible"

then people in the know are saying "worst run business in history"

Maybe it IS possible.

Yes, but maybe it ISN'T

[justanickname]

For me, the best explanation is this one:

Summary

1. A substantial amount of the missing 740k bitcoins are still in addresses that MtGox believed they had control over

2. Transaction malleability thefts did take place, but not nearly 740k coins

3. MtGox believed they were solvent because their watch-wallet continued and continues to show expected cold storage balances

4. MtGox’s deepest coldest-cold storage reserves were never tested until the transaction malleability situation

5. MtGox can not recover the keys to the coldest-cold storage. (possibly a software problem.. custom deterministic wallet? or some other hardware/organization failure)

6. Mark has reason to think that the keys might be recoverable

7. The 2,000 odd coins mentioned in the crisis document represent whats left of the first stage cold wallet/hot wallet coins

http://letstalkbitcoin.com/somethings-not-right-at-gox/

I also think that this is the right explanation because it fits the announcements that they had last week.
Even if someone is lying usually you can  partially sense their state of mind, just read these last announcements again:
 
 

Dear MtGox Customers,
 
Thank you for your patience this week while we are working on re-initiating bitcoin withdrawals. In addition to the technical issue, this week we have experienced some security problems, and as a result we had to relocate MtGox to our previous office building in Shibuya (details can be found here: https://support.mtgox.com/home). The move, combined with some other security and technical challenges, pushed back our progress.
 
As much as we didn’t want to only provide an “update on an update”, this is the current status. We are committed to solving this issue and will provide more information as soon as possible to keep everyone in the loop.
 
We are very sorry for the delays and deeply appreciate your kind understanding and continuous support.
 
Best regards,
 
MtGox Team
MtGox Co.,Ltd Location and Address Change – February 19
Mike Feb 19 • Announcements / Announcements

Dear MtGox Customers,

MtGox Co.,Ltd. (Japan) has moved to the address below:

MtGox Co.,Ltd.
Cerulean Tower 15F
26­-1 Sakuragaoka­cho
150­8512 Shibuya Tokyo
Japan

Please send all documents/letters to the above address from now on.
Thank you for your kind cooperation.

Best Regards,

MtGox Team

Update - Announcement Affecting Bitcoin Transfers - February 17th, 2014
Mike Feb 17 • Announcements / Announcements

February 17th, 2014


Dear MtGox Customers,


We apologize for the inconvenience caused by the recent suspension of external bitcoin transfers. Fortunately, as we announced on Saturday we have now implemented a solution that should enable withdrawals and mitigate any issues caused by transaction malleability (please see our previous statements for details on this issue).


Thanks to our friends at Blockchain.info, MtGox now has a workaround that will use a unique identifier created by Blockchain to show whether transactions have been modified or not. This will prevent any fraudulent use of the malleability issue and protect the assets of our customers.


Resuming Withdrawals


With this new system in place, MtGox should be able to resume withdrawals soon. At the beginning we will do so at a moderated pace and with new daily/monthly limits in place to prevent any problems with the new system and to take into account current market conditions.


In order to launch the new system, we are going through the following steps:


- Re-indexing the entire Blockchain (approx. 32 million entries).
- Fully deploying the new NTX ID.
- Implementing a new bitcoin withdrawal queue that needs to be tested.


We will update everyone again by Thursday at the latest.


Additionally, you may have noticed that we have added a new login system that sends you an email when you successfully access your account. This is an additional security layer, but as always we strongly encourage our customers to use the 2-step authorization options available in our Security Center.
Thank you again for your support, and we look forward to resume bitcoin withdrawals as quickly as possible.


Best regards,

MtGox Team

Maintenance Announcement Effecting Bitcoin Transfers - February 15th, 2014
Mike Feb 17 • Announcements / Announcements

Tokyo, Japan, February 15th, 2014

 

Dear MtGox Customers,

In order to implement our solution to the "transaction malleability" issue being faced by bitcoin exchanges and businesses, we are going to have a 6-hour downtime on all bitcoin deposits and internal bitcoin transfers in addition to the current pause on bitcoin withdrawals. Trading will otherwise still be open as usual.

Maintenance Schedule (approximate): 6pm ~ 12am JST (February 15th)

The above downtime period is approximate: it may be shortened or lengthened as required. Once the implementation is complete customers will again be able to deposit bitcoin, but we will be doing extensive testing before bitcoin withdrawals are reactivated. We will publish an update on the situation on Monday .

BlockChain.info have implemented changes to address the malleability issue. Our solution should work in the short term, while a longer-term solution is being discussed with the Bitcoin Core Dev team and the Bitcoin Foundation. We are also discussing this with other exchanges and businesses.

Thank you for your support during the maintenance, and we will update you on the progress shortly.

Best regards,

MtGox Team

Update - Statement Regarding BTC Withdrawal Delays
Marion Feb 10 • Announcements / Announcements

Dear MtGox Customers and Bitcoiners,

As you are aware, 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.

