[ANN] Mt.Gox overview: January 2012 / Transparency

[BadBear]

Nice to see MtGox taking steps to rectify their issues, hopefully others will follow.

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[Kluge]

Damn clever move, Gox team!  Was this a direct result of hazek's hell-raising with CxC? 

[jothan]

You go Gox !

[finway]

Thanks!

[casascius]

Of interest would be total funds owed to depositors in relation to reserves.

Even without actual figures or verification, simply stating "We have enough funds on hand to back 100% of all deposits" in some sort of credible format would be a faith promoting claim.

[Dan The Man]

Does Mt. Gox publish the address of it's Bitcoin holdings so that anybody can use block explorer to check that they have the bitcoins they are supposed to have.

[casascius]

Does Mt. Gox publish the address of it's Bitcoin holdings so that anybody can use block explorer to check that they have the bitcoins they are supposed to have.

This wouldn't be useful: they could publish any bitcoin address that wasn't theirs and claim funds they don't own.

What would be useful is if they signed a message to prove ownership of private keys, which then could be used to deduce their holdings.

But that would come at a major expense of network-wide anonymity for users - anyone could positively identify exit of funds from MtGox.  Not a whole lot of users would like that, so it would be a major tradeoff.  Any investigation that arrived at one of these addresses would be met with legal demands placed on MtGox: "we know this address is yours, so we hereby compel you to tell us who got these funds."

A plausible compromise might be for them to sign only their cold storage, which would compromise anonymity only for the largest transactors who probably have to "d0x" themselves to death anyway.

Even if they signed only 50% of their bitcoins, if they were bitcoins that rarely or never moved because they were cold storage, I would probably be 90% as satisfied as had they signed 100% of their coins.  I would want to know that the cold storage had not just appropriate storage, but proper contingency plans (so that one plane crash or one death wouldn't send my coins to their grave).

All of this recent disclosure is actually a great thing for Bitcoin as a whole.  The more people who are willing to leave money in MtGox without fear it will vanish, the deeper the order books will get, hence greater liquidity and less chance for sudden swings in the price.

[btc_artist]

Good to see the pro-activeness.

[bitcoinBull]

This is awesome.

But, can you guys please fix your data API?  GoxLive and websockets is consistently down during peak trading, then bitcoincharts  lags by minutes, and orders on mtgox are stuck pending for excruciatingly long.

[hazek]

Dear Mt.Gox Users,

It’s no secret that since Tibanne took over Mt.Gox in March 2011 we’ve had a bumpy road, both in terms of growth and security.  The violation of our exchange that took place in June has left an ominous cloud hanging over us and in part, Bitcion and the community.  It has taken us several months to reestablish the level of trust we have now, and we feel as the leading Bitcoin Exchange it is our place to continue to set the model of trust for companies whose business revolves around Bitcoin.

Today we will be putting up a deck, aptly called “Transparency” where you will find basic information about Mt.Gox including operation cost, basic security details, revenue, turnover and so on...

A update to this document will be done every three months or so and we plan to provide as much information as possible without breaching our companies security or competitive advantage. Also, please note that this iteration is a first attempt and we plan to refine subsequent attempts in an effort to be continually more accurate and clear. Your feedback on this deck is of course welcome!

Also, we plan to have this document verified by third party auditors for future releases, however we want to set a realistic expectation this may not happen by the next quarter.

We sincerely hope that our effort here will be mirrored by other exchanges, Bitcoin related business, and that we have the communities backing on this “move”.

Transparently,

The Mt.Gox Team.

Please follow this link to access to our presentation and/or download the “Transparency” PDF file Mt.Gox overview: January 2012

Excellent! As a customer I couldn't be happier to read this and I feel now more assured about having my business with you than ever before. Really huge props for being first to make this move which is word for word what I suggested to cryptoxchange!

You see cryptoxchange? This is what you could have done and been first to get an edge, but you dropped the ball..

Again, major props to MtGox!

[nayrB16]

Who is the outside auditing entity?

[Serge]

Please make MTGOXLIVE transparent (aka live) during heavy trading periods. Thank you.

[Mt.Gox Support]

Who is the outside auditing entity?

As stated in our first post : "Also, we plan to have this document verified by third party auditors for future release". There is not yet any auditing entity for this first publication. Once we have one, we will publish their information on the document and on our webpage. But please keep in mind that this may take time, not only to find the auditing company that will do the job we need, but it will also take time for them to audit us.

