200k btc,big move,2014-03-07

[T.Stuart]

Next step, laundering the coins so that they remain untraceable?

Mark will have to justify these movements, of course the 850k BTC heist was a lie but now what is he doing? Preparing to give back our coins or find a way to rob them without being spotted?

I don't want to raise hope, I really don't, but why would he use the same splitting system that has been seen in action before, the code for which was leaked recently - ie the Gox hot wallet system - if he was trying to do it without being spotted? Wouldn't you write some different code for the splitter, something that doesn't have Gox's signature all over it?

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[renfr]

Next step, laundering the coins so that they remain untraceable?

Mark will have to justify these movements, of course the 850k BTC heist was a lie but now what is he doing? Preparing to give back our coins or find a way to rob them without being spotted?

I don't want to raise hope, I really don't, but why would he use the same splitting system that has been seen in action before, the code for which was leaked recently - ie the Gox hot wallet system - if he was trying to do it without being spotted? Wouldn't you write some different code for the splitter, something that doesn't have Gox's signature all over it?

Yes that's true. Personally I don't think that Mark or anyone is planning to rob the coins, it just doesn't fit with all the information we've had so far.

I'm just saying that if it's a thief then he will probably use a bitcoin pool to launder the coins but it's probably was gmaxwell said on IRC, that Mark is preparing the hot wallets.

Wait and see.

[McKinley]

What would make sense now are only two scenarios:

1) MTGOX had encrypted the keys and couldn't decrypt them any more - now checked all possible decryption scenarios until one worked. Now - to avoid having an "all in" scenario again - they decided to split them and handle each wallet with a different security.

2) The Bitcoin transaction in 2011 was a transaction by someone close to MTGox did them a favor to proclaim liquidity. When he now found out that his wallet is under suspicion, it gave him the creeps and he moved them to several others.

3) The "thief" theory is - reasons already mentioned above - off the table.

well yeah, and the big time fraud theory by someone from MTGox, believing authorities will be unable to ever catch him - i hope at least not.

[shunt1]

If MtGox was unable to obtain their private keys, then this is great news.

Perhaps the coins in "cold storage" are now available and are being distributed to multiple wallets, to minimize the vulnerability of future theft or loss.  Remember the statement: "technically they are not lost, but not available at this time."

This is exactly the type of activity that I would anticipate, prior to their going live once again.  If so, then there is a possibility of limited withdraws soon.

Who knows what the future holds, but I have remained optimistic that MtGox will eventually recover.

[renfr]

What would make sense now are only two scenarios:

1) MTGOX had encrypted the keys and couldn't decrypt them any more - now checked all possible decryption scenarios until one worked. Now - to avoid having an "all in" scenario again - they decided to split them and handle each wallet with a different security.

2) The Bitcoin transaction in 2011 was a transaction by someone close to MTGox did them a favor to proclaim liquidity. When he now found out that his wallet is under suspicion, it gave him the creeps and he moved them to several others.

3) The "thief" theory is - reasons already mentioned above - off the table.

well yeah, and the big time fraud theory by someone from MTGox, believing authorities will be unable to ever catch him - i hope at least not.

2) doesn't work because transactions are being splitted in accordance with Mt. Gox's own code.

Another theory is that the feds allowed Mark to withdraw a part of his bitcoins, remmeber that so far this is the theory that makes most sense.

[renfr]

If MtGox was unable to obtain their private keys, then this is great news.

Perhaps the coins in "cold storage" are now available and are being distributed to multiple wallets, to minimize the vulnerability of future theft or loss.  Remember the statement: "technically they are not lost, but not available at this time."

This is exactly the type of activity that I would anticipate, prior to their going live once again.  If so, then there is a possibility of limited withdraws soon.

Who knows what the future holds, but I have remained optimistic that MtGox will eventually recover.

It is very likely that bitcoins will be able to be withdrawn soon, however as to fiat it will take much more time (several months) because of bankrupcy protection procedures.
But since bitcoin isn't regulated and wasn't included in the losses then it can escape the wait for the decision of japanese courts.
To me it the scenario looks like to become almost that of BTC-24.

[dontek]

Another theory is that the feds allowed Mark to withdraw a part of his bitcoins, remmeber that so far this is the theory that makes most sense.

