Poll: Who should acquire & bailout MtGox?

[Lauda]

Why would anyone buy MtGox?
This would be a mistake for the buyer.

[gollum]

Why would anyone buy MtGox?
This would be a mistake for the buyer.

The buyer would probably pay a symbolic price of 1 dollar to Mark Karpeles, and promises to settle all client funds with cash.
The true cost for the buyer would land on 100-500 million dollars as we don't know exactly how much money and bitcoin they miss.

What do the buyer gain when buying MtGox? They get 1 million clients, most of them are verified.

As I mentioned Facebook paid 19 billion dollars for WhatsApp, so 500 millions for the no.1 bitcoin exchange is peanuts.

[Laosai]

Free the bitcoin !! Fiat!!

[Armis]

I had a hard time deciding on none or who I felt would be a good target to stick with the burned brand next.


the best thing is for it to be a community owned endeavor with 100% transparency, and block chain accountability and secuirty, meaning that every satoshi is accounted for every second of the way.  the name would have to be changed, to protect the innocent, of course

[Armis]

Why would anyone buy MtGox?
This would be a mistake for the buyer.

The buyer would probably pay a symbolic price of 1 dollar to Mark Karpeles, and promises to settle all client funds with cash.
The true cost for the buyer would land on 100-500 million dollars as we don't know exactly how much money and bitcoin they miss.

What do the buyer gain when buying MtGox? They get 1 million clients, most of them are verified.

As I mentioned Facebook paid 19 billion dollars for WhatsApp, so 500 millions for the no.1 bitcoin exchange is peanuts.

they were once #1, but were #3 when they dropped out of the race, don't forget most of the numbers were fudged anyway so they were probably not #3 either.



as for what Facebook they have lots of cash but not so much income, they have to spend the cash to generate income, preferable on things that fit with their business model.  I can't see an exchange fitting in, although I can see they using btc.   nevertheless, how they choose to value something should not be how you choose to value it.   

[gollum]

Why would anyone buy MtGox?
This would be a mistake for the buyer.

The buyer would probably pay a symbolic price of 1 dollar to Mark Karpeles, and promises to settle all client funds with cash.
The true cost for the buyer would land on 100-500 million dollars as we don't know exactly how much money and bitcoin they miss.

What do the buyer gain when buying MtGox? They get 1 million clients, most of them are verified.

As I mentioned Facebook paid 19 billion dollars for WhatsApp, so 500 millions for the no.1 bitcoin exchange is peanuts.

they were once #1, but were #3 when they dropped out of the race, don't forget most of the numbers were fudged anyway so they were probably not #3 either.



as for what Facebook they have lots of cash but not so much income, they have to spend the cash to generate income, preferable on things that fit with their business model.  I can't see an exchange fitting in, although I can see they using btc.   nevertheless, how they choose to value something should not be how you choose to value it.   

Yes Facebook is probably not interested in the bitcoin exchange business, but maybe Google or Nasdaq OMX is?

[Dissonance]

In the a terrible moment of the online poker world, known as Black Friday in April of 2011, the US government shut down Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars and demanded all US players to be given back their money. It turns out PokerStars was legit and sent hundreds of millions of dollars dutifully back to US citizens. Full Tilt, on the other hand, had no legitimate banks to do business with for the last few years and had lost hundreds of millions of dollars either through crooked payment processors of government seized funds.

In the end, Pokerstars agreed to pay half a billion dollars in fines for ignoring a sneaky bank law and they got the rights to Full Tilt Poker. The US government, after years since its massive poker raid, is just now paying out around $180 million to US customers that never got paid from FTP. But the government wouldn't have struck that deal unless Pokerstars ponied up half a billion...

Looking at it now, I would say that poker players DO want regulation. So many people got screwed unfairly that I don't think you can compare the Full Tilt bailout to the 2008 bailouts. When Pokerstars agreed to step in and buy FTP, everyone thought it was a godsend. Nobody in the poker business wants an unregulated system now because there have been NUMEROUS other small fry Full Tilts who packed up and left with everyone's money.

Does this apply directly to cryptocurrency? Just as the 2008 bailouts dont truly apply to the FTP scandal, I don't think it applies to this either. Instead of regulation of currencies, the community can demand transparency. Regulation of these currencies sounds next to impossible so the headache that would generate would be immense.

I don't know if it would be better or worse for someone to bail out Gox. Like Full Tilt, thousands of honest people got completely screwed. We are realizing now the importance of KNOWING our money is safe, and hopefully it doesn't come to government regulation to make that happen.

Irony of this statement is that the fist wave of balances of FT are scheduled to be paid tomorrow.  Hope it doesn't take that long for Gox people if there is a bailout

[James-Cryptonomics]

You forgot to mention the FBI - they already have 1/5 of the BTC liability covered .

