Is "finshaggy" this person: http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=finshaggy

It may have been a suicide, but "losing a lot of investor money due to bad decisions" does not seem to be enough reason for killing oneself in that community.   She had not been charged with anything it seems.  Also, the timing was not right, was it?  It was a while before the extent of the loss at MtGOX became known, IIRC.

Item 3.3(c)(iv) is not about managing assets (that is indeed fine), but about amending the Bylaws.  Like, changing the goals of the Foundation to promoting UFO research, Aryan supremacy, hot tub parties, or whatever.  It seems that he Board of Directors can do that without even telling the members, correct?

Before filing for bankruptcy, Mark had a reorganization plan written by some consultant, and then tried to find investors who could "buy" it and save the company.  I recall that at least one of the potential investors that he contacted came public about it, saying that they had dismissed the proposal immediately after realizing the magnitude of the problem. 

That was before Ms. Radtke's suicide, correct?

Which people or companies do we know that he contacted at the time?

SecondMarket is doing just that.  They earn money from keeping bitcoins locked up.

If old coins get dumped on the market, volume will probably go up, at least for a while, while price goes down.  We saw that in every past crash.  Exchanges will make more money during price crashes, than when the price is stable.  

BitPay will make money even if the BTC price falls, as long as there are people buying with bitcoin.

SecondMarket's BIT could make a lot of money with falling BTC price, if they didn't  actually buy the coins when clients invest in them, but only when they liquidate.  I don't know the exact terms of their contract (they are revealed only to investors) and whether they could be prosecuted for failing to honor it.

And ruin my trading record?   Not likely soon...

Thanks.  I read, among other things:

Who in sane mind would join an association that has something like 3.3(c)(iv) in its bylaws?

I can see that there are many new enterprises trying to take money out of bitcoin users' pockets. 

BitPay says that they made 100 M USD last year, which means at least 3 M USD of fee revenue, right?  SecondMarket BIT bought over 100'000 BTC for its investors, it must have made several M USD from fees and smart buying, with hardly any cost.  Large miners seem to be still profitable, exchanges earn lots in fees, etc.  If a few million of the hoarded coins start moving, service companies could easily skim off hundred of millions of dollars from that traffic.

That table omits lakeBTC, which is Shanghai-based but trades in USD, and last time I checked had about as much volume as Bitstamp, BTC-e and Bitfinex.

Thanks for the information.  "This" being bitcoin in general, bitcoin exchange regulation, or specifically the MtGOX bankruptcy?

You mean, a government would take money from taxpayers and give it to creditors/investors of a failed private company, in the expectation that the police may be able to recover what was stolen from it?

That sort of thing just does not happen, and should not happen.  Clients will get those missing MtGOX assets only IF and AFTER they are recovered.  Which, in the case of bitcoins, unfortunately, may be impossible by design.

I really do not understand why people still entertain the idea of MtGOX being ressurected.  When someone dies, normal people lament the loss, but do not dream of digging out the corpse and bringing it back to life.  Same when companies die.

Reviving MtGOX makes as much sense as reviving Enron, or Madoff's fund.  After the remaining assets are liquidated, nothing will remain of it except the memory of a colossal disaster.  Any exchange that intends to fill the void left by its demise will do all it can do dissociate itself from that memory. (And there is not even a void to be filled, really.)

I fully agree that, in general, one needs to trust other people in order to live.  Trust however is not automatic.

One way to have trust is to know the other person very well; and that means personally, for several years.  Just watching a few interviews on YouTube is not enough. The clients obviously did not know Mark well enough.  Danny Brewster's employees and associates did not know him at all.

The other way to have trust in someone is making sure that the other person will be punished if he violates the trust.  This precaution becomes more important when a large pile of money is involved, since that often changes people's character for worse. 

Due to the way bitcoin works, this last premise does not exist for most bitcoin enterprises.  Their owners/managers can easily defraud their clients/investors in many ways, with no risk of being punished in any way.  It is no wonder that bitcoin has enabled so many scams and heists, in spite of its short history and small user base.

Indeed, because they allowed MtGOX to function like a bank plus stock/commodity exchange, without it being registered regulated as such.  To that extent they are indeed to blame.

