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

[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...