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Economy / Service Discussion / Re: MtGox withdrawal delays [Gathering]
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on: December 29, 2014, 03:31:55 PM
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I was not referring to MtGox per se, but on the process of transacting with fiat/bitcoin or vice versa through an exchange. If I had a say through the regulation process, I'd propose the obvious:
If no transaction is on the ledger, it must be declared as illegal and the person(s) involved should be hunted down for a fraud.
Simple as that.
Well, that may make sense from the bitcoiners' perspective; but society as a whole would see no reason to pass such a law. Transactions off the bitcoin blockchain, governed by private or public contracts, have been going on for millennia, with the support of escrows and notaries, and the backing of laws and courts; and no one sees that as a problem that needs fixing. But, on the other hand, bitcoin exchanges should be subjected to the same regulations and audits that apply to stock exchanges and banks. Those regulations were created precisely because stock exchanges were going through the same problems a century ago. An alternative to government audits could be to make bitcoin exchanges transparent, i.e. requring them to publish the identities of the parties in each trade. However, there are still many sleazy tricks (like front-running) that the exchanges could pull on their clients and would not get exposed by such transparency. EDIT: The exchanges have a good excuse for recording trades off the blockchain: traders would not accept having to wait for confirmation on the blockchain.
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322
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Economy / Service Discussion / Re: MtGox withdrawal delays [Gathering]
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on: December 29, 2014, 02:54:19 PM
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THERE'S NO ONE TO BLAME, because it's not illegal!
That is not true, the Japanese courts have already recognized that the claims of the ex-clients against MtGOX have merit (although the way the claims will be evaluated is still highly undefined, as I pointed out to exhaustion here), and Kobayashi has asked the police to investigate something (not clear if the investigation will look into the 660'000 missing ones, or some other fishy things that they found in the books). In the two scenarios that I just suggested, crimes would have been committed for sure, even if the trades of clients inside MtGOX are considered irrelevant.
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323
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Economy / Service Discussion / Re: MtGox withdrawal delays [Gathering]
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on: December 29, 2014, 02:43:39 PM
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By the way, another theory I have for what happened at MtGOX is:
In Aug/2013 (say) some big investor sought MtGOX's management and proposed to buy all the coins that they would sell at 200 $/BTC. The price at the time was 110 $/BTC, so the management gave in and sold 800'000 BTC for 160 M$. Of course they had no right to do that, since the coins were not theirs but were only held on behalf of the clients; but they thought that, when a client wanted to withdraw, they could buy the BTC from the market for ~110 $/BTC, and still make the 90 $/BTC profit.
But then the Nov/2013 rally happened, and, before the management could react, the price surged and more or less stabilized at ~800 $/BTC, four times their sale price. Then they could only buy back 1/4 of the coins that they had sold, namely 200'000 BTC; but still owed 800'000 BTC to their clients.
If this is what happened, then perhaps that investor can be identified, and forced to return the coins or their equivalent in dollars at a suitably high price (since he was knowingly buying stolen property). However, that investor could be someone outside the reach of the law, such as an anonymous gangster from Yakuza or the Chinese mafia; or someone with enough power to block the investigation...
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324
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Economy / Service Discussion / Re: MtGox withdrawal delays [Gathering]
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on: December 29, 2014, 02:10:25 PM
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A) trying to clear everything out and give back the BTC and fiat missing. B) trying to cover everything and give back some donats to us
Well, my current best guess (far from certainty, and not the only one) about what happened is that the management and/or accomplices took the bitcoins that MtGOX was holding on behalf their clients and sold them for yuan at the Chinese exchanges, profiting from the price difference. In this theory, they hoped to withdraw the yuan and convert them to yen or dollars at some later time, before the clients noticed; but either someone stole the yuan, or they were lost when the Chinese exchanges lost their bank accounts. if this theory is correct, the coins were bought by thousands of innocent Chinese investors and speculators, with real yuan, resold many times, and cannot be recovered. The Chinese exchanges owe some 400 M$ to the embezzlers, but they cannot pay because they lost the money, and the embezzlers obviously cannot sue them. So there is a third possibility (the most common one in bankruptcies): C) they will figure out and publish what happened, but cannot recover the missing coins and money, and will distribute only what was left.
