I suppose you are right, for the readout.  I was thinking of the first step, exposing the chip.

Could it be Willframium (74) or Dafnium (72)?

PS, about the distribution of MtGOX spoils:


There is no queue, except that defaulted employee salaries are to be paid first, then suppliers etc., then the clients, and the managers last.  The first two have been paid already, and there will be nothing left for the managers anyway.

Among the clients, Kobayashi will first gather and validate all the claims, then he will divide the remaining assets proportional to the claims.  So everybody should receive around 20% of their claims.  However, it is not clear yet how the claims will be defined.

Guess, just for guessing:

To have a positive effect, this auction would have to repeat the outcome of the previous one: a single winner, who can convince the market that he bought for a "good price" and does not intend to dump the coins.

However, that seems a bit unlikely, because:

* There are almost twice as many coins being auctioned this time, and twice as many coming in a few months.

* There seems to be much less excitement this time about those coins. (Last time, some even argued that those coins would have extra value as collectibles -- "the" coins from "the" Silk Road -- and/or for having been blessed by the US government. I have seen no such claims this time.)

* Therefore, it is more likely that, this time, there will be several winners.

* There is even a small chance that some lots will be unsold. (AFAIK, the USMS can ignore bids for any reason, including them being too low.)

* If there are several winners, some of them may remain unknown.

* If there are several winners, or unknown winners, or unsold lots, the market will probably assume that the coins were bought below market -- suggesting that the big players are bearish;

* If the market thinks that some of the coins were bought below market, it will fear that they be dumped for profit.

Moreover, the price increase after the previous outcome was announced only reversed the drop that occurred when the auction was announced.  There was no such drop this time, so why should there be a recovery?

Thus, if I had to guess, I would guess "no effect, or a drop".

Partly wishful thinking... some of the victims desperately want those bitcoins to be returned as bitcoin, and Kraken obviously wants that too (and force all victime to open an account with them). But there is no decision yet.  AFAIK the law requires all refunds to be in yen. Kobayashi said that he will look into it, and that has been "translated" into "will do".

If the thief were to buy the necessary equipment, I would guess that it would cost at least tens of thousands of dollars, perhaps hundreds of thousands. (For starters, he would have to drill open the processor chip's enclosure without damaging the chip itself. That would require a good microscope, a super-steady drill, micromanipulators...)  Therefore, that attack would be profitable only if the expected payoff was in the thousands of BTC.

However, the thief may be able to "borrow" the equipment from some physics or microelectronics research lab.  In that case, the thief may be willing to attack smaller targets.

Don't you think that the guy in that meme looks a bit like a mummy?

MtGOX: Report on the 2nd meeting of former clients with the bankruptcy trustee Kobayashi:
http://www.mtgoxprotest.com/
Some highlights:
* Kobayashi is trying to recover 13 M USD that Mark took from MtGOX for services, loans etc -- but he is resisting.
* The auditing firm concluded that the MtGOX database has been adulterated, and they don't know what to do.
* Kraken paid 300'000 USD to Kobayashi (not the other way around) to have a role in the investigations.

Good report!

I disagree with the assessment that no progress has been made.  It may be less than what the creditors expected, but is more than what I expected.  Even simple bankruptcy procedures are slow, and this one is quite unusual and complicated.  Kobayashi must folow legal procedures at every step, document his actions and other people's reactions, give sufficient time for formal replies...

I find it quite encouraging that Kobayashi is actively trying to get back the money that Mark took:


I guess that the "legal action" in the last sentence would be criminal charges for fraudulent management (when managers spend lots of company money on their own salaries,  or in other ways that will end up in their pockets, while creditors are unpaid).  In that case his personal properties will be seized and auctioned (as they did with Madoff).

On the other hand, it is indeed likely that most of that money was spent and cannot be recovered.  Unless Mark, threatened with jail time, suddenly "finds another old format bitcoin wallet that he had forgotten about"

My reading is also that Kobayashi and the consultants that he hired are working hard enough, trying to make sense of MtGOX's  database and other records.  AFAIK, this was the first reliable confirmation ever that the database was compromised.  Another reason to expect that mark will face criminal proceedings.


Kobayashi already said that the all files were secured as soon as he could, with the help of experts from Fujitsu, and copies were given to the consultants.  Mark and/or other employees may have doctored the records before the trustee took over, but I do not see any danger that he could alter or erase anything now.

It is quite natural to interrogate the management of a failed company about its operations, and the organization and meaning of its records.   Those statements are usually taken under oath, so Mark would face additional criminal charges (perjury, contempt of court, obstruction of justice...) if he were caught lying or trying to sidetrack the investigation.  However, depending on the local laws, he may have the right to refuse to provide information that would incriminate himsef.


