Great! My apologies again for not being more efficient at reporting the bug.

Nice proposal.  I hope that it can be confirmed and improved as more data and analyses become available.

I have two questions:

(1) The proposed loss of 1 M BTC at that time could have been theft by hackers, or could have been any of the other hypotheses that were suggested (theft by insider, Mark selling the coins off-market,  police seizure, lost keys, etc.).  Are there evidence or testimonials that point to hacker theft, specifically?

(2) What do you make of this theory, that MtGOX sold/used 750 kBTC to settle the 75 M$ CoinLab lawsuit? http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1z8vaq/crowd_detectives_reveal_mt_gox_bitcoin_heist_as/

Perhaps, but check this reply to that post:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=497289.msg5474846#msg5474846

EDIT: But there is a counter-reply:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=497289.msg5474989#msg5474989

Er, wasn't this thread created specifically to hold those hourly Chartbuddy plots?

If they look all the same, it is because nothing significant is happening on Bitstamp's order book.

If they are posted one after the other, it is because nothing significant is happening in this thread, either. 

That is quite different than "10% of the money supply in the world is in the hands of common criminals".


I know of one lawsuit in the US that alleges that MtGOX has failed to properly secure the bitcoins that were deposited there.  It is not clear that it will lead to an investigation of what happened to the coins; and anyway it has been stalled by the Chapter 15 filing (above).  Are there others?

To be more specific: I did not see any sign that the celebrities of the bitcoin scene or the Shrem Karpeles & Friends Foundation (a.k.a. Bitcoin Foundation) are keen on getting to the truth.  (Yes, this is not a Scientific-Academic Result; it is just a speculation if you wish, but this is the 'Speculation' sub-forum, isn't it?  )


Careful, I believe I was called a retard or worse in this thread, for suggesting that Mark could have lost the keys -- back when 'MtGOX is insolvent' was still a heresy. 

Yes, admitted, it is possible that those 500,000 bitcoins (or more, perhaps 750,000 ?) were simply lost, or have been sold already to innocent people (who did not know that they were stolen).   In these cases, my statement above would be false.  But it is at least as likely that someone now has got those coins, knowing that they rightfully belong to MtGOX clients.   That someone may be Mark, a hacker, an insider, or someone who bought the coins off market from Mark knowing that they were not his to sell.

So, together with all the other hacks and scams, there is at least the strong possibility that a few common criminals now have around 10% of all bitcoins.  That "strong possibility" is already good munition for the enemies of bitcoin.  (Can one say that a few common criminals control 10% of all national currency supply in the word?) Thus bitcoiners, not the skeptics, should be the most interested in finding out the truth.

As for my opinion on what really happened, the theory that I find most likely at the moment is that Mark sold the coins off-market, before the Nov/2013 rally.  (By the way, I was called a retard also for suggesting this possibility, when MtGOX was still "solvent".)  At the time I did not know of the Coinlab lawsuit.  Recently I saw (on reddit?) an estimate that 750,000 BTC x 100 USD/BTC = 75,000,000 USD = the Coinlab claim; but I do not know whether the dates are consistent with that price.

If Mark sold the coins, the buyer would surely do whatever he can to prevent the truth to come out, since he may then have to return the coins and may be criminally charged for buying stolen property.  Therefore, according to the Bayes-McGrath theorem, this must be the truth. 

Their trade volume yesterday (Sat Mar/15 00:00--23:59 UTC) was 1.74 kBTC, the lowest since they opened according to Bitcoinwisdom. Today (Sun Mar/16) it may be even lower: 1.30 kBTC so far, only 3 hours left.

Granted that these two days have been low for all exchanges (Bitfinex lost 69% from Friday to Saturday, Bitstamp lost 75%), and that their new fee structure (if their announcement is taken literally) holds only for Mar/16, not for Mar/15.  However the drop seems to be quite abrupt at Mar/15 00:00 UTC, and the new fees did not seem to be of much help today.

Whatever happened at MtGOX, it is certain that some 500,000 BTC now belong to a thief or scammer.  Added to other scams and thefts, known and unknown, it may be that more than 1 million BTC now belong to bitcoin criminals.  If those people go unpunished and get to keep their bitcoins, such crimes will not stop with MtGOX.

So, if bitcoin succeeds like his most ardent fans believe, perhaps 10% of all the money supply in the world will belong to criminals.  You want me to root for that? 

 

Hey, MtGOX issued another press release:
Announcement regarding the applicability of US Bankruptcy Code Chapter 15
https://www.mtgox.com/img/pdf/20140314-announcement_chapter15.pdf
How come, no crash yet? 

Well, I belive it is a "google fact", in that I can't find any new analyses; and at least this site, which had the database on line and seemed to have made some interesting discoveries, has shut down.

As the bitcoin bulls say, MtGOX is MtGOX, and bitcoin is bitcoin.  The coin will succeed or fail no matter what the bears think.

But the fact that the "bitcoin community" does not want to know what happened inside MtGOX, to me, means that the MtGOX scam was not confined to Karpeles and the hypothetical hacker.  Shouldn't investors be interested to know whether other prominent bitcoin businessmen are involved?

Is it my impression, or has there been a general clamp-down on discussion and analysis of the MtGOX heist and its leaked database? 

Bitstamp suddenly stayed still and then Huobi's sheep went into a panic freeze.

Someone suggsted that  the low volume is due to the Spring break in US universities. I have been trying to find out if this weekend is especially significant in China, without much success.  It seems that some universities start classes around this time, but others don't.  Any clues?

