Bitcoins are officially donkdown

[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.

Oh sure you didn't Druff. Sure you didn't. lol. Give us a fucking break now. You bought your .1 Bitcoin so you could be able to buy real Bitcoin in the future because you thought it would make you money. As usual you were late to the party and lost. Big surprise. Hang it the fuck up and never post about Bitcoin again.

I bought my 0.1 BTC so I could be in place to do a quick buy-sell when everyone panic-sells over the bitcoin crisis du jour, and then release them when the inevitable recovery occurs.

That's still my plan.

I never once said that I thought bitcoin had a long term future. I have said many times that there is a short-term future to flipping them and making a profit.

You know this, and are just trying your best to troll.

[BetCheckBet]

[/B]

Oh sure you didn't Druff. Sure you didn't. lol. Give us a fucking break now. You bought your .1 Bitcoin so you could be able to buy real Bitcoin in the future because you thought it would make you money. As usual you were late to the party and lost. Big surprise. Hang it the fuck up and never post about Bitcoin again.

I bought my 0.1 BTC so I could be in place to do a quick buy-sell when everyone panic-sells over the bitcoin crisis du jour, and then release them when the inevitable recovery occurs.

That's still my plan.

I never once said that I thought bitcoin had a long term future. I have said many times that there is a short-term future to flipping them and making a profit.

You know this, and are just trying your best to troll.

In all fairness Pooh has a point. I myself have been fascinated with bitcoins for quite awhile. I've always maintained its a scam just like ponzis or one of the newer "matrix" models that were a big hit online 8 years ago. On that fact alone I'd never invest in it. Being that this site is meant to out "fraud and scams" it certainly brings up your credibility when you openly take part in things things for short term personal gain despite you warnings others at the same time. Much how like many people kept on promoting UB for their own self interest. I applauded you for calling out bitcoin. The fact that you chose to all of a sudden change your point of view right as the bitcoin bubble began to burst doesn't do you any favours.

Not that you should be specifically to blame cause many others have done so. A shitload of people bought bitcoins at 800-1000. But what Pooh says is definitely valid (despite the fact he trolls you on other things too).

[Dan Druff]

I bought my 0.1 BTC so I could be in place to do a quick buy-sell when everyone panic-sells over the bitcoin crisis du jour, and then release them when the inevitable recovery occurs.

That's still my plan.

I never once said that I thought bitcoin had a long term future. I have said many times that there is a short-term future to flipping them and making a profit.

You know this, and are just trying your best to troll.

In all fairness Pooh has a point. I myself have been fascinated with bitcoins for quite awhile. I've always maintained its a scam just like ponzis or one of the newer "matrix" models that were a big hit online 8 years ago. On that fact alone I'd never invest in it. Being that this site is meant to out "fraud and scams" it certainly brings up your credibility when you openly take part in things things for short term personal gain despite you warnings others at the same time. Much how like many people kept on promoting UB for their own self interest. I applauded you for calling out bitcoin. The fact that you chose to all of a sudden change your point of view right as the bitcoin bubble began to burst doesn't do you any favours.

Not that you should be specifically to blame cause many others have done so. A shitload of people bought bitcoins at 800-1000. But what Pooh says is definitely valid (despite the fact he trolls you on other things too).

I don't think bitcoin is a scam. Perhaps that's where we differ.

I think it's a cute little science project that has blown up into the big time way beyond where it should have, and its flaws are now becoming more and more apparently.

If I want to profit off dumbasses who buy and sell at stupid times, that's no worse than seeking out fish to play at the poker table.

You will never find anywhere that I praise bitcoin and state it has a long term future.

[Pooh]

I troll Druff sometimes because 1) its fun and 2) I believe what I'm actually arguing about. I'll be the first to admit that I like Druff however I disagree strongly with some of the things he does and stands for thus I call him out on it. Everyone should.

For him to openly talk shit about Bitcoin from $2 up to $1000, then all of a sudden want to invest is both comical and stupid as fuck. Now he back tracks.

The one thing I will give Druff big ups for is he will not fuck with you as long as you keep personal shit out of here. You can talk as much shit as you want and he'll deal with it. That's admirable.

That said, if you want opinions on running a business, investing ideas, making money running a forum or real estate I wouldn't recommend contacting Druff. If you want to know how to get shit free from companies who may have fucked up, want customer service advice then Druff is your man.

[JUSTIFIEDhomicide]

I troll Druff sometimes because 1) its fun and 2) I believe what I'm actually arguing about. I'll be the first to admit that I like Druff however I disagree strongly with some of the things he does and stands for thus I call him out on it. Everyone should.

For him to openly talk shit about Bitcoin from $2 up to $1000, then all of a sudden want to invest is both comical and stupid as fuck. Now he back tracks.

The one thing I will give Druff big ups for is he will not fuck with you as long as you keep personal shit out of here. You can talk as much shit as you want and he'll deal with it. That's admirable.

That said, if you want opinions on running a business, investing ideas, making money running a forum or real estate I wouldn't recommend contacting Druff. If you want to know how to get shit free from companies who may have fucked up, want customer service advice then Druff is your man.

: DruffBUTfair

[sonatine]

imo trying to suss out whether or not bitcoin is a scam is basically just philosophy, albeit cheap and obvious philosophy, and a totally irrelevant conversation to 'how can i make money off this'.

[BetCheckBet]

imo trying to suss out whether or not bitcoin is a scam is basically just philosophy, albeit cheap and obvious philosophy, and a totally irrelevant conversation to 'how can i make money off this'.

Someone creates a global unbacked currency in which they own a huge percentage of. Pretty safe to say that fact alone should make it pretty obv. Let alone any other numerous flaws.

