A cracker owning 850,000btc. How bad is that?

[Yogafan00000]

I know this has been said elsewhere, but I believe the only theory that makes sense is that mtGox was running a fractional reserve system since the original loss of 500,000 coins in June 2011 due to hacking and the unintentional ponzi was exposed by the November 2013 run up to $1,200USD.

Losses in 2011 were valued merely at $10,000,000USD, now they are billions.

[1715059519]

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[1715059519]

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[1715059519]

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[derpinheimer]

Not billions, hundreds of millions.

Everything Mark has said would say no to that theory, but I agree it seems most plausible and is really unfortunate.

[Peter R]

Everything Mark has said would say no to that theory, but I agree it seems most plausible and is really unfortunate.

If Mark was knowingly running a fractional reserve since 2011, then I think this is clear-cut fraud with jail time involved.  If Mark was not aware of the theft, then it is just incompetence/negligence.  He would have an incentive to inject as much confusion as possible. 

It never made sense to me how the price could fall so much in 2011.  But if the thieves were slowly selling off 500,000 - 1,000,000 BTC, then that would have added a lot of downwards price pressure. 

[btbrae]

Agree with OP, this is a horrible outcome.

It was most likely one person than was taking advantage of the exploit. One person can now bring Bitcoin to it's knees. It's the absolute antithesis to Bitcoin's concept of decentralization.

If you ever played in the altcoin forum, you will see the hysteria when somebody launches a coin with even a 1% premine.

This guy has 6%. There is a real danger to holding Bitcoin as an investment right now, the reward no longer outweighs the risk.

[GeniuSxBoY]

You do realize that if he cashes out, the coins get less expensive right? People will be able to buy them for pennies on the dollar.

If he cashes out, then he will have a shitton of fiat. This will give him away if he ever tries to trade this sum into fiat because the banks don't have that amount of cash lying around.
When his taxes come and the banks report his income, he's sure to get audited.

Especially when bitcoin crashes in a fireworks explosion.


If he cashes out slowly, it will be too slow to worry about anything dramatic happening with the price. He could have the unique ability to keep the price stable for months, attracting more buyers.

[derpinheimer]

You do realize that if he cashes out, the coins get less expensive right? People will be able to buy them for pennies on the dollar.

If he cashes out, then he will have a shitton of fiat. This will give him away if he ever tries to trade this sum into fiat because the banks don't have that amount of cash lying around.
When his taxes come and the banks report his income, he's sure to get audited.

Especially when bitcoin crashes in a fireworks explosion.


If he cashes out slowly, it will be too slow to worry about anything dramatic happening with the price. He could have the unique ability to keep the price stable for months, attracting more buyers.

Oh please, these is NO good side to this. Just slightly less awful. Slightly.

[scribe]

If 850k coins truly were stolen, shouldn't we be able to see that in the blockchain? Especially if this happened recently. I call bullshit on this one until I see some proof such a big number of coins were actually stolen.

There's been 2 huge coin movements recently. See this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=381045.msg4994241#msg4994241

[Miz4r]

Agree with OP, this is a horrible outcome.

It was most likely one person than was taking advantage of the exploit. One person can now bring Bitcoin to it's knees. It's the absolute antithesis to Bitcoin's concept of decentralization.

You seriously think only one person in the whole world found out about the exploit? Forget it, if there is one there are tons more who found out. Many probably didn't even know about the exploit but were all too happy to see that their bitcoin withdrawal went through twice. Anyway I don't buy this whole 850k theft story anyway, it's probably just a cover up for something else.

[nitehawk]

cracker?

[TERA]

How many different people stole the coins?

When were they stolen?

there's been a known exploit in youtube for years

they might already be dumped

[exponential]

The most concerning thing to me is whether the coins are held by one person or many.  Also, WHEN they were stolen.  If someone with a malicious intent wants to dump them all then we know what is going to happen.  I wish MagicalTux would release some more info.

[Ibian]

Guys? Fatboy is still a fraudster. Don't believe anything without proof.

