Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
When I first posted Gox's statement about transaction malleability here, I asked if people thought it was true, partially true (meaning a true statement but not the whole story), or false.
I asked this because I personally believed it to be partially true, and that is looking increasingly clear.
Transaction malleability is a real thing, of course, but the question is why the other exchanges have dealt with it mostly unscathed, while Gox still has withdrawals disabled and a price that has slipped to about 38% of the other major exchanges.
Gox also refuses to answer any real questions, and most disturbingly, does not seem interested in providing any form of proof or assurance that they really have the bitcoins they claim.
Whenever a company or individual is accused of wrongdoing, and their response is either silence or vague/evasive statements, that's almost 100% indicative that they are guilty. If you are innocent, you shout it from the mountaintops and bend over backwards to show proof of your innocence. Gox is pretty much doing the opposite.
Perhaps transaction malleability is the whole story, but not in the way Gox wants everyone to believe. Perhaps they had a massive amount of bitcoins stolen that way, and now they're trying to stall, Full Tilt style, and hope enough time passes to where they can buy them back somehow. Maybe they are even hoping their own price crashes enough to where it becomes cheap enough to buy back a lot of coins from people, thus extricating themselves from the situation.
Gox has now sufficiently scared everyone to where they will never be trusted again. If withdrawals are ever enabled, there will be a mass exodus, with people transferring their coins elsewhere and never touching Gox again. This will also create a likely crash on the other exchanges, as you have to imagine that a lot of people will just want to sell their bitcoins and GTFO out of this whole mess. This will be compounded by the people who bought very cheap coins on Gox and simply want to cash out immediately for a nice profit.
Either way, this situation doesn't look good. Best case, Gox gets back on its feet, enables withdrawals, and you will see a mass transfer-and-sell-off occur, crashing BTC prices. Worst case, it comes out that Gox is broke and its bitcoins gone, creating a big wave of public distrust of bitcoin, again causing a crash.
I have never believed bitcoin to have a sustainable future in its current form. It just isn't possible. It's too fragile, too vulnerable, too tempramental, and too dangerous for the US government to allow to continue unchecked and unregulated. At one point I thought that the future of bitcoin would involve a highly regulated situation which resembles today's anonymous and uncontrolled BTC economy, but now I'm thinking that a few years from now, people will discuss bitcoin the same way we talked about disco in 1984.