[DirtyB]

imo trying to suss out whether or not bitcoin is a scam is basically just philosophy, albeit cheap and obvious philosophy, and a totally irrelevant conversation to 'how can i make money off this'.

Someone creates a global unbacked currency in which they own a huge percentage of. Pretty safe to say that fact alone should make it pretty obv. Let alone any other numerous flaws.

The aspect of bitcoins that I'm most fascinated by is the fact that nobody knows who created it. The mysterious "Satoshi Nakamoto" appears to have mined about a million coins (about 8% of the current total). But he's only ever parted with about 500 of those, and none since he disappeared in April 2011.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/6/429...toshi-nakamoto

So, no, the creator(s) of bitcoin do not appear to have had any interest in making money off of it. At one point, their stash was worth over a billion dollars, and they didn't do anything to capitalize on it. It's also possible that "Satoshi" lost all of his coins in a hard drive crash and cries himself to sleep every night.

[Charham]

this is actually about 10 days old but interesting. A customer flew to Japan to confront MtGox.

Cool looking offices BTW. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comm..._7th_february/

pics:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=465071.0

love the CEO who sits on bouncy balls for pictures, wears tight t shirts to work (when he is fat) and drinks giant dessert coffees in the AM....

[shortbuspoker]

In all fairness Pooh has a point. I myself have been fascinated with bitcoins for quite awhile. I've always maintained its a scam just like cash gifting or live cash game BAPS that were a big hit online 8 years ago. On that fact alone I'd never invest in it.

FYP

[unchainedghost]

That guy from Mt gox looks like a total pickle

[Dan Druff]

So who are all of these dumbasses still buying coins on Gox? Do they not realize what's going on there? Are they delusional enough to believe that Gox will suddenly right the ship and they will double their money selling the bitcoins elsewhere? Is Gox buying the coins themselves at the depressed prices to get back the bitcoins stolen from them?

[BetCheckBet]

So who are all of these dumbasses still buying coins on Gox? Do they not realize what's going on there? Are they delusional enough to believe that Gox will suddenly right the ship and they will double their money selling the bitcoins elsewhere? Is Gox buying the coins themselves at the depressed prices to get back the bitcoins stolen from them?

Probably lots of insider trading. Huge arbitrage options here. Remember lock poker when nobody could get money and pros like Melanie Wiesner were secretly buying money off people accounts because they were given preferential withdrawals? Ya that shit is likely going on here at a much more massive scale.

Even if you aren;t one of the insiders doing this it can be worth the risk given how cheap coins are. If Mtgox really does resume trading as usual some guys will triple their investment in under a month...

[BeerAndPoker]

My take is insider trading as well and I lean strongly to believe the hacker was an inside job whether it be something they planned or a MT Gox worker who decided to steal on there own.

[sonatine]

or orders being backfilled.

[abrown83]

Now is the time to buy on Gox.

Problem fixed and going to begin withdrawing Thursday ....so they say.

Press Release Here

[BeerAndPoker]

Now is the time to buy on Gox.

Problem fixed and going to begin withdrawing Thursday ....so they say.

Press Release Here

That could be good news, we have to wait and see if they really can handle it if people hammer them with large volume of withdrawals?

From that release:

With this new system in place, MtGox should be able to resume withdrawals
soon. At the beginning we will do so at a moderated pace and with new daily/
monthly limits in place to prevent any problems with the new system and to take
into account current market conditions

What I make of that is they will do some withdrawals but for anyone who has a lot locked up with them it could take quite a while to cash out. The current price at the moment is $275. It will be interesting to see where that price goes from this announcement leading up until Thursday, and beyond once people start casing out.

If someone believes that they really have resolved these issues it would probably be wise to not cash out right away because you will get a poorer price then waiting out the people who don't mind cutting some losses trying to cas out immediately. To cut your losses or wait is the question. If it was me I'd base my decision on how much I trust Mt Gox really having the funds since it could mean $250-350 per coin versus $600 from waiting.

[Belly Buster]

Now is the time to buy on Gox.

Problem fixed and going to begin withdrawing Thursday ....so they say.

Press Release Here

When asked if cashout times should improve following the new platform rollout, Lock spokesperson Shane Bridges told pokerfuse that a new cashier “was rolled out prior to the launch with our existing options, and now we have several new options that will roll out in the coming month after the new software goes live.”

[sonatine]

Ive seen exchanges default to the value of coins when doing transfers before. Which is insane but 100% true.

So what you may see is Gox saying Ok you have 3 coins on Gox worth $250 each, and youre transferring to BTC-E where the price is $750, so we are just going to give you .75 bitcoins on BTC-E.

It seems laughable and insane but dont be shocked when it happens.

[Salty_Aus]

Ive seen exchanges default to the value of coins when doing transfers before. Which is insane but 100% true.

So what you may see is Gox saying Ok you have 3 coins on Gox worth $250 each, and youre transferring to BTC-E where the price is $750, so we are just going to give you .75 bitcoins on BTC-E.

It seems laughable and insane but dont be shocked when it happens.

No way thet can do this, you own the BTC not the fiat equivalent... this totally goes against the entire concept of Bitcoins.

If they limit transfers as well as cash withdrawals I'd be very concerned. (especially if it's a low limit)

Might not be too bad a situation for Gox, this super low price on their exchange might permit them to buy themselves out of any shortage of coins cheaply. Nothing stopping them selling a chunk they have in cold storage on a competitors site, and then buying them back on their own exchange.
Set limits and wing it till they're golden.

Regardless, I think it might be the death of Gox.