[Mt.Gox Support]

Dear Mt.Gox Users,

It’s no secret that since Tibanne took over Mt.Gox in March 2011 we’ve had a bumpy road, both in terms of growth and security.  The violation of our exchange that took place in June has left an ominous cloud hanging over us and in part, Bitcion and the community.  It has taken us several months to reestablish the level of trust we have now, and we feel as the leading Bitcoin Exchange it is our place to continue to set the model of trust for companies whose business revolves around Bitcoin.

Today we will be putting up a deck, aptly called “Transparency” where you will find basic information about Mt.Gox including operation cost, basic security details, revenue, turnover and so on...

A update to this document will be done every three months or so and we plan to provide as much information as possible without breaching our companies security or competitive advantage. Also, please note that this iteration is a first attempt and we plan to refine subsequent attempts in an effort to be continually more accurate and clear. Your feedback on this deck is of course welcome!

Also, we plan to have this document verified by third party auditors for future releases, however we want to set a realistic expectation this may not happen by the next quarter.

We sincerely hope that our effort here will be mirrored by other exchanges, Bitcoin related business, and that we have the communities backing on this “move”.

Transparently,

The Mt.Gox Team.

Please follow this link to access to our presentation and/or download the “Transparency” PDF file Mt.Gox overview: January 2012

Excellent! As a customer I couldn't be happier to read this and I feel now more assured about having my business with you than ever before. Really huge props for being first to make this move which is word for word what I suggested to cryptoxchange!

You see cryptoxchange? This is what you could have done and been first to get an edge, but you dropped the ball..

Again, major props to MtGox!

We have been discussing this for a long time and even shared some data and discussed this with some of you at CES, what we published yesterday was in fact something we planed for a longtime. But your comments and others ones has been taken into consideration to make it happen.

Cheers

[finway]

What's the latest number ? 
Is it time to release NO.2 ?

[Mt.Gox Support]

What's the latest number ? 
Is it time to release NO.2 ?

Hi, the N.2 is coming soon, we have been so much busy on other projects that we had to postpone this Transparency Overview. But do not worry we did not forget about it

Cheers

[anonymous5050]

Are you guys working on releasing the report for the last four months?

[Mt.Gox Support]

Are you guys working on releasing the report for the last four months?

We did not forget about it, but we are concentrating our effort somewhere else at the moment!

[anonymous5050]

we plan to have this document verified by third party auditors for future releases, however we want to set a realistic expectation this may not happen by the next quarter.

Will we see an audit some time this year?

[casascius]

we plan to have this document verified by third party auditors for future releases, however we want to set a realistic expectation this may not happen by the next quarter.

Will we see an audit some time this year?

If you ask MtGox if they've done an audit, their answer is YES, we've done it, just look at our name Tibanne is listed at such-and-such Japanese website.

If you ask for the audit report though, their answer is basically... "Aww, shucks.  Sorry, we can't let you see it.  You actually have to pay for your own copy of it straight from the auditor, we can't let you see ours.  And it's really expensive.  Sorry about that."

If you ever could see the audit, and if it's even in English, it almost certainly was written by someone who doesn't have a clue what a Bitcoin is, and doesn't cover whether MtGox has USD and BTC to cover customer balances, it probably merely covers whether MtGox complies with some certain accounting standard and certifies that they filed some forms on time and in the proper format.

In other words, what I bet you WON'T see in the document: "We went through Tibanne's accounting records and discovered that they have liabilities of $X in the form of customer deposits, and as shown on the balance sheet and verified by bank statements, they have enough currency in their bank accounts to cover it."

And even MORE unlikely is a statement "We went through Tibanne's accounting records and discovered that they have liabilities of BTCX in the form of BTC customer deposits, and they signed messages for us proving that they own some certain addresses, and we verified ourselves on the block chain that they have all of the BTC they claim they have."

The audit I want to see would contain statements like that.

MtGox says getting such an audit is impossible or unfeasible due to cost, because according to them, they are a multinational conglomerate and any auditor would have to trot the globe just to confirm your money is there.  They even told me that some of the bank accounts they use don't offer internet banking.  (It's a multinational conglomerate kind of like Sony, but of course, if the website goes down while one guy is sleeping, it stays down for 4 hours until someone wakes him up!  Go figure.)

As I own a business that has undergone such audits several times, I know these we-can't-get-an-audit claims are simply untrue.  The first exchange or business who comes to the table with a SSAE 16 or comparable audit is going to be a major asset to the Bitcoin community.