gox and the 20 percent payout?

[thresher]

I don't understand why the 20 percent number is being thrown around. 
I understand 200k bitcoins is 20 percent of the bitcoins they had, but what about all their equipment, bank accounts, etc. 
Is there a reason that those items are not being factored into the total amount people receive?

[Massimo80]

I don't understand why the 20 percent number is being thrown around. 
I understand 200k bitcoins is 20 percent of the bitcoins they had, but what about all their equipment, bank accounts, etc. 
Is there a reason that those items are not being factored into the total amount people receive?

First of all, keep in mind that this is only a rough estimation of currently known company assets; a real inventory has yet to begin, and there is a very good chance it will uncover something that has been hidden and/or not disclosed.

Anyway, equipment (such as servers, office furniture, etc.) accounts for very little in a financial company which only operated online; the real money was (is?) in Bitcoin wallets and bank accounts.

[thresher]

I don't understand why the 20 percent number is being thrown around. 
I understand 200k bitcoins is 20 percent of the bitcoins they had, but what about all their equipment, bank accounts, etc. 
Is there a reason that those items are not being factored into the total amount people receive?

First of all, keep in mind that this is only a rough estimation of currently known company assets; a real inventory has yet to begin, and there is a very good chance it will uncover something that has been hidden and/or not disclosed.

Anyway, equipment (such as servers, office furniture, etc.) accounts for very little in a financial company which only operated online; the real money was (is?) in Bitcoin wallets and bank accounts.

Thanks for clearing that up a bit.  I have no idea what kind of hardware they have or would need at an exchange like gox.  I just sort of assumed that they have to have some expensive equipment or property. 
Also the 200k btc, doesn't include bank account amounts, so...

[Keyser Soze]

20% is most likely a rough estimate of the current bank balances plus current value of bitcoin holdings divided by amounts owed. Hopefully there will be more concrete information available as the bankruptcy proceedings continue.

[Nagle]

Thanks for clearing that up a bit.  I have no idea what kind of hardware they have or would need at an exchange like gox.  I just sort of assumed that they have to have some expensive equipment or property. 

No, all they had was leased office space and leased server space. Mt. Gox was mostly on Amazon AWS.

However, I suspect that with Karpeles out, a bankruptcy trustee in charge, outside experts being brought in, and  the Tokyo police investigating, more money and Bitcoins will turn up.  With a list of all Mt. Gox wallets, the Mt. Gox customer list, and the Bitcoin block chain, everything on the Bitcoin side should be traceable.

[Massimo80]

Mt. Gox was mostly on Amazon AWS.

A financial trading system running on cloud servers?!?
They must have been really crazy...

[thresher]

Thanks for clearing that up a bit.  I have no idea what kind of hardware they have or would need at an exchange like gox.  I just sort of assumed that they have to have some expensive equipment or property. 

No, all they had was leased office space and leased server space. Mt. Gox was mostly on Amazon AWS.

However, I suspect that with Karpeles out, a bankruptcy trustee in charge, outside experts being brought in, and  the Tokyo police investigating, more money and Bitcoins will turn up.  With a list of all Mt. Gox wallets, the Mt. Gox customer list, and the Bitcoin block chain, everything on the Bitcoin side should be traceable.

Cool: good news.

Mt. Gox was mostly on Amazon AWS.

A financial trading system running on cloud servers?!?
They must have been really crazy...

To my knowledge Prudential runs on cloud servers 

[Massimo80]

To my knowledge Prudential runs on cloud servers

Maybe you can run some web servers there, but having your back-end systems on AWS...
The customer database, the trading engine, the accounting data, the wallets... those are definitely things no sane person would allow outside their own physical datacenter.

If they were really running everything on cloud services, that's a whole new level of crazyness.

[Nagle]

If they were really running everything on cloud services, that's a whole new level of crazyness.

Their static web pages were (and still are) hosted on Akamai. Don't know about the trading engine. Gox only averaged about 2 transactions a minute, so the trading engine didn't really do all that much work.

[Massimo80]

Their static web pages were (and still are) hosted on Akamai. Don't know about the trading engine. Gox only averaged about 2 transactions a minute, so the trading engine didn't really do all that much work.

I'm quite more concerned about security than performance. Financial data isn't something any sane person would store and process on cloud servers. But again, it's Mt.Gox we're talking about...

[bryant.coleman]

In optimal scenario this will be what the Mt Gox users getting:

Mt Gox lost a total of 650,000 customer's coins and 200,000 Gox coins. Total 850,000 coins or equivalent to $500 million at that time.

They recovered some 200k coins, and if they are auctioned, it can raise some $76 million. (Right now the market rate is $480. I am calculating a very conservative discount of $100 for the auctioned coins, with auction prices at $380 per coin).

So for every 1 BTC lost by the customer, he will get back $89.