The problem we have identified is not limited to MtGox, and affects all transactions where Bitcoins are being sent to a third party. We believe that the changes required for addressing this issue will be positive over the long term for the whole community. As a result we took the necessary action of suspending bitcoin withdrawals until this technical issue has been resolved.


Addressing Transaction Malleability
MtGox has detected unusual activity on its Bitcoin wallets and performed investigations during the past weeks. This confirmed the presence of transactions which need to be examined more closely.


Non-technical Explanation:
A bug in the bitcoin software makes it possible for someone to use the Bitcoin network to alter transaction details to make it seem like a sending of bitcoins to a bitcoin wallet did not occur when in fact it did occur. Since the transaction appears as if it has not proceeded correctly, the bitcoins may be resent. MtGox is working with the Bitcoin core development team and others to mitigate this issue.


Technical Explanation:
Bitcoin transactions are subject to a design issue that has been largely ignored, while known to at least a part of the Bitcoin core developers and mentioned on the BitcoinTalk forums. This defect, known as "transaction malleability" makes it possible for a third party to alter the hash of any freshly issued transaction without invalidating the signature, hence resulting in a similar transaction under a different hash. Of course only one of the two transactions can be validated. However, if the party who altered the transaction is fast enough, for example with a direct connection to different mining pools, or has even a small amount of mining power, it can easily cause the transaction hash alteration to be committed to the blockchain.

The bitcoin api "sendtoaddress" broadly used to send bitcoins to a given bitcoin address will return a transaction hash as a way to track the transaction's insertion in the blockchain.
Most wallet and exchange services will keep a record of this said hash in order to be able to respond to users should they inquire about their transaction. It is likely that these services will assume the transaction was not sent if it doesn't appear in the blockchain with the original hash and have currently no means to recognize the alternative transactions as theirs in an efficient way.

This means that an individual could request bitcoins from an exchange or wallet service, alter the resulting transaction's hash before inclusion in the blockchain, then contact the issuing service while claiming the transaction did not proceed. If the alteration fails, the user can simply send the bitcoins back and try again until successful.

We believe this can be addressed by using a different hash for transaction tracking purposes. While the network will continue to use the current hash for the purpose of inclusion in each block's Merkle Tree, the new hash's purpose will be to track a given transaction and can be computed and indexed by hashing the exact signed string via SHA256 (in the same way transactions are currently hashed).

This new transaction hash will allow signing parties to keep track of any transaction they have signed and can easily be computed, even for past transactions.

We have discussed this solution with the Bitcoin core developers and will allow Bitcoin withdrawals again once it has been approved and standardized.

In the meantime, exchanges and wallet services - and any service sending coins directly to third parties - should be extremely careful with anyone claiming their transaction did not go through.

Note that this will also affect any other crypto-currency using the same transaction scheme as Bitcoin.


Conclusion
To put things in perspective, it's important to remember that Bitcoin is a very new technology and still very much in its early stages. What MtGox and the Bitcoin community have experienced in the past year has been an incredible and exciting challenge, and there is still much to do to further improve.

MtGox will resume bitcoin withdrawals to outside wallets once the issue outlined above has been properly addressed in a manner that will best serve our customers.

More information on the status of this issue will be released as soon as possible.

We thank you for taking the time to read this, and especially for your patience.

Best Regards,
MtGox Team

For me it is quite clear that until Feb 20th at least, MtGox were under the impression that everything is fine because they didn't have any problem to write specific and detailed announcements.
Just read the 17 Feb announcement, how they describe the steps to initiate the new withdrawal system. I truly don't believe that they can write this kind of message when they are in such a bad situation, because when they are in trouble they close their site erase their twitter and you don't here from them more than 2 sentences at a time with absolutely no information in them.
So I conclude that the problem of 750K BTC  missing is only 1 week old.
No matter how stupid you are when you know someone stole from you, first thing you do (after disabling the withdrawls) is check the damage and I'm sure that is exactly what they have done when they discovered transaction malleability thefts.
After you finished checking your balance and assessing the damage, assuming the loss is not that big, you try to fix your withdraw system.
You DO NOT write specific steps of how you are going to technically resume the withdrawals when you are looking for 750K BTC missing - It just doesn't fit.

The only reasonable explanation is that on Feb 20th or later they discovered that they can not reach their BTC and then they probably wrote the famous draft of what to do if the coins are lost forever. It also fits the "temporary unavailable" argument.  
 

 

[idee2013]

one thing i do not unterstand. I read at many sources that there are only 2000 BTC left.
But i have tracked the path of one deposit adress of gox in which i have deposited btc in dezember 2013. And the path is ending for example in this adress
https://blockchain.info/de/address/1FfdcppWbJ7FeQFznsjdLYNXdwMdoiTGSA
And there are over 10k btc...and this is only one adress.

This implies MtGOX has 10K btc and still lost 700K ?

no,

i said, if i know it right, gox had many cold storages...and this could be only one of those.... i think that the amount of only 2000 left btc is not true

Maybe you tracked the path wrong (i.e. one of those transfers in the path is a withdrawal)?

ehm...who is sending manually 100BTC or 200BTC packages ?...