I remember reading somewhere that, according to their bylaws, board members had to attend the meetings in person; but that requirement was promptly waived for Mark Karpelès.  Is that correct?  If so, they will probably just change the rules again, no?

I do not intend to "blame the victim"; what happened at MtGOX was a crime, the only questions remaining are by whom, when and how.  (Since the "transaction malleability hack" has already been shown to be another lie, the management is not out of suspicion yet.)

But, still, the clients should be embarassed for trusting their money to a business that they knew was intentionally outside the government's control -- opaque, unregulated, unaudited, usecured, and meant to be that way.

Governments, police, laws, and regulations were not created for fun.  They were invented precisely to prevent scams like MtGOX. 

I see the sarcasm...  but actually I think that there was a cause for the rally.

Only my feeling is that the cause was limited to the Chinese market; and it was not a general uplifting of the mood of all Chinese (or non-Chinese) traders, but rather something that convinced a subset of the Chinese traders to buy.  Perhaps some inside information, something posted on some Chinese forum, some news or exchange policy adjustments that benefitted only a few traders, some rumor that only a few traders took seriously, etc. 

So I would think that the rise will be limited, although I would rather not guess what the limit will be, nor whether the rise will be permanent or temporary.

I do not think that the rally is due to "increased adoption" outside China (the "West").  All those stores that accept bitcoin via BitPay are attractive only to people who already own bitcoins.  I do not see how they could create increased demand for bitcoin at the exchanges; they will only convince some holders to sell a few of their bitcoins there (through Bitpay).

I can't see any sign of increased adoption in the plots of Transactions Per Day and Total Transaction Output Per Day on blockchain.info.  In fact, since there are no fees (yet) for bitcoin transactions, probably more than 90% of that blockchain volume is fake anyway.   

Still no answer to this question:
Nor to several other questions...

Is that a fact, or mere supposition? At some point the employees of a failed company just find themselves without a job.

Some free comments, worth every cent of the price:

* Once you realize that someone has told a flat lie (such as "MtGOX is solvent and your coins are safe"), you should ignore anything else he may say or write, and should not waste any time interacting with him.  If the MtGOX website is still under Mark's control, you should not trust anything you read there.  The court-appointed liquidators are the only persons you should interact with.

* Legal procedures usually require physical paper documents.  E-mails and electronic documents can be easily faked and usually have no legal status. Paper documents at least can be subjected to forensic analysis.  So it is not surprising that the liquidators want paper mail.

* When a company goes bankrupt, creditors normally recover only part of their due, and only after a long time and with significant paperwork.  That is normal; it is the reason why people are usually very unhappy when a company that owes them money goes bankrupt.

* For that reason, creditors who are owed modest sums often do not bother to file a claim; they just write off the entire amount as a loss and move on.

* If the leaked database is to be trusted, MtGOX had less than 20'000 accounts with 1 BTC or more in them.  So it is likely that only a few thousand clients will bother to file a claim.

* Creditors should file criminal charges, or press the liquidators to do so, if they think that the management was dishonest and may have taken possession of company assets.  That will take even longer, and may not be very fruitful, but it is important that it be done -- to discourage them and other scammers to keep scamming.

* Returning a small fraction of what the victims lost, after they have internalized their loss, is a psychological trick that scammers frequently use.  The victims get so happy to get something back that they lose interest in prosecuting the scammer, even though he still has taken a lot of money from them.

* The Japanese government has no obligation to help MtGOX customers, beyond providing the standard legal mechanisms for handling bankruptcies; and has nothing to be ashamed of.  It is the people who chose to put their money into bitcoin, and entrust their bitcoins to Mark, who should be embarrassed about the affair.

Huobi stopped updating on bitcoinwisdom 15 minutes ago.

Great move! 

According to another post, he plans to use the coins to create a memorial to... Tim McVeigh?

With friends like that, Bitcoin doesn't need me, does it? 

Indeed, I admit that "vouched" is too strong.  He just let his name be used to legitimize the enterprise, and (like the other chief officers) did not see anything wrong with it until after the CEO ran away.  Only then did people read the "prospectus" critically and noticed that there never was a real business plan.

I do not think at all that Andreas was conscious of the scam until that time.  Also, as a tech guy he could be excused for not noticing the financial problems (unlike economist Tuur Demeester).  But the episode does not inspire confidence in his competence as auditor, does it?