[keithers]

Pokerstars...if they can hire the right people to actually manage and run the operations.   They definitely have enough money to pay back what users have lost, and have a great reputation around the internet involving millions of dollars.

[BTCWizard]

Why would anyone buy MtGox?
This would be a mistake for the buyer.

The buyer would probably pay a symbolic price of 1 dollar to Mark Karpeles, and promises to settle all client funds with cash.
The true cost for the buyer would land on 100-500 million dollars as we don't know exactly how much money and bitcoin they miss.

What do the buyer gain when buying MtGox? They get 1 million clients, most of them are verified.

As I mentioned Facebook paid 19 billion dollars for WhatsApp, so 500 millions for the no.1 bitcoin exchange is peanuts.

And most WA users now use Telegram, everyone I had in my WA list is now on Telegram.
In the case of Mt Gox, much more customers will leave, you wouldn't end up with 1 million active clients.

[StarfishPrime]

How about Ripple (and Mt.Gox) founder Jed McCaleb?

He still apparently owns 12% of Mt.Gox - it should be interesting to see how he becomes involved in this.
He seems to have had zero oversight over their operations after he sold (most of) it ...

[repentance]

Why would anyone buy MtGox?
This would be a mistake for the buyer.

The buyer would probably pay a symbolic price of 1 dollar to Mark Karpeles, and promises to settle all client funds with cash.
The true cost for the buyer would land on 100-500 million dollars as we don't know exactly how much money and bitcoin they miss.

What do the buyer gain when buying MtGox? They get 1 million clients, most of them are verified.

As I mentioned Facebook paid 19 billion dollars for WhatsApp, so 500 millions for the no.1 bitcoin exchange is peanuts.

Approximately half of the people on MtGox database are verified.  Just paying out customer balances would work out to a ridiculous amount per customer for simply acquiring the database.  Buying the database wouldn't solve any of the other issues which limit the potential for operating tGox as a viable business, such as the regulatory issues or creating new infrastructure - you'd be looking at significant additional costs for addressing those issues.

Realistically, you could likely start a new exchange from scratch for what it would cost to acquire the MtGox customer database.

[Spekulatius]

@ OP: You should have let the vote run for longer! I would suggest one or a group of competitors like Bitstamp, Bitcoin.de, Kraken etc. bail the customers out and either share the assets and dissolve Gox or restart the company as a mutually run venture, sharing profits.

[Spekulatius]

Other big Bitcoin companies/investment funds may actually also interested in the pie, like Lightspeed Ventures, Bitpay or BIPS, Blockchain.info, etc..
And hey! What about Mt.Gox- and Ripple founder Jed McCaleb and his www.secretbitcoinproject.com

[CoinCidental]

i think everyone is just dreaming here

if any of the aforementioned parties were going to open an exchange ,theyde just open one and start at 0.00

taking on a few hundred millions of debt wouldnt be a feasible plan for anyone

loooks like lost is lost for whatever money people left at gox

[StarfishPrime]

The soft assets alone (customer base of 1m+ verified customers) are easily worth 100's of millions. Someone will almost certainly buy the assets from the trustee. The only question is how much, if any, reimbursement of customer losses will be. Estimates seem to indicate cash/btc assets of about 18% of liabilities. That's not counting any lawyer fees, and they're already lining up over this one.  

Don't underestimate how tough it is to destroy a brand. We're still buying gas at Exxon and BP...

[franky1]

why would anyone pay $420mill (744k coin at ~ $570) for a website that has lost customer confidence, that does noy have banking licences in each country.

unless the person was japanese and dumb.. then and only then would they bailout mtgox.

its far easier and cheaper to just set up a new exchange and pay all the licences for the main countries of the world. to then be fully legit and more trusting to never freeze accounts due to the owners having bank account taken away. (and the other excuses gox used over the years).

and as for the previous poster saying soft assets are worth it alone..

mtgox has no soft assets. they lost peoples trust which has devalued the potential customer base a new investor would gain. and also the majority of customers are purely pseudonyms. without names and postal addresses to then sell onto spam/junkmail advertising services.

just looking at the trade volume, there is not 1mill active customers. so the soft assets are no where near the value you mention

[marcotheminer]

Assume that all buyers would settle 100% of clients' funds and start MtGox again, who do you trust to run MtGox?

No one will bail them out!! No point

[1krona]

I've lost 5000$ and as it seems the Cryptocommunity is just full of greedy selfish geeks(I'm probably one of them)..

Fuck cryptocurrencies, fuck "revolutions".. Actually fuck all kind of money! Viva El Che!

Some fuckers are Lucky others isn't.. And the one that are lucky often think that they're smarter or better in any way, that's what fucking disgusts me.

[RoooooR]

Max Keiser? You kidding?