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325
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Economy / Service Discussion / Re: MtGox withdrawal delays [Gathering]
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on: December 29, 2014, 01:35:59 PM
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Wow... If I may feel or think so, that would mean some kind of disgrace to us all... [ ... ] On the other side, deep understanding BTC and not being a bitcoiner would at least demand that knowledge is applied into another cryptocoin, better than BTC. (which one??) Or BTC is just something with no future and those who knows it are not there.
Indeed, there are many knowledgeable ex-bitcoiners who have abandoned Bitcoin to work on other cryptocoins. But I wasn't thinking of those. (They could be involved in the MtGOX collapse too.) Also there must be many hackers who do not believe in bitcoin, and just sell whatever coins they can steal in the black market. There is also, for example, a guy that goes by the nickname @BitcoinExpress who claims to be an expert in breaking altcoins. I was thinking of people like these two: http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/06/16/how-a-mining-monopoly-can-attack-bitcoin/Their conclusions by be disputed, but they certainly understand the protocol and the system better than most bitcoiners.
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326
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Economy / Service Discussion / Re: MtGox withdrawal delays [Gathering]
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on: December 29, 2014, 05:01:34 AM
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Jorge, it's not sane nor logical to judge every bitcoiner as a ''suspect'' and thus rule them all out from the process. It's the very same to rule every financial investigator out because they're involved with money and they're suspects!
All people who could have been involved in the disappearance of those coins should be suspect. Since we onlookers have not the faintest idea of when and how the coins disappeared, our list of suspects should include everybody who could have the technical knowledge and means to do that; which means millions of people with knowledge or bitcoin and computers. Hopefully the investigators have more information about the hack/theft, so they can narrow that list substantially. In financial crimes it is easy to exclude most financial experts from the list of suspects, for lack of means and opportunity; not so easy in computer crimes. In general, investigators can and do obtain useful information from suspects without ceasing to consider them suspects. I only wish that they do not lower their guard when they consider whether to use help from bitcoiners, especially from people like Powell who had some special connection to MtGox. The fact is that there's an ongoing investigation that will need every resource available to get the best results. If no bitcoin-related was ever involved, things would be in the dark for a much longer period. Take for instance someone who has no idea how bitcoin works, or how the infrastructure is implemented. How on earth could he be in the position to judge what (technically) happened?
There are many people out there with a deep understanding of the bitcoin protocol who are not "bitcoiners". There are many non-bitcoiner experts in networks, python programming, databases, etc., who together can figure out how the software worked and how it could have been attacked. There are computer forensics experts who have skills and tools for tracing network connections, deciphering logs, etc., that a bitcoiner will probbably not have. And so on. Also, since MtGOX used private software, its operation probably was very different than that of Kraken.
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327
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Bitcoin / Development & Technical Discussion / Re: Reused R values again
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on: December 29, 2014, 04:32:34 AM
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It sounds like it is somewhat safe to use blockchain.info again.
I would also say this just shows the importance of rigorously testing any new release of any software that in any way controls any kind of money because people may not immediately continue the upgrade cycle after a 2nd release is released to fix any potential problem
I haven't seen any sign that they have fixed the organizational problem that created the technical problem. According to other reports, they have a single super-programmer who ships changes without independent review. If that is true, good luck...
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328
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Other / Off-topic / Re: Answer the question above with a question.
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on: December 28, 2014, 09:44:18 PM
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Does it even make sense to seek Enlightenment in some concoction obtained from the Dark Web? Should I blend my MacBook? Isn't the name "MacBook" quaint, considering that books no longer look like laptops? Would it still be called the [Johnny] Appleseed [fail] Challenge akin to the Lighter Fluid [fail] Challenge? Why does that video remind me of Idiocracy? Is anyone else here confused? That's the idea, confuse the enemy; don' t you see? Do you realize that you, yourself is yor biggest enemy ? Well, I am confused; does that mean that it is working? frankly... im still confused how come there is no number on the side of a dice... who put spot in there and why... and why would any sane man put spot on a dice instead of number Why would you not put a dot? Did I just roll a Bingo with the above, when one outta six times I roll the below and lose? Since the Red Cross symbol was originally just the Swiss flag with colors reversed, would you agree with my reasoning that the gentleman with the risk-free die must be Swiss, and the two ladies above must be nurses working for the International Red Dot?