I thought that perhaps the non-Chinese exchanges are the source of volatility, in spite of their small volume.  Namely, 1 BTC of trade at Bitstamp moves the price by some amount, then arbitragers propagate the change to Huobi, and traders at Huobi react by swapping 10 BTC among themselves before settling more or less where they were before and propagating that back to Bitstamp.  Thus, with the western markets shut down because of Spring break, the Chinese ones just sit still.  Makes sense?

EDIT: one argument: in the Chinse exchanges the only asks and bids are for speculation inside the exchange, whereas outside China there are asks and bids that are generated externally, eg. by people who want to buy things with bitcoin.

From that Guardian article:

The Guardian, March 14, 2014:
MtGox knowingly traded non-existent bitcoins for two weeks, filing shows
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/14/mtgox-knowingly-traded-non-existent-bitcoins-for-two-weeks-filing-shows

Chinese Slumber Method prediction for Sunday Mar/16

No prediction today, gotcha!

The last two days were False Slumber Points, a.k.a. Lignite Albertosauruses, when Huobi's traders kept trading into the night.  By the Method, those two data points are not reliable data and therefore there is no trend to extrapolate.   (Actually, in the morning from Friday to Saturday some Huobi client logged in at 03:00 am and traded just enough to spoil my data, then went back to bed. )

This is quite bizarre since such late-night trading at Huobi usually occurs only on days with extreme price changes.  Were it not for the Rules, I coud easily predict for tomorrow the same price as today.

Anyway I am using the pause to make the Method a little less unscientific.  Stay tuned.

The total trade volume today (Sat Mar/15 00:00-23:59 UTC), at the exchanges that I monitor, was just a little over 100 kBTC.  That is 49% less than yesterday, and 67% less than last Saturday Mar/08.

Indeed, the last three times since the total daily volume has been this low or lower were

  Jan/29--Feb/05 (volumes ranging from ~54 to ~91 kBTC): Chinese New Year holidays, banks closed in China.
  Sunday Feb/19 (~95 kBTC): eve of MtGOX's second announcement.
  Sunday Mar/02 (~94 kBTC): perhaps eve of Bloomberg TV "important announcement"?

Volume outside China dropped 63%, from 19 kBTC to a ridiculous 7 kBTC.  All exchanges lost volume, the largest ones more in proportion. BTC-e (with 2.55 kBTC) returned to first place, followed by Bitstamp (2.20) and Bitfinex (1.74).

Volume in China dropped 48% (from 179 to 93 kBTC).  OKCoin (59% of the Chinese total) increased its advantage over Huobi (39%). The dwarf exchange Bter was the only one that I monitor that had more trade than yesterday, from 0.19 to 0.35 kBTC.

China's slice of the total volume increased again, from 91% to 93%.

Daily volumes of BTC trade to/from USD and other national currencies (in kBTC):

             !    Sat !    Sun !    Mon !    Tue !    Wed !    Thu !    Fri !    Sat !                     
  EXCHANGE   !  03/08 !  03/09 !  03/10 !  03/11 !  03/12 !  03/13 !  03/14 !  03/15 ! Currencies considered

  BTC-e      |   8.71 |   6.52 |   7.16 |   5.09 |   7.96 |   7.43 |   3.76 |   2.55 | USD,EUR,RUR         
  Bitstamp   |   9.70 |   9.12 |  13.40 |   9.17 |  12.70 |   6.73 |   8.68 |   2.20 | USD                 
  BitFinEx   |  10.97 |   8.29 |  11.60 |   3.63 |   7.29 |   3.31 |   5.53 |   1.74 | USD                 
  Kraken     |   0.55 |   0.64 |   0.57 |   0.45 |   0.56 |   0.40 |   0.48 |   0.34 | EUR                 
  Bitcoin.DE |   0.31 |   0.20 |   0.39 |   0.41 |   0.37 |   0.35 |   0.20 |   0.12 | EUR                 
  CaVirtEx   |   0.12 |   0.15 |   0.13 |   0.18 |   0.13 |   0.13 |   0.11 |   0.06 | CAD                 
  CampBX     |   0.03 |   0.02 |   0.05 |   0.06 |   0.04 |   0.03 |   0.06 |   0.03 | USD                 

  SUBTOTAL   |  30.39 |  24.94 |  33.30 |  18.99 |  29.05 |  18.38 |  18.82 |   7.04 |                     

  OKCoin     | 146.46 | 136.24 | 119.00 |  68.50 |  90.60 |  60.70 |  97.80 |  55.40 | CNY                 
  Huobi      | 119.46 | 103.51 |  95.10 |  55.00 |  77.90 |  65.40 |  78.40 |  36.50 | CNY                 
  BTC-China  |   5.08 |   4.24 |   3.34 |   3.11 |   3.16 |   2.89 |   2.97 |   1.13 | CNY                 
  Bter       |   0.28 |   0.21 |   0.27 |   0.34 |   0.49 |   0.26 |   0.19 |   0.35 | CNY                 

  SUBTOTAL   | 271.28 | 244.20 | 217.71 | 126.95 | 172.15 | 129.25 | 179.36 |  93.38 |                     

  TOTAL      | 301.67 | 269.14 | 251.01 | 145.94 | 201.20 | 147.63 | 198.18 | 100.42 |                     

All numbers were collected by hand from the site http://bitcoinwisdom.com. Beware of possible errors.

For each exchange, the numbers include only the trade volume to/from the currencies listed in the rightmost column. Trade between BTC and other cryptocoins, such as LiteCoin, is NOT included.

Dates on the header line are UTC. Specifically, "01/15" means "from 01/15 00:00:00 UTC to 01/15 23:59:59 UTC". (Beware that Bitcoinwisdom uses your local time, so the date may appear to be off by 1 day.  For example, if you are 2 hours west of Greenwich, it may show "01/14 22:00" when the UTC time is "01/15 00:00".)