Maybe. However when they made their statement, they claimed that the DHS seizure was ~$5mil worth of assets. These are over $150million and these wallets weren't "counted" when they released their assets/liability claims.

[shunt1]

I have very little trust in the "leaked documents" and rely upon what has actually been traced in the blockchain.  Of the multiple theories expressed, I still believe that incompetence from poor management is closer to reality, than any actual theft.

Personally, I think that MtGox lost their database of private keys and is working hard to recover them.  If so, then this recent activity may be a good indication that they have recovered some of those private keys.

I may be a fool, but as a Software Engineer, this is the scenario that I have the most confidence with.

If I was able to recover a wallet with 100K BTC, what would I do to prevent this from happening again?  I would split those bitcoins into multiple wallets of 10 or 5 BTC, to insure that this would never happen to me again.

I have done the exact same thing with my personal bitcoin and keep them in paper wallets of 5 BTC groups.

[itsunderstood]

Hmm,

500k in BTC form = weightless (run forever)
500k in bank notes = has weight, still can maybe run with it (not far)
500k in gold = hard to run with

[shunt1]

With thousands of very upset MtGox customers tracing every movement on the blockchain, how long would you last until someone recognized your wallet and called the police when you dared to exchange those bitcoin for fiat?

You can run, but you can not hide!

[itsunderstood]

With thousands of very upset MtGox customers tracing every movement on the blockchain, how long would you last until someone recognized your wallet and called the police when you dared to exchange those bitcoin for fiat?

You can run, but you can not hide!

If I hold a paper wallet, I can trade it with key for anything else.

Then it is THAT person's problem to liquidate.  But yes, this is interesting to watch.

[shunt1]

Sorry that I am a "newbie" after a year on this forum, but I have never felt a need to post something before.

This does sound like the first steps of a MtGox recovery and I wanted to express why I feel that way.  I may be a total idiot, but this big move of 200k BTC got me rather excited.

I only had about $15,000 in MtGox when it shut down, so I am only a little player.  However, if it was an actual theft, then I will spend the rest of my life tracking down the people responsible.

Once again, I still feel strongly that it was an incompetent software error and that MtGox will eventually recover and allow limited withdraws.

[itsunderstood]

[...]

I only had about $15,000 in MtGox when it shut down, so I am only a little player.  However, if it was an actual theft, then I will spend the rest of my life tracking down the people responsible.

[...]

Oh of course you will, and may you succeed!  Indeed, your 15k in BTC could go to 150k you lost, or even 1.5 mil you lost --THAT is what hurts so much.

Man these Goxxies, you have been hurt.  I mean, I never trusted Gox at all, but, it is still not fair when you are core adoptors and then you get shat upon.  Capital-ists and Commune-ists will each have their solutions no doubt.  And yet there is a third column, which exists only to steal, and which doesn't hide under the other two party brands.

Anyway as to your question, there is the other thread where a user has analyzed the movment and suggests it is being done using the Gox source code to break up large amounts.  So, since everyone now has access to the source code (a brilliant chess move imo) then it's anyone guess as to who can activate the code, and from where.

[Roy Badami]

May be the thief (thieves) moving funds...
They are dividing sums and sending them to different addresses.

They are currently transferring and dividing big sums from each new address to two new addresses.
Every step makes sums twice smaller.

And it is happening NOW !

Pft. There was no "theft". That's BS. ALL of the 5 wallets in the link above were known to last be accessed by Mt.Gox in 2011. How could they (GOX) claim that those bitcoin were "stolen" when they were still sitting in those wallets the entire time and were never touched (until this morning that is). What, someone stole the keys to those wallets? I don't believe that. A thief would have transferred and started tumbling those BTC the moment they had access to it, not sit and wait for GOX to fall, have all eyes on GOX and then 2+ years later all of a sudden wake up one morning and decide to wipe the wallets out.

No, it would appear that these are the remaining 200,000 coins that Gox has left after the theft of the 850,000 coins.  And that they are being moved from Gox cold storage to the Gox hot wallet. 

See:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zt2hc/i_made_a_network_map_of_where_the_coins_went_from/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zshct/4ee89f7cf824a85ad5f11d52604ffdebe9f01302bcea8ddec0/cfwnd2v?context=3

As to what Gox are doing with these coins, who knows?  But due to the bankruptcy proceedings it's unlikely that anything will happen quickly.  It could just be part of an audit to prove that these few coins are still accessible.

roy

[renfr]

May be the thief (thieves) moving funds...
They are dividing sums and sending them to different addresses.