Unfortunately, creating multi-layer companies is a standard trick that sleazy entrepreneurs often use to dodge the laws.  Thus they can let debts, liabilities, and unpaid taxes pile up in one company, which is destined for bankruptcy, while transferring its revenue to the other company.

For the purposes of bankruptcy, and perhaps other civil proceedings, Tibanne is just another company that provided services to MtGOX.  While MtGOX was insolvent and, for that reason, had to be liquidated, Tibanne is doing pretty well and has no debts.  I guess that this shielding will be ineffective if Mark (not MtGOX) is charged with fraudulent management ("piercing the corporate veil").

On the other hand, I was disappointed by the lack of any questions about the accounting method that will be used to define the claim of each client.  Is everybody still assuming that his claim is just his final MtGOX account balance?  There may be unwelcome surprises there.

Finally, I cannot stop thinking that some of the alleged victims may in fact be accomplices -- e.g. clients who got non-existent coins and/or money credited to their accounts.  The database may have been doctored to hide fraudulent trading and accounting.

I don't know about the electron microscope specifically, but surely one can do it with suitable scientific equipment. Not with something that you but at Radio Shack, though.

Seems I must correct my resumé too. "I bravely served my country during the Gulf War." There.

A syndicate is interesting for bidders who cannot afford to bid for an entire lot (1000 BTC, correct?).  I understand that the syndicate organizers combine small bids of several clients into 1000-BTC bids, perhaps providing their own bids to fill the gaps.

If someone intends to buy several thousand BTC,  I don't see any obvious advantage in joining a syndicate.  Is there?

Perhaps he intends to buy exactly 7013 BTC, so he will bid for 7 lots, and join a syndicate for the last 13 BTC.

Perhaps he is taking part in the syndicate just to lend it his prestige.

is there any way to say in this thread "I know what you mean" without asking a question?

Actually I was a teacher at a public university at the time, so I was not stretching the truth, not a little bit.  

EDIT: Actually, I had to stretch the dates of Desert Storm by one or two years in order to make my claim be true.  But that is within the rules of the game, isn't it?

Wait, I did not say that I served my country *in the armed forces*, did I? 

Two guys at MIT looked at the relevant logs and concluded that most attempts to exploit the "malelability bug" came only after Mark blamed it for the loss; and at most a couple hundred BTC could have been lost that way:
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/526161/the-troubling-holes-in-mtgoxs-account-of-how-it-lost-600-million-in-bitcoins/


Like the malelability bug, the gag order may be only an excuse.  But he surely must have been advised by his lawyers to keep his mouth firmly shut.  That is standard legal advice for anyone in his situation.

If other people are involved, with or without his cumplicity, perhaps he is silent for fear of physical consequences.  Someone who steals such a large sum will have the motivation and the means to murder anyone who threatens his loot and freedom.  (Note, for example, that Ross Ulbricht is charged with trying to hire a hitman to take out someone who was blackmailing him; whether it is true or not, it is quite plausible.)

It is hard to understand how he could have, all alone, made the coins vanish so completely that the crowd detectives still cannot locate them in the blockchain, even with the help of the leaked database.  


As far as I know, there was no note or any other evidence clearly indicating a suicide, nor any specific cause.  Someone who was close to her implied that she was somewhat "down" on the previous day, but nothing specific.  Brock Pierce later called her friends for an evening of remembrance or something in Los Angeles.  I have not read anything coming from her family about possible reasons for her death.

I find it hard to believe that she would kill herself for advising someone to put money into MtGOX.  She was hardly alone in making that mistake, and every investment advice has at least 50% chance of being disastrous .  Although she was involved with virtual currencies in general, AFAIK she was not really a "bitcoin evangelist" that would push reluctant investors into bitcoin.  

Wow, today I learned that I served my country bravely during Operation Desert Storm and Operation Desert Shield.  I must put that in my resumé.

And I studied Venetian 12 hours a day during the Korean War, but I think that I will leave that out for now.

The price recovered on June 30, when the USMS announced that one bidder got all the lots.  Most people concluded that his bid was above market.

The price then started a slow decline, that got worse only after one month.  I don't think that this decline was related to the auction.  I rather see it as a continuation of the descending trend that dominated from February to April.

News say that he is taking part in a syndicate.  Doesn't that mean that he intends to buy less than 1 lot (1000 BTC)?
https://medium.com/@MirrorHQ/mirror-creates-syndicate-for-the-december-2014-usms-bitcoin-auction-45870def4f91

Someone from BFL at some bitcoin conference (to stay in the forum's topic), you mean?