Finally, GOX dead... Best thing that could happen to Bitcoin...

[ehoffman]

... Well, not so to those who have lost their coins on the exchange, but if you look at Bitcoin as a whole, 50% of the time that BTC went down was due to Gox, and the other exchanges followed afterward.  We have come to rely on Gox for so long now.  Even though it's been shadowed when Bitpay started using an average of several exchanges instead of taking Gox price as the golden exchange rate, and with the Chinese taking over the (BTC) world, I'm sure everyone who followed BTC price had a Gox window open on their desktop.

Now it's over (let face it, even if it does re-open, it's as dead as 50btc.com, which suffered (presumably) the same problem).  So, people will get out and finally look past Gox.  We are free!

Whatever the price does from now on, be it if it goes up, or crash down, won't be because Gox ripple up or ankle the price down.

Just trying to see a bright side in those dark days... 

[Dafar]

So Chine being dead will be the next best thing to happen to bitcoin?



Btw- MtGox bought gox.com domain... I'm pretty sure they are not gone yet. They may come back with a new domain and have everything go back to normal.

Why do people assume they have ran off with everyone's bitcoins? Can they really get away with something like this?

[humanitee]

So Chine being dead will be the next best thing to happen to bitcoin?



Btw- MtGox bought gox.com domain... I'm pretty sure they are not gone yet. They may come back with a new domain and have everything go back to normal.

Why do people assume they have ran off with everyone's bitcoins? Can they really get away with something like this?

2 things wrong here:
1) Implying Mark can run.
2) It's speculated that they LOST the coins.

[dmpotter]

I don't think they ran off with coins.

Okay, maybe a few.. They have been trading virtual representations of virtual currency for a while.

[Ibian]

Why do people assume they have ran off with everyone's bitcoins?

Because everything indicates that they did.

Can they really get away with something like this?

Probably. Keeping trades going while nobody can get their privately owned funds out should already have resulted in criminal charges.

[Dafar]

So Chine being dead will be the next best thing to happen to bitcoin?



Btw- MtGox bought gox.com domain... I'm pretty sure they are not gone yet. They may come back with a new domain and have everything go back to normal.

Why do people assume they have ran off with everyone's bitcoins? Can they really get away with something like this?

2 things wrong here:
1) Implying Mark can run.
2) It's speculated that they LOST the coins.

Lol.. you're a funny guy.

Ok, so them claiming some BS that they lost the coins would make more sense. But I don't understand how they can say that when there's a public ledger that keeps records of all transactions of every coin out there.

Why do people assume they have ran off with everyone's bitcoins?

Because everything indicates that they did.

Can they really get away with something like this?

Probably. Keeping trades going while nobody can get their privately owned funds out should already have resulted in criminal charges.

I still don't understand how such a well known public figure like Mark K. won't face any prosecution if they really did run off with the coins... just because we are dealing with crypto currency and not "actual money" basic laws don't apply? That's BS

[Ibian]

Ok, so them claiming some BS that they lost the coins would make more sense. But I don't understand how they can say that when there's a public ledger that keeps records of all transactions of every coin out there.

They have said no such thing. They have said nothing at all.

[Ibian]

I still don't understand how such a well known public figure like Mark K. won't face any prosecution if they really did run off with the coins... just because we are dealing with crypto currency and not "actual money" basic laws don't apply? That's BS

We don't know what happened. All we can see are the results. For all we know governments and bankers could be in on this.

[anu]

I still don't understand how such a well known public figure like Mark K. won't face any prosecution if they really did run off with the coins... just because we are dealing with crypto currency and not "actual money" basic laws don't apply? That's BS

IANAL and I am not familiar with Japanese law, but it seems exceedingly unlikely that no laws apply. Delaying filing of insolvency almost certainly applies (assuming that he did). Anything MtGox said after they went insolvent may constitute a crime, provided they are insolvent.

I find it unlikely that the Japanese bureaucracy tries to stay out, quite the opposite. The state is usually eager to meddle. In fact it would be a very interesting precedent if the state of Japan declares that Bitcoin is none of it's business.

[Dafar]

I still don't understand how such a well known public figure like Mark K. won't face any prosecution if they really did run off with the coins... just because we are dealing with crypto currency and not "actual money" basic laws don't apply? That's BS

We don't know what happened. All we can see are the results. For all we know governments and bankers could be in on this.

I would not be surprised if govs/banksters are involved in this crisis, even if they are not they will definitely point to this incident as an example of how bitcoin is flawed and banks are there to protect people. And people will buy it. We're still too early for bitcoin to really take off

[ehoffman]

Why do people assume they have ran off with everyone's bitcoins? Can they really get away with something like this?

I didn't imply that they left with the coins...  I do believe rather that they did get eaten slowly and surely with transaction malleability.  It's a shame that they didn't had two level of balance verification.  They just assumed that their algorithm worked.  Some transactions happened to not make it through and being "rejected".  Gox assumed that it was just because the transactions got lost, due for example to too little transaction fees, and just re-issued it.

You take all gox transactions, and discard the "failed" ones, and what you were left did balance.  But no check was done in the other way, checking if the sum of users balances did match Gox sum of BTC balances (hot + cold wallets).  So, those "failed" transactions really did pass...  just with different transaction ID, but still eating from Gox wallet.

What will happen now is that even if Gox come back, they will probably have lost the public trust.

[MisterLG]

On their webpage:


Dear MtGox Customers,

In light of recent news reports and the potential repercussions on MtGox's operations and the market, a decision was taken to close all transactions for the time being in order to protect the site and our users. We will be closely monitoring the situation and will react accordingly.

Best regards,
MtGox Team