Bitcoins are officially donkdown

[Belly Buster]

Mercifully the declared bankruptcy. The remaining cash may be gone though!! http://my.chicagotribune.com/#sectio.../p2p-79472551/

When they checkled Monday 30m USD was missing. Time to bring some forensic auditors in. The crisis document mentioned the 30m of fiat on hand so that may have walked out the door.

"It also said there was a discrepancy of 2.8 billion yen ($27.4 million) in its bank accounts when it checked on Monday. Junko Suetomi, a lawyer with Baker & MacKenzie, said she could not comment on the balances of foreign bank accounts held by the company."

popcorn.gif

This shit is HOF. You can dream up a technical explanation for how the bitcoins might be missing, but how the fuck can you lose USD30m + JPY2800m as well. Holy shit those guys are fucked now. The feds might not give a shit about bitcoins going missing but when the cash goes missing that is a different story.

This should be a stock PFA image:

[Belly Buster]

All the benefits of an underlying commodity but with a big lump of added risk that your coins will likely get stolen.

There needs to be a 3 day waiting/clearing period or 2 step process on non retail transactions or some similar safety. But you're right. Experience is proving that flawless security is still the holy grail.

It's not just the ledger/malleability issue, but the fact that cryptos are just too easy to lose/steal in too many different ways.

[monsterj]

There needs to be a 3 day waiting/clearing period or 2 step process on non retail transactions or some similar safety. But you're right. Experience is proving that flawless security is still the holy grail.

It's not just the ledger/malleability issue, but the fact that cryptos are just too easy to lose/steal in too many different ways.

Isn't there a legit chance the bitcoins are just lost like some sort of sunken treasure? Never to be recovered again?

[Crowe Diddly]

It's not just the ledger/malleability issue, but the fact that cryptos are just too easy to lose/steal in too many different ways.

Isn't there a legit chance the bitcoins are just lost like some sort of sunken treasure? Never to be recovered again?

Without a doubt, at least some of them are. Maybe more like Han Solo in carbonite than sunken treasure, if you had no way of unfreezing him. You know he's there, you can see him, you can still measure him and everything, but if you can't unfreeze him, he's entirely useless.

If you have bitcoins in your wallet, then destroy your wallet and forget your password, those coins spend the rest of their virtual eternity right where they are, in a non-existant wallet.

If you are a criminal, and say, have 10,000 btc in a wallet, and everyone knows you stole that shit from Gox or where ever. If you know the FBI or Secret Service or whoever the fuck is just waiting for you to do something, ANYTHING with those coins so they can follow your trail, you may very well decide to never touch them again, which is essentially the same as destroying them without actually destroying them (because they can't be destroyed, obv, they can just become unusable/lost).

[Salty_Aus]

How do you misplace 850,000 Bitcoins?

This was not a revolutionary exploit I don't believe, was first discovered at least 18 months ago.

Nobody is that stupid.
He gave someone the keys, he has to be in on it... along with a couple of others in the company.

Still think they were stealing coins for the last four weeks, but nobody is going to really scrutinize this as they'll be looking at how the 850,000 coins were stolen.
They had only 2,000 coins in the end I think. What did they have a month ago?

Plead stupid and disappear.

[Sanlmar]

Will kids collect old Bitcoins as a hobby like old stamps?

Can you play liars poker with the block chain?

[Salty_Aus]

Isn't there a legit chance the bitcoins are just lost like some sort of sunken treasure? Never to be recovered again?

Without a doubt, at least some of them are. Maybe more like Han Solo in carbonite than sunken treasure, if you had no way of unfreezing him. You know he's there, you can see him, you can still measure him and everything, but if you can't unfreeze him, he's entirely useless.

If you have bitcoins in your wallet, then destroy your wallet and forget your password, those coins spend the rest of their virtual eternity right where they are, in a non-existant wallet.

If you are a criminal, and say, have 10,000 btc in a wallet, and everyone knows you stole that shit from Gox or where ever. If you know the FBI or Secret Service or whoever the fuck is just waiting for you to do something, ANYTHING with those coins so they can follow your trail, you may very well decide to never touch them again, which is essentially the same as destroying them without actually destroying them (because they can't be destroyed, obv, they can just become unusable/lost).

Tumble them a few times and leak them back through legit exchanges.
Sell them to the twins on the cheap? Play at sealswithclubs maybe?
Or better still start a Bitcoin exchange.

[sonatine]

Despite significant turmoil in the Bitcoin markets this week, the recently sworn-in chair of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, told Congress it was not the place of the U.S. central banking system to regulate the online cryptocurrency.

"To the best of my knowledge there's no intersection at all in any way between Bitcoin and banks that the Federal Reserve has the ability to supervise and regulate," Yellen said. "So the Federal Reserve simply does not have authority to supervise or regulate Bitcoin in any way."

This comes following a turbulent week in which many U.S. politicians and prosecutors voiced an interest in bringing a regulatory hammer down on Bitcoin exchanges like Mt. Gox.

The Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, which used to be the world's leading Bitcoin exchange, simply vanished earlier this week. For weeks prior, the exchange had halted all withdrawals for fear that hackers had breached their security measures to steal Bitcoin. The firm officially filed for bankruptcy in Japan on Friday, admitting that it had lost 750,000 of its investors bitcoins and 100,000 of its own. At current trading prices, that total amounts to roughly $480 million. That's roughly 7 percent of the global Bitcoin economy.

This massive virtual banking breakdown has lead some U.S. politicians, like Sen. Joe Machin, D-W.Va., to call on the government to issue a total ban on Bitcoin and other digital currencies. Machin criticized Bitcoin as a "highly unstable and disruptive" economic force.

"I urge the regulators to work together, act quickly, and prohibit this dangerous currency from harming hard-working Americans," Machin said in a written statement.

Meanwhile, a Manhattan District Attorney's office has reportedly subpoenaed Mt. Gox and other Bitcoin businesses and exchanges. CNET said they are investigating the denial-of-service attacks that forced Mt. Gox to suspend withdrawals, precipitating the current crisis.

For those who've lost substantial amounts of money in the Mt. Gox bankruptcy, it may be frustrating to find no help from the government. After all, the government, through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, has long been in the habit of insuring America's private accounts to safeguard against just these types of banking calamities. But Bitcoin enthusiast have long trumpeted the virtue of a currency that is beyond the reach of government regulators.

It seems Yellen agrees, telling Senate Banking Committee that Bitcoin was simply outside the jurisdiction of the Federal Reserve.

"The Fed doesn't have authority with respect to Bitcoin," Yellen said. "But certainly it would be appropriate for Congress to ask questions about what the right legal structure would be for digital currencies."

"It's not so easy to regulate Bitcoin because there's no central issuer or network operator," she continued. "This is a decentralized global [entity] … we're looking at this."

In the past, the U.S. relationship with Bitcoin has been lukewarm but permissible. Though countries like Russia and Iceland have banned the currency from use, the U.S. has always allowed it. However, some users and entities have encountered trouble for running afoul of U.S. money laundering laws by mishandling the currency. That's what happened last year when the Department of Homeland Security seized an American bank account belonging to Mt. Gox.

[Sanlmar]

"Several exchanges have seamlessly picked up the slack, and the market price has shown remarkable resilience. Mt. Gox is in the past, and the brightest minds in the room are hard at work building a responsible and secure future."

Cameron Winklevoss (he's the cute twin)

Moneynews
Winklevoss' Support for Bitcoin Unshaken By Mt. Gox Collapse
Thursday, 27 Feb 2014 07:35 AM

[sonatine]

[NaturalBornHustler]

Jennifer Booton ‏@jbooton 1m

Breaking: #Bitcoin advisory in Mass. to be released in coming weeks will warn consumers about the currency's volatility, lack of insurance

[DRK Star]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ns-pounds.html


I just watched the video of him answering a few questions.


dude sounds like a fucking fat muppet

[DirtyB]

"To the best of my knowledge there's no intersection at all in any way between Bitcoin and banks that the Federal Reserve has the ability to supervise and regulate," Yellen said. "So the Federal Reserve simply does not have authority to supervise or regulate Bitcoin in any way."

That's not the Federal Reserve's job at all. I'm pretty sure that bitcoins are technically a security, and any regulation would be handled by the SEC. One way to look at stocks is that they're a currency backed by a company.

[blueodum]

Since Karpales is in Japan, I believe the correct course of action in Japanese culture after a public shaming is for the CEO to commit seppuku.

[sonatine]

http://www.dailydot.com/lol/jon-stewart-bitcoin-scam/


nice.

[DRK Star]

http://pastebin.com/LPm3jBG7

[sonatine]

http://pastebin.com/LPm3jBG7

I mean.. ok it makes more sense than "oh hackers bled us dry over the course of years for like 99.98% of our cold storage"... but really I still dont quite buy it.

[sonatine]

Its just so delightfully convenient. Suddenly its 100% not the fault of MtGox, its all the big bad US government.

Can anyone else remember an incident where the US gov confiscated almost a half a billion dollars worth of assets but imposed a gag order? And isnt that SR investigation over?

[abrown83]

Its just so delightfully convenient. Suddenly its 100% not the fault of MtGox, its all the big bad US government.

Can anyone else remember an incident where the US gov confiscated almost a half a billion dollars worth of assets but imposed a gag order? And isnt that SR investigation over?

Hasn't gone to trial yet though.

Should be interesting as I assume the US will comment on this at some point.

Mark will obviously be pushed for evidence as well, which he should obviously come out with sooner than later if it exists.

[Detroit]

Its just so delightfully convenient. Suddenly its 100% not the fault of MtGox, its all the big bad US government.

Can anyone else remember an incident where the US gov confiscated almost a half a billion dollars worth of assets but imposed a gag order? And isnt that SR investigation over?

Read 2nd word in everything he wrote.