They are currently transferring and dividing big sums from each new address to two new addresses.
Every step makes sums twice smaller.

And it is happening NOW !

Pft. There was no "theft". That's BS. ALL of the 5 wallets in the link above were known to last be accessed by Mt.Gox in 2011. How could they (GOX) claim that those bitcoin were "stolen" when they were still sitting in those wallets the entire time and were never touched (until this morning that is). What, someone stole the keys to those wallets? I don't believe that. A thief would have transferred and started tumbling those BTC the moment they had access to it, not sit and wait for GOX to fall, have all eyes on GOX and then 2+ years later all of a sudden wake up one morning and decide to wipe the wallets out.

No, it would appear that these are the remaining 200,000 coins that Gox has left after the theft of the 850,000 coins.  And that they are being moved from Gox cold storage to the Gox hot wallet. 

See:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zt2hc/i_made_a_network_map_of_where_the_coins_went_from/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zshct/4ee89f7cf824a85ad5f11d52604ffdebe9f01302bcea8ddec0/cfwnd2v?context=3

As to what Gox are doing with these coins, who knows?  But due to the bankruptcy proceedings it's unlikely that anything will happen quickly.  It could just be part of an audit to prove that these few coins are still accessible.

roy

If it was only an audit why split it up? When Mark moved some 400k BTC back in 2011 he didn't split it up...

[T.Stuart]

May be the thief (thieves) moving funds...
They are dividing sums and sending them to different addresses.

They are currently transferring and dividing big sums from each new address to two new addresses.
Every step makes sums twice smaller.

And it is happening NOW !

Pft. There was no "theft". That's BS. ALL of the 5 wallets in the link above were known to last be accessed by Mt.Gox in 2011. How could they (GOX) claim that those bitcoin were "stolen" when they were still sitting in those wallets the entire time and were never touched (until this morning that is). What, someone stole the keys to those wallets? I don't believe that. A thief would have transferred and started tumbling those BTC the moment they had access to it, not sit and wait for GOX to fall, have all eyes on GOX and then 2+ years later all of a sudden wake up one morning and decide to wipe the wallets out.

No, it would appear that these are the remaining 200,000 coins that Gox has left after the theft of the 850,000 coins.  And that they are being moved from Gox cold storage to the Gox hot wallet. 

See:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zt2hc/i_made_a_network_map_of_where_the_coins_went_from/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zshct/4ee89f7cf824a85ad5f11d52604ffdebe9f01302bcea8ddec0/cfwnd2v?context=3

As to what Gox are doing with these coins, who knows?  But due to the bankruptcy proceedings it's unlikely that anything will happen quickly.  It could just be part of an audit to prove that these few coins are still accessible.

roy

Where did you read that they have 200,000 coins remaining? The official line is they have nothing.

If they had exactly 200,000 coins left it would be strange for them to move everything to the hot wallet, wouldn't it?

 

[Roy Badami]

May be the thief (thieves) moving funds...
They are dividing sums and sending them to different addresses.

They are currently transferring and dividing big sums from each new address to two new addresses.
Every step makes sums twice smaller.

And it is happening NOW !

Pft. There was no "theft". That's BS. ALL of the 5 wallets in the link above were known to last be accessed by Mt.Gox in 2011. How could they (GOX) claim that those bitcoin were "stolen" when they were still sitting in those wallets the entire time and were never touched (until this morning that is). What, someone stole the keys to those wallets? I don't believe that. A thief would have transferred and started tumbling those BTC the moment they had access to it, not sit and wait for GOX to fall, have all eyes on GOX and then 2+ years later all of a sudden wake up one morning and decide to wipe the wallets out.

No, it would appear that these are the remaining 200,000 coins that Gox has left after the theft of the 850,000 coins.  And that they are being moved from Gox cold storage to the Gox hot wallet. 

See:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zt2hc/i_made_a_network_map_of_where_the_coins_went_from/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zshct/4ee89f7cf824a85ad5f11d52604ffdebe9f01302bcea8ddec0/cfwnd2v?context=3

As to what Gox are doing with these coins, who knows?  But due to the bankruptcy proceedings it's unlikely that anything will happen quickly.  It could just be part of an audit to prove that these few coins are still accessible.

roy

If it was only an audit why split it up? When Mark moved some 400k BTC back in 2011 he didn't split it up...

Because that's what the hot wallet code does.  We know this because the PHP code has been leaked.  There was some discussion as to whether this was really the Gox hot wallet, or a thief (who has read the leaked code) deliberately faking it to look like the Gox wallet.  But Greg Maxwell pretty much conclusively confirmed it using the Gox API.

See the links I posted above.

[Roy Badami]

May be the thief (thieves) moving funds...
They are dividing sums and sending them to different addresses.

They are currently transferring and dividing big sums from each new address to two new addresses.
Every step makes sums twice smaller.

And it is happening NOW !

Pft. There was no "theft". That's BS. ALL of the 5 wallets in the link above were known to last be accessed by Mt.Gox in 2011. How could they (GOX) claim that those bitcoin were "stolen" when they were still sitting in those wallets the entire time and were never touched (until this morning that is). What, someone stole the keys to those wallets? I don't believe that. A thief would have transferred and started tumbling those BTC the moment they had access to it, not sit and wait for GOX to fall, have all eyes on GOX and then 2+ years later all of a sudden wake up one morning and decide to wipe the wallets out.

No, it would appear that these are the remaining 200,000 coins that Gox has left after the theft of the 850,000 coins.  And that they are being moved from Gox cold storage to the Gox hot wallet. 

See:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zt2hc/i_made_a_network_map_of_where_the_coins_went_from/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zshct/4ee89f7cf824a85ad5f11d52604ffdebe9f01302bcea8ddec0/cfwnd2v?context=3

As to what Gox are doing with these coins, who knows?  But due to the bankruptcy proceedings it's unlikely that anything will happen quickly.  It could just be part of an audit to prove that these few coins are still accessible.

roy

Where did you read that they have 200,000 coins remaining? The official line is they have nothing.

If they had exactly 200,000 coins left it would be strange for them to move everything to the hot wallet, wouldn't it?

 

The official line, in the legal documents filing for bankruptcy, says nothing about how many coins they have left, only how many they lost.

[itsunderstood]

The official line, in the legal documents filing for bankruptcy, says nothing about how many coins they have left, only how many they lost.

Yes, and they cannot discuss the "losing" details, I would guess due to other control vectors.  Because, if you get mugged, you can give an account of it "He came up behind me!" or "He told me the money was to buy a chicken farm!"

But in this case the answer is "stolen and we can't say more than that."  Because lawyers.

[T.Stuart]

May be the thief (thieves) moving funds...
They are dividing sums and sending them to different addresses.

They are currently transferring and dividing big sums from each new address to two new addresses.
Every step makes sums twice smaller.

And it is happening NOW !

Pft. There was no "theft". That's BS. ALL of the 5 wallets in the link above were known to last be accessed by Mt.Gox in 2011. How could they (GOX) claim that those bitcoin were "stolen" when they were still sitting in those wallets the entire time and were never touched (until this morning that is). What, someone stole the keys to those wallets? I don't believe that. A thief would have transferred and started tumbling those BTC the moment they had access to it, not sit and wait for GOX to fall, have all eyes on GOX and then 2+ years later all of a sudden wake up one morning and decide to wipe the wallets out.

No, it would appear that these are the remaining 200,000 coins that Gox has left after the theft of the 850,000 coins.  And that they are being moved from Gox cold storage to the Gox hot wallet. 

See:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zt2hc/i_made_a_network_map_of_where_the_coins_went_from/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1zshct/4ee89f7cf824a85ad5f11d52604ffdebe9f01302bcea8ddec0/cfwnd2v?context=3

As to what Gox are doing with these coins, who knows?  But due to the bankruptcy proceedings it's unlikely that anything will happen quickly.  It could just be part of an audit to prove that these few coins are still accessible.

roy

Where did you read that they have 200,000 coins remaining? The official line is they have nothing.

If they had exactly 200,000 coins left it would be strange for them to move everything to the hot wallet, wouldn't it?

 

The official line, in the legal documents filing for bankruptcy, says nothing about how many coins they have left, only how many they lost.

Exactly