I wonder whether this is proper according to Japanese law and procedures?  

Requiring the creditors to deal with the very person who, er, failed  them?

EDIT: wording

A wise man does not post to forums when drunk. 

(But no one is wise when drunk, of course.)

To add to the confusion: from http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1z8vaq/crowd_detectives_reveal_mt_gox_bitcoin_heist_as/
So, what did they file for, actually?

Total trade volume today (Sat Mar/01 00:00--23:59 UTC) was ~216 kBTC.  That is 31% less than yesterday's, confirming the shrinking trend since Tuesday's peak (~948 kBTC).

Volume fell 37% outside China (from 53 to 33 kBTC) and 32% in China (from 259 to 183).   China's slice of the volume thus increased slightly, from 83% to 85%.

Volume at OKCoin fell 43%, thus restoring the ratio Huobi:OKCoin to the usual range, around 3:2.

Outside China, Bitstamp still leads (~14 kBTC) with BTC-e (~10) and Bitfinex (~9) competing for a distant second place.

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


             !    Fri !    Sat !    Sun !    Mon !    Tue !    Wed !    Thu !    Fri !    Sat !
  EXCHANGE   !  02/21 !  02/22 !  02/23 !  02/24 !  02/25 !  02/26 !  02/27 !  02/28 !  03/01 ! Currencies considered

  Bitstamp   |  29.61 |  18.08 |  20.87 |  51.84 | 115.76 |  49.11 |  17.05 |  22.63 |  14.30 | USD
  BTC-e      |  23.64 |  18.68 |  14.24 |  20.78 |  73.86 |  33.61 |  14.60 |  12.74 |   9.55 | USD,EUR,RUR
  BitFinEx   |  28.46 |  14.73 |  15.80 |  27.16 |  94.55 |  37.71 |  12.04 |  15.29 |   8.62 | USD
  Kraken     |   1.15 |   1.08 |   1.06 |   1.06 |   2.23 |   1.87 |   0.89 |   1.34 |   0.39 | EUR
  Bitcoin.DE |   0.76 |   0.61 |   0.50 |   0.73 |   2.23 |   1.00 |   0.50 |   0.70 |   0.31 | EUR
  CaVirtEx   |   0.60 |   0.20 |   0.23 |   0.30 |   2.15 |   0.32 |   0.31 |   0.33 |   0.15 | CAD
  CampBX     |   0.24 |   0.26 |   0.22 |   0.37 |   0.42 |   0.36 |   0.05 |   0.07 |   0.08 | USD

  SUBTOTAL   |  84.46 |  53.64 |  52.92 | 102.24 | 291.20 | 123.98 |  45.44 |  53.10 |  33.40 |

  Huobi      | 187.12 | 154.12 | 185.15 | 163.47 | 352.76 | 250.64 | 123.38 | 122.00 | 104.12 | CNY
  OKCoin     | 140.75 |  87.71 | 141.90 |  84.03 | 275.68 | 150.41 |  83.60 | 129.17 |  73.29 | CNY
  BTC-China  |  15.23 |   9.29 |  10.42 |  13.12 |  27.72 |  14.72 |   6.71 |   7.17 |   5.02 | CNY
  Bter       |   0.63 |   0.48 |   0.62 |   0.53 |   1.10 |   0.53 |   0.31 |   0.29 |   0.30 | CNY

  SUBTOTAL   | 343.73 | 251.60 | 338.09 | 261.15 | 657.26 | 416.30 | 214.00 | 258.63 | 182.73 |

  TOTAL      | 428.19 | 305.24 | 391.01 | 363.39 | 948.46 | 540.28 | 259.44 | 311.73 | 216.13 |



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".)

Actually the price charts have been this dull before: e.g. from Dec/30 to Jan/2,  from Jan/20 to Jan/24, and from Jan/29 to Feb/05.

The first interval must be connected to the Western new year, the last one spans the Chinese New Year holidays.   I have no guess for  Jan20--24.

Investors must now be exhausted after seven straight days of highly intense trading and unbelievable news.  So, now that the bad news have ceased, many of them may have relaxed and paused for a while.

Also, the definitive closure of MtGOX removed a major source of "noise" in the market.  For example, many ill-informed investors may have tried to do arbitrage with MtGOX.  Others may have been "withdrawing" BTC from it via bitcoinbuilder and selling it on the other markets.  And perhaps the MtGOX thieves were trying to unload their booty.  

Chinese Slumber Method prediction for Sunday Mar/02

Trade volume V_d for today Mar/01 is already ~102 kBTC, and volume V_h in the official Slumber hour (19:00--19:59) was 100 BTC; so, by the new rule V_h/V_d < 0.005, it is definitely a True Slumber Point.

The price at the official Slumber hour today (Feb/28 19:00--19:59) was 3464 CNY.  The new data point leads to a slight revision of the last segment of the new trendline.  The average of the True Slumber Points since the Second Karpeles Catastrophe of Feb/20 (namely, Feb/21, 23--25, 27--28, and Mar/01) is now 3515 CNY instead of 3522. Thus,

Prediction valid for: Sunday 2014-03-02, 19:00--19:59 UTC (not before, not after)
Huobi's predicted price: 3515 CNY.
Bitstamp's predicted price: 572 USD.

The prediction is the blue rectangle almost outside the right margin in the chart below.  The orange and grey dots are the True and False Slumber Points, and the orange line is the new trendline.


