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March 01, 2014, 02:45:34 PM |
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Well, I would assume this is complicated
I am not a lawyer..
Let's assume a big investor purchased bitcoin for 100K USD at MTGox.
He bought at 100 a long time ago, and kept coins at MtGox. His transfer records showed 100K USD transferred. MtGox's bank shows 100K USD received.
Yet, he sells everything at 200 when price goes down right before MtGox shuts down. He now has 200K USD in GoxUSD.
GoxUSD exists merely as entries in MtGox's database. This database can be easily deleted along with backups, then it can be claimed that there were no backups, and the HDD containing the live system crashed, got stolen, lost, accidentally deleted, keys to encrypted volumes lost or whatever excuse MtGox comes up with. Then there will be no record of that 100K USD gain, and it would be very hard to prove that you have more than 100K USD with MtGox. Maybe you didn't buy bitcoins, maybe you just stored the money there, where would the evidence be? If you bought bitcoins at MtGox, this would still only be an entry in their database, there would be no evidence on the block chain, unless you transferred bitcoins outside mtGox.
You could've had screenshots. But these could be doctored. What would be the difference between someone depositing 100K USD and claiming to have 200K USD on MtGox, vs. someone depositing 5K BTC very early on, and then claiming to have 100K USD today? Well, if you look isolated at the price increase, this might just be true, but it's a bigger chance that this person just traded, and maybe have 15K MtGox USD and not 100K MtGox USD today.
Since probably MtGox does not have a license to make MtGox USD, the only hard evidence you have is the amount transferred to MtGox.
There will likely be some false claims asking for more money than people actually have on MtGox. If MtGox records is not presented in court, it's quite likely that all numbers claimed to exist in the MtGox database will be declared irrelevant, and your only chance is to get back your initial investment with a haircut, which of course would be better than nothing.
Again I am not a lawyer, but it seems to me this is a distinct possibility. If something cannot be proved without reasonable doubt, I think it will be tossed out.
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