[pera]

The funniest thing about all this is that iff Mark still have the private keys for his stolen coins (ie the official explanation is true) since he owns a lot of btcs (at least 150k?) he could try to make a deal with the biggest mining pools / miners and hard-fork the blockchain removing the thief's transaction and making a new one to some address he owns. It would require a lot of mining power and consensus in the community, but it's possible

(interesting poll results!)

[DanielVG]

Who the fuck ur calling a cracker you racist fuck. Just because ur black or brown gives u no fucking right.

Bitcoin belongs to white people

By 'cracker', the OP only means a 'hacker'. And English is not his primary language, so let's be sensible here.
On the other note, it would be good for OP to edit the title of the thread to replace 'cracker' with 'hacker'

thank you,
wanted to post that the sec i saw the title, but what responses to this typo in this thread....intelligence level around here hasn't been rising lately..seriously, what the f

[GeniuSxBoY]

Hack0r, Crack0r, Phreak0r

[Peter R]

I've been thinking more about MtGox and the missing coins today.  I described a theory earlier that the only theft of coins occurred in 2011.  Since then, MtGox has been running a slowly-dwindling fractional reserve:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=488058.msg5397869#msg5397869


1.  Why is Mark acting so strange about releasing details of the theft?  Why does he insist that the coins are just "temporarily unavailable"?  How much of an impact did malleability play?

Answer: if he admits that the theft took place in 2011 and that he knew, then he is guilty of fraud and will very likely spend time in jail.  If it's plausible that he wasn't aware of the theft until now, then he is only guilty of incompetence and negligence, and will likely not end up in jail.  

I think the malleability thefts were a feature and not a bug.  He wanted people to steal coins in this way, to obfuscate the large theft from 2011.  And he also wants people to think that he thinks he made a mistake somewhere and certain "cold-storage" keys are still on his server.  He knows the coins have been gone for a long time, but he wants to create enough doubt in everyone's mind that he won't be found guilty of a fraud that wiped out half a billion dollars.


2.  What kind of person could lose 500,000 - 1,000,000 bitcoins?  How could the "cold wallet leak"?

Answer:  People are amazed that 750,000 BTC could be stollen.  However, if we assume the theft happened in the summer of 2011, then this is actually very believable and perhaps Mark was more "unlucky" than negligent or incompetent.  Remember, in April of 2011, bicoin was trading at about $1, and in October 2010 at $0.10.  So, 750,000 BTC would have only had a value of about $75,000 when Mark wrote the original code.  

At $75,000, I can see a lot of people saying "oh, just leave the keys on the server."  Then suddenly the price starts to rally hard and months later the price is $30 per BTC and those coins are worth $22.5 million.  Mark is working frantically to code a more secure system because he doesn't want to lose $22.5 million!  But his business grew too fast and he couldn't get it all done.  

And then "bam!"  As he's working to implement better bitcoin security in the summer of 2011 to protect what are now millions of dollars of coins, the theft occurs.  A few years later and the 750,000 BTC that he stored on his server at $0.10 a pop are suddenly worth $400,000,000!

And that's how you go broke with a bang ladies and gentlemen!

[spiderbrain]

And that's how you go broke with a bang ladies and gentlemen!

Most believable story I've read so far.

[Le Happy Merchant]

now one person with no moral values could destroy the economy at any moment.

That's assuming a lot.

For instance, I don't have morals applying to the harm of animals, but when people hurt plants I tell them to stop.

Maybe this person just has no morals applying to the money in exchanges, but would see a moral problem with tanking an economy.

[derpinheimer]

now one person with no moral values could destroy the economy at any moment.

I don't have morals applying to the harm of animals, but when people hurt plants I tell them to stop.

what.

[pera]

now one person with no moral values could destroy the economy at any moment.

That's assuming a lot.

For instance, I don't have morals applying to the harm of animals, but when people hurt plants I tell them to stop.

Maybe this person just has no morals applying to the money in exchanges, but would see a moral problem with tanking an economy.

I disagree, assuming that the thief is looking for more money is not "assuming a lot": he could mix those coins, sell a fraction just to be a new fiat millionaire, do shorts then drop, talk with some evil banks that wants to destroy bitcoin, etc.

If MtGox was actually robbed as they claim then now we have one single actor that have the power to destroy the economy anytime.