The price ratio between Huobi and Bitstamp was 6.08. That is so close to the factor R = 6.12 that I have been using, that I prefer to stick to the latter.  Thus, the prediction for Bitstamp is simply that for Huobi, divided by R = 6.12.

NOTE: The prediction is void and null if Mark Karpeles issues another press release, or somebody sneezes.

Checking the Chinese Slumber Method predictions for Mar/01

(Since by now I must be in most people's "ignore" lists, advance warnings seem unnecessary.)

This is no fun...

Prediction posted on: Friday 2014-02-28, 22:19 UTC
Prediction was valid for: Saturday 2014-03-01, 19:00--19:59 UTC

Huobi's predicted price: 3522 CNY
Huobi's actual price (L+H)/2: 3479 CNY
Error: 43 CNY

Bitstamp's predicted price: 575 USD
Bitstamp's actual price (L+H)/2: 572 USD
Error: 3 USD

The Huobi prediction in question is the rightmost blue rectangle on the chart below.  The light blue-gray rectangles are the previous predictions.  The orange and grey dots are the True and False Slumber Points, the mean Huobi prices at 19:00 UTC every day.  The orange line is the trend that was assumed for the prediction.


The following chart shows the Bitstamp prices and predictions. The orange and grey dots are Huobi's prices at 19:00 UTC every day, divided by R = 6.12.  The orange line is the trend used in the prediction, which is Huobi's trend divided by R (6.40 for Feb/07--09, 6.12 for all other times).

For some months I contributed work to Wikimapia, and in the end I was banned after a heated discussion with the unpaid moderators (they wanted me to delete a couple of weeks of work that violated some rule they had just made up, and I refused.)

I bring this up because I saw reference to the use of unpaid, allegedly bossy moderators by BTC-e, and because Wikimapia is a private Russian company (a fact that I did not know when I joined) owned by two young programmers/entrepreneurs.  Could it be that... 

Yes, that would be the most logical approach, methinks.

Suppose the client deposited 50 BTC when the price was 10$,  and by trading inside MtGOX he managed to have 1000 BTC and 2000$ in his account at closing time, having withdrawn 30$ at some point.  Methinks that he entitled to get back only the 50 x 10$ - 30$ = 470$ that he put in, not the 1000 x 500$ + 2000$ = 502,000$ that he thought he had.  Makes sense?

EDIT: However, courts use a "logic" that is quite different from the usual sense of the word.

I don't know what Japanese Law says.

But, logically, a client depositing BTC in an exchange should be no different than, say, someone lending their car to a used car dealership, to be paid if and when the car is sold, or to have it back if it isn't.

In both cases the guy handed over his property but expected to have it (or something else) back eventually, so he should be considered a creditor.  Hopefully he can prove his claim to the liquidators by showing the contract.

Not even logic tells how to value that loan when the liquidators can't return the item itself, of when the item was damaged or lost value while in the possession of the liquidated company.  Presumably the laws and traditions have defined that.

It has been claimed that the theft was done by hackers who manipulated the BTC withdrawal transactions issued by MtGOX in such a way that the transaction succeeded but MtGOX was led to believe that it hadn't, so it credited the amount back to the client's account.

Has anyone identified any specific instance of this "malleate and get refunded" trick being used?  Or is that just a theory made up by the "crowd detectives"?

Right on.

Which appears to be what the "core bitcoin community" desperately wants in the case of MtGOX.  Why aren't they clamoring for a criminal investigation?

Bythe way, it should be easy to find and demonstrate specific instances of use of the "malleate request and get refunded" trick. Perhaps those examples can be found even without the cooperation of MtGOX? Have any such examples been published, or is that still only a theory?

You mean late november?  The April peak was passed on Oct/30.

Replace "bitcoin" in that chart with "Yugoslavian postage stamps", it will "prove" that those stamps may be worth a fortune one day.

The little detail that is missing in that "proof" is why is why the key word in that chart is "bitcoin", rather than "litecoin", "GoogleCoin", "WellsFargoCoin", "USACoin", or even "Yugoslavian postage stamps".  Or the old US dollar.

AFAIK the main liabilities are what MtGOX owes to their clients.  Isn't that so?

It seems that one smiley was not enough, so:     

The fact that MtGOX filed for (and got?) "bankruptcy protection" rather than "bankrupcty" is very depressing. 

If I understand correctly, it means that no one will be looking into MtGOX books and files for months, maybe years.  We will not know what really happened, as Mark will be free to continue lying as he has in the past.  Any other people who may also have been involved in the loss will walk away free and unsuspected.  The police will not be called to investigate the "theft", and MtGOX clients will probably get no additional information from Mark that could help them track down the thief.  We will not know whether any other exchanges of bitcoin-based enterprises were involved, or may have fallen into the same trap. 

By the way, I applaud all the other exchange owners who, realizing the importance of public trust for the survival of bitcoin and hence of their business, have promptly disclosed their financial positions, and proved that they do own enough bitcoins to cover all the BTC account balances of their clients.  I am anxiously waiting for the reports of the external auditors that they have hired to check their books.  <---[ note the smiley ]

Indeed it seems so.  That is very bearish  since it means that there will be more press releases from Mark.  The last two appear to have resulted in permanent drops of ~350 CNY at Huobi...

Seems to have been just a temporary glitch of their webserver (and a bit of healthy paranoia).