[T.Stuart]

The only reasonable explanation is that on Feb 20th or later they discovered that they can not reach their BTC and then they probably wrote the famous draft of what to do if the coins are lost forever. It also fits the "temporary unenviable" argument.  

You don't need a statement from Mark on this point.

I can tell you with 100% assurance that the situation is now officially unenviable! 

Sorry, facile I know...

[zhangweiwu]

For me it is quite clear that until Feb 20th at least, MtGox were under the impression that everything is fine because they didn't have any problem to write specific and detailed announcements.

I think it is wishful thinking. It's pretty clear whatever MtGox released is not to be trusted, so my reading of their detailed announcement of work procedure means they are negociating with takers and he wishes to buy more time for someone to buy MtGox.

[justanickname]

For me it is quite clear that until Feb 20th at least, MtGox were under the impression that everything is fine because they didn't have any problem to write specific and detailed announcements.

I think it is wishful thinking. It's pretty clear whatever MtGox released is not to be trusted, so my reading of their detailed announcement of work procedure means they are negociating with takers and he wishes to buy more time for someone to buy MtGox.

If you are right,

Why not have another detailed announcement about the situation or about some surprising new difficulties
that have occurred and that it will take a few days more?

Why not continue announcing twice a week for a few more months and continue arbitrage behind the scenes?

Why did they close the site and deleted tweets all of a sudden?

Something must have happened (or something was discovered) that made them panic and change their behavior.

[zhangweiwu]

If you are right,

Why not have another detailed announcement about the situation or about some surprising new difficulties
that have occurred and that it will take a few days more?

Why not continue announcing twice a week for a few more months and continue arbitrage behind the scenes?
Why did they close the site and deleted tweets all of a sudden?

Something must have happened (or something was discovered) that made them panic and change their behavior.

Something happend on 20th to 22th. When I said they wanted to buy time, I only meant before that event. I meant that "They had wanted to buy time".

Imagine this:

1. Negociation planned for 20th, need to buy some time until then.
2. by 20th, negociation broken or postpone, need to come up with a new strategy.
3. by 22th, bidder turned down the offer, this is a dead-end. Let me think some strategy.
4. Document leaked, no use to further list difficulties.

In other words, it only make sense to buy time before 20th or 22th, that's why they don't keep listing difficulties.

And by the way, they cannot do arbitrage, keeping MtGox forever low to arbitrage all the missing asset is impossible, if the leaked document is true. You can do insider deal on the book and buy up GoxCoins from panic sellers, but you need real coins to do arbitrage on other platforms, and 2000 is not sufficient.  I do not know why MtGox lists "arbitrage" in the plan, if the asset table is true, there were no more than 2000 coins of arbitrage they can do one hand with, and they don't have more coins to do another hand.

[Swordsoffreedom]

I question the authenticity of the document and even if it was real they have more bitcoins than they put on
Even if just from trading fees over the years
Plus what idiot would put all of the assets into a hot wallet or into one single address and not  have multiple cold storage addresses considering the size of the company itself.

So BS

[btc4ever]

We may be focusing our wrath on the wrong entity.  If US Gov has put MK under a gag order and also court order not to use those funds due to silk road activity, that could explain a lot.  And if this turns out to be the case it means that the guv is the root cause of all this, and those with funds in Mt Gox should be absolutely outraged.

[bassclef]

We may be focusing our wrath on the wrong entity.  If US Gov has put MK under a gag order and also court order not to use those funds due to silk road activity, that could explain a lot.  And if this turns out to be the case it means that the guv is the root cause of all this, and those with funds in Mt Gox should be absolutely outraged.

Exactly. Mark already experienced the power of the US Govt when they simply swept away his Mutum Sigillum Dwolla account to the tune of $5 million. Ouch. If they told him to shut up and play ball pending some Silk Road/money laundering investigation, you'd better bet he's listening to them, not anything that's happening on here, twitter or reddit.

[anu]

We may be focusing our wrath on the wrong entity.

This!

As someone said, MK's cat knows more than we do. For all we know, MK may be working to save our funds from the claws of the coldest of all cold monsters while we constantly kick his groins.

I know, chance seems small, but that is the one we should focus on. If we catch the monster red clawed with this, it'd be a scandal bigger than the Snowden revelations. It may be enough to push back the creeping totalitarianism in the West.

[DPoS]

Exactly. Mark already experienced the power of the US Govt when they simply swept away his Mutum Sigillum Dwolla account to the tune of $5 million. Ouch. If they told him to shut up and play ball pending some Silk Road/money laundering investigation, you'd better bet he's listening to them, not anything that's happening on here, twitter or reddit.

that leaked crisis report (created by that firm's junior whatever..) does seem very much like a crafted planted fed doc... one of those things that someone who isn't really in tune with a subject would read and convince themselves that it makes sense...