It is assumed that SMBIT only buys BTC when some client buys their shares (10 shares = 1 BTC).  If that is true, there seems to be a client who buys 2.5 million dollars worth of shares each week.  But we do not know, really.

Humpf. That is not a microchip, it is only a protoboard for plugging discrete components.  That ancient civilization probably was too primitive for bitcoin: it had no ASICs, not even GPUs.

I suppose the logic is
"Rats, if he agreed to pay 100$, he probably would have paid 105$; I should have bargained harder."
"Rats, if he agreed to sell for 100$, he probably would have sold for 95$; I should have bargained harder."

I don't know about Yantis's involvement, but the claim that the MtGOX hacker exploited the "transaction malelability bug" was dismissed by a group of MIT researchers:  


Perhaps, who knows, those transaction malelability attacks were issued by MtGOX managers themselves, in an attempt to cover up what really happened.


I do not find that likely, since the "transaction malelability" attack seems too specific to the bitcoin protocol.  In particular, it depends on the "best effort" propagation of the transaction requests, that allows the "malleated" requests to get ahead of the true ones; and on the faulty logic allegedly used by MtGOX to detect failed requests.  Computer games depend on centralized servers and more deterministic connections.  

However, it is possible that Yantis's exploit involved some synchronization bug too.

As for the death of Autumn Radtke, It is hard to dismiss the idea that it was somehow connected to the collapse of MtGOX. The coincidence of dates and business area, her close connection to key players in the digital currency world, the location near Japan, the apparent lack of motive for suicide, the absence of witnesses...

Whoever stole those half a billion dollars would surely murder anyone who threatened to expose the crime, if he had occasion and means to do so.

Oops... 

By the way, I see that Tony Gallippi is indeed the Executive Producer of the Magazine.

By the way, their "About" page is out of date.  Jon Matonis resigned from the post of Executive Director of the Bitcoin Foundation, and said he will leave its Board of Directors at the end of the year.

Bitcoin Magazine is shutting down:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2nhafk/bitcoin_magazine_going_to_shut_down/


Coud this have something to do with BFL?  Redditors claim that the main investor of the magazine is BitPay, and conjecture that "Tony" above is Tony Gallippi, CEO of BitPay...

Analogies are dangerous, but...

Suppose that a car dealer

1. collected tens of millions of dollars in advance payments from customers, promising delivery in Two Weeks^TM;
2. used that money to buy cars from the auto maker, but did not deliver them them to customers right away;
3. instead, set up a rent-a-car service with some of those cars, sold some to a taxicab company, and pocketed the revenue;
5. simulated a large pre-order in order to hide the origin of that revenue;
4. refused to refund customers even when the cars were months or years late;
6. eventually delivered some cars, all battered and damaged, worth a small fraction of the price paid;
5. insulted, abused and threatened any customers who complained.

Would a judge be worried about the future survival of that dealership?

If the BFL principals walk away from this incident with most of their freedom and money, it is not just bad for bitcoin.  After Costa Rica and Kansas City, they may well set up a car dealership here in Brazil, why not? 

After all, they already have the website for it, isn't it not so?

Or at both ends (i.e. at the lowest and highest fractions with the same integer part).

Actually, not long ago I was assigned to a "Computers & Ssociety" course for our CS majors (1 lecture per week, no homework or exams).  Police snooping vs privacy was one of the topics.  Wikileaks and Manning were still on the news; Snowden saga was just unraveling, or had not started yet.

The field has changed a lot since then, unfortunately for the worse.  With the spread of centralized services like Facebook and cloud computing, people are much more indifferent to unrestricted snooping by unaccountable agencies, to censorship under the excuse of copyright enforcement, and other "classical" Computers&Society issues.

Bitcoin may be partly responsible for that.  Many activists who could be campaigning for better government practices and rights-oriented laws seem to have given up the fight, trusting that all those problems will disappear once bitcoin takes over the world and governments just shrivel away.

Not even with a warrant?

Since 9/11, it seems that the US intelligence and law enforcement agencies have legal authorization to do anything to anyone, anywhere.  But, even before 9/11, I believe that they could legally plant cameras, hack computers, or infiltrate criminal organizations, if they got a judge's authorization to do so.

Law enforcement was inside Silk Road 2.0 almost since the beginning.

If the German police cannot legally place a trap order on a German drug-selling site, or set up a fake tumbling site in a laptop over a desk in a building in German soil, they can give a call to an Italian or French colleague and have him do that favor for them.

If the cops had any brains they would set up a dozen fake tumbling services, with unbeatable fees and spiffy interfaces; and quietly close or co-opt the legitimate ones.  But fortunately they are nowhere as smart as the typical users of such services.

I thought that I posted it yesterday:
https://medium.com/@MirrorHQ/mirror-creates-syndicate-for-the-december-2014-usms-bitcoin-auction-45870def4f91

A progress report by the MtGOX trustee on his actions since the previous meeting:
https://www.mtgox.com/img/pdf/20141126_document.pdf
(Dated 2014-11-26, translation at the end.)

Some highlights: Mark Karpelès and his other companies took over 10 million dollars in loans from MtGOX, the trustee is trying to get them to pay the loans.  The law says refund must be in yen but he is looking whether it is possible to return the bitcoins as bitcoins.  There are inconsistencies in the MtGOX records, which are being investigated.  He has control of ~202 kBTC so far.

Is it possibe to catch a virus watching a totally stupid YouTube video?

Statement by MtGOX's bankruptcy trustee about the agreement with Payward (Kraken's Japanese susidiary):
https://www.mtgox.com/img/pdf/20141126_announcement.pdf
(Dated 2014-11-27; English translation at the end.)

The role of Kraken will be substantially more modest than what the first news claimed.  No decision yet on whether the coins are to be distributed as coins, and whether Kraken will handle the distribution if they are.

A mining operator who is building a multimillion mining facility should want to secure a contract that guarantees a return and shifts the risks (and any extraordinary gains) to the VC investors, as much as possible.  Say, the investor gives N million dollars every month for M months, and in return keeps all the coins that the installation mines during that time frame, independently of the difficulty and price. 

Of course, they may not find investors in those terms, and may have to share the risk and unpredictable profits.

He is joining a syndicate this time.  So, probably, he does not intend to buy even a whole lot of 10'000 BTC.

Perhaps I am mis-remembering about the hacking.  But, from day 0, the police can buy stuff on the site, pay in bitcoins, and follow them on the blockchain.  That tracing could reveal if there were other wallets beyond those that that they seized (~30'000 on the server and ~150'000 on his laptop). 

I doubt it.  The FBI etc had hacked into his computers before the raid, and can follow trails on the blockchain.

The announcement surely refers to distributing the 220'000 BTC that were left in MtGOX's forgotten wallet.  There is no money or BTC to make good on the other 600'000 BTC that disappeared.