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329
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Automated posting
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on: December 28, 2014, 04:26:19 PM
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Actually, that link isn't working at the moment. I need to send some more funds to the hosting service.
You could post the explanation on this forum (here, or as a new thread) and link to that post.
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330
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: December 28, 2014, 04:24:07 PM
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do you guys think it is a good idea to sell all my 200btc for ripple will ripple replace bitcoin soon? I would say trust nobody, do your own research, and make up your own mind. Good advice. But do not expect the research to yield any firm conclusion. It seems that no one, not even the experts, has any clue about the future prices of either currency.
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332
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Economy / Speculation / Re: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion
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on: December 28, 2014, 04:44:11 AM
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I have no idea what your talking about. Were you drinking tonight or is this just some lame trolling? He is saying the conclusion you came to from that quote is a bit of a stretch. Yeah, forgot AGAIN to put the " ". Just to be clear then: * Here is a transcript of the part of Rajan's interview relevant to bitcoin. He says that bitcoin is not good because it is insecure and has high volatility. Some of bitcoin's innovations are good but some are "worrisome". He sees India moving to a "cashless society" with "some kind of currencies like this" some 10 to 20 years from now. And he said that "credit cards are already performing some of that role". Elsewhere he says that the Central bank must be able to regulate the money supply. So: he is ANTI-bitcoin, not PRO-bitcoinl. * The Russian Ministry of Economic development is not opposed to that bill that bans virtual currencies (a bill that was requested by Putin). He only wants the bill to "define" with more "precision" what is to be banned, so that things like merchant points are not banned too. In the published reports, he did not mention bitcoin at all. You guess whether bitcoin will be among the things he likes and wants excluded, or among those that will be banned by the corrected bill. In both cases, the reporters have invented "pro-bitcoin" policies when the facts are not pro-bitcoin at all: not relevant in the case of Russia, fairly negative in the case of India.
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333
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Other / Off-topic / Re: Answer the question above with a question.
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on: December 28, 2014, 02:51:44 AM
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Does it even make sense to seek Enlightenment in some concoction obtained from the Dark Web? Should I blend my MacBook? Isn't the name "MacBook" quaint, considering that books no longer look like laptops? Would it still be called the [Johnny] Appleseed [fail] Challenge akin to the Lighter Fluid [fail] Challenge? Why does that video remind me of Idiocracy? Is anyone else here confused? That's the idea, confuse the enemy; don' t you see? Do you realize that you, yourself is yor biggest enemy ? Well, I am confused; does that mean that it is working?
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335
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Other / Off-topic / Re: Answer the question above with a question.
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on: December 28, 2014, 02:04:01 AM
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Does it even make sense to seek Enlightenment in some concoction obtained from the Dark Web? Should I blend my MacBook? Isn't the name "MacBook" quaint, considering that books no longer look like laptops? Would it still be called the [Johnny] Appleseed [fail] Challenge akin to the Lighter Fluid [fail] Challenge? Why does that video remind me of Idiocracy? Is anyone else here confused? That's the idea, confuse the enemy; don' t you see?
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337
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Other / Off-topic / Re: Answer the question above with a question.
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on: December 28, 2014, 12:37:37 AM
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Does it even make sense to seek Enlightenment in some concoction obtained from the Dark Web? Should I blend my MacBook? Isn't the name "MacBook" quaint, considering that books no longer look like laptops?
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339
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Economy / Service Discussion / Re: MtGox withdrawal delays [Gathering]
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on: December 28, 2014, 12:28:36 AM
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I have no money at stake, but if I had I would be extremely wary of letting any bitcoiners or bitcoin companies play a key role in the investigation -- especially if they seem eager to help, like Sunlot, OKCoin, Kraken, and that new firm above. We do not know what happened, except that the criminal was obviously familiar with bitcoin. So, every bitcoiner should be considered a suspect, including all the significant ex-clients. Everyone who was somehow close to MtGOX (like Roger Ver, who was a neighbor and close friend of Mark) should be suspect also. Perhaps the Judge and/or Kobayashi and/or his hired consutants are corrupt too, but at least they should be bound -- by the obligation of their offices, and for the sake of their reputations -- to be fair, to follow the law, and to be minimally transparent in their actions. The former MtGOX management and staff, ex-clients, and other outsiders do not have any such obligations.
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