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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.


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.

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...

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?

You could post the explanation on this forum (here, or as a new thread) and link to that post.

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. 

Google saves those (like me) who need lasers:
http://www.comicvine.com/articles/if-knowing-is-half-the-battle-whats-the-other-half/1100-139077/

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.

Well, I am confused; does that mean that it is working?

Read carefuly, he actually said that India will completely replace the rupee for Dogecoin in 2015.  He did not want to be bested by the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia, who, as reported previously here, said that he will stand up to Putin and demand the immediate replacement of the ruble by Litecoin.

That's the idea, confuse the enemy; don' t you see?

Why does that video remind me of Idiocracy?

Isn't the name "MacBook" quaint, considering that books no longer look like laptops?

Does it even make sense to seek Enlightenment in some concoction obtained from the Dark Web?

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.

Can one buy mandrake root on the Dark Web?