[thresher]

In optimal scenario this will be what the Mt Gox users getting:

Mt Gox lost a total of 650,000 customer's coins and 200,000 Gox coins. Total 850,000 coins or equivalent to $500 million at that time.

They recovered some 200k coins, and if they are auctioned, it can raise some $76 million. (Right now the market rate is $480. I am calculating a very conservative discount of $100 for the auctioned coins, with auction prices at $380 per coin).

So for every 1 BTC lost by the customer, he will get back $89.

Wow, those numbers are absolute garbage; here I was thinking they would pay people in bitcoin.  You just have to love how the law actually works. 
It is almost as if it was decided what is the best way to further fuck people out of their bitcoin  

[edmundedgar]

In optimal scenario this will be what the Mt Gox users getting:

Mt Gox lost a total of 650,000 customer's coins and 200,000 Gox coins. Total 850,000 coins or equivalent to $500 million at that time.

They recovered some 200k coins, and if they are auctioned, it can raise some $76 million. (Right now the market rate is $480. I am calculating a very conservative discount of $100 for the auctioned coins, with auction prices at $380 per coin).

So for every 1 BTC lost by the customer, he will get back $89.

Wow, those numbers are absolute garbage; here I was thinking they would pay people in bitcoin.  You just have to love how the law actually works.  
It is almost as if it was decided what is the best way to further fuck people out of their bitcoin  

FWIW it's not at all clear that the law requires the liquidator would sell off the bitcoins and compensate people in yen, or that that's what the liquidator would want to do. This is just something people are pulling out of their arses, especially the "savegox" people who are trying to make some money out of the situation.

[Nagle]

FWIW it's not at all clear that the law requires the liquidator would sell off the bitcoins and compensate people in yen, or that that's what the liquidator would want to do. This is just something people are pulling out of their arses, especially the "savegox" people who are trying to make some money out of the situation.

Right. The creditors do share in the assets equally, though, and some Bitcoins may have to be converted to dollars to pay off people owed dollars. So a price has to be fixed for conversion purposes. That will probably be the market price of Bitcoin as of the date the bankruptcy commenced.

One of the big questions that people on here haven't been asking is "where did the customer's dollars go?" That should be answerable from bank records, all of which are now accessible by the bankruptcy trustee. There should be a preliminary accounting soon, a real one, not a Mark Karpeles fantasy. 

Very likely there will be a "clawback" phase, during which the trustee claws back monies transferred improperly to other parties.

[fulepp]

FWIW it's not at all clear that the law requires the liquidator would sell off the bitcoins and compensate people in yen, or that that's what the liquidator would want to do. This is just something people are pulling out of their arses, especially the "savegox" people who are trying to make some money out of the situation.

Right. The creditors do share in the assets equally, though, and some Bitcoins may have to be converted to dollars to pay off people owed dollars. So a price has to be fixed for conversion purposes. That will probably be the market price of Bitcoin as of the date the bankruptcy commenced.

One of the big questions that people on here haven't been asking is "where did the customer's dollars go?" That should be answerable from bank records, all of which are now accessible by the bankruptcy trustee. There should be a preliminary accounting soon, a real one, not a Mark Karpeles fantasy. 

Very likely there will be a "clawback" phase, during which the trustee claws back monies transferred improperly to other parties.

This is a good question. Everyone talks about how btc can be recovered but everyone seems skip the fact they handled usd and euros. Where is the fiat? Obviously they should have much more than the 200 k btc...

[BitCoinNutJob]

In optimal scenario this will be what the Mt Gox users getting:

Mt Gox lost a total of 650,000 customer's coins and 200,000 Gox coins. Total 850,000 coins or equivalent to $500 million at that time.

They recovered some 200k coins, and if they are auctioned, it can raise some $76 million. (Right now the market rate is $480. I am calculating a very conservative discount of $100 for the auctioned coins, with auction prices at $380 per coin).

So for every 1 BTC lost by the customer, he will get back $89.

i hear courts might pay back in BTC

[bryant.coleman]

I hear courts might pay back in BTC

Can you give me the original source (doesn't matter whatever language it is in). If this can be verified, then it is really good news. (Not as good as the users getting all their coins back, but still it is excellent news).

[kooke]

All the articles I've read so far predict that gox users may not get anything. It's hard to say though, as there's not really much information available yet.

[Nagle]

All the articles I've read so far predict that gox users may not get anything. It's hard to say though, as there's not really much information available yet.

No, liquidation should result in a payout. Now that Karpeles has been fired, he can't make it worse.

[bryant.coleman]

All the articles I've read so far predict that gox users may not get anything. It's hard to say though, as there's not really much information available yet.

I have also read such articles. The reason they are saying is that any fiat recovery from the sale of the newly found Gox coins (BTC 200K) will be used to payoff its fiat debts first, which amounts to some $60 million. But I have also seen some posts claiming that the fiat debts owned by Mt Gox only adds up to $6.5 million.