crime

Online sleuthing by Mt Gox dispossessed throws up few clues

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I just got my telescope. I've been looking for coins all night.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

I have no idea people today were so dumb that they would believe a con scheme like Bit coins would NOT be crooked. Real money is real money. Funny money is funny money. You can't just CREATE new money not based on anything of value to back it up. Sad but really stupid.

-4 ( +3 / -7 )

You can't just CREATE new money not based on anything of value to back it up. Sad but really stupid.

You show your ignorance on this. Governments create money all the time without anything of value to back it up. In fact, most money doesn't have anything backing it up. Back when money was first created, it was backed by an equal value of gold, but that went out years and years ago.

4 ( +7 / -3 )

ChrisGerSan

" You can't just CREATE new money not based on anything of value to back it up. Sad but really stupid. "

But that is what governments all around the world are doing. And even bragging ab out it. "Quantitative easing" and "Abenomics" are nothing but euphemisms for exactly this. If you disagree, explain how.

The only difference to Bitcoin is there is no Bitcoin banking law that insures depositors... but even that is broken in the real world, just look what the EU did to Cyprus.

5 ( +5 / -0 )

"With one touch of a mouse, a hacker managed to transfer 25,000 credits of online currency – then worth almost $500,000 dollars – to his own account. The transfer is visible on a public register; the original owner has publicised his plight online, but to no avail – the money is gone.

This hack, which happened in June 2011, was the first major online heist for Bitcoins" source: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jun/22/bitcoins-how-do-they-work

Bitcoin was bent in 2011, who is surprised Bitcoin is bent now?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Still no major news outlets reporting the source code, entire database of personal information and even internal recordings with the bank was stolen and distributed on the net.

http://pastebin.com/W8B3CGiN

http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/03/mt-gox-source-code-leaked-by-hackers-along-with-team-information-customer-data/

-3 ( +0 / -3 )

You could argue that the money governments create is backed up by their ability to tax the population: they can seize your assets, by force if necessary, to pay their debts.

Not being under the control of a government Bitcoin is backed by nothing at all. It is only the limited number, or scarcity, of Bitcoins that gives them their perceived value.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

Not being under the control of a government Bitcoin is backed by nothing at all.

Not exactly. Just like a government backed currency is only backed by people's belief that the currency has value, bitcoin's value is backed by the people's belief that it has value. As long as people perceive it to have value, it does. The only difference is usually people have more confidence in a government backed currency than they do in bitcoin, which means that usually a government backed currency will have the perception of being more stable.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

I have no idea people today were so dumb that they would believe a con scheme like Bit coins would NOT be crooked.

Bitcoin is not crooked; it's open source, available for anyone to investigate to their heart's content.

Because there is a lot of value involved there are quite a few crooks involved, and a lot of people getting way over their heads in this. The guys at Mt Gox are probably more of the latter than the former, though who really knows.

There's no inherent problem with bitcoin, though, anymore than there is with the yen.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Because there is a lot of value involved there are quite a few crooks involved, and a lot of people getting way over their heads in this. The guys at Mt Gox are probably more of the latter than the former, though who really knows.

From all accounts, it's the latter. Apparently Karples wrote the program that he was using in Mt. Gox (which is different from the Bitcoin protocol), and didn't get it security tested. Then his program got hacked, and his bitcoins stolen.

The guy is a programmer who started out selling Magic The Gathering cards. He got in way above his head with multimillions of dollars worth of bitcoins. The sad thing is that he had the money to hire people to do what he didn't do well, he should have done so, which would have prevented all of this.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

As I wrote before it's very easy to make half billion dollars in within a few minutes. Digital cryptocurrency transaction is anonymous and move around untraceable. You can blame virus and hacker after you finished your business and just infested with virus and open the back door. I'll say Mt Gox and FlexCoin are not the last scandal. Wait and see Bitcoin mess will come more in future.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

You're correct, there will be further problems in the future, as there will always be people trying to steal when big dollar amounts are at hand. However, there have not been any problems with the bitcoin protocol itself so far, the problems have been with technology used in interacting with the bitcoin protocol.

Think of it like an app that allows you to read your Facebook posts, but is not an app put out by Facebook the company. If that app gets hacked, it does not mean that Facebook has been hacked, node does it mean that Facebook is insecure. Mt Gox made an 'app' that integrated with the bitcoin protocol, and their 'app' got hacked. Bitcoin itself is still as secure as it was.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Digital cryptocurrency transaction is anonymous and move around untraceable.

Whoa whoa whoa, bitcoin is the exact opposite of untraceable! Every transaction is public - every single one. The users themselves are in theory untraceable but not if they want to "cash out" their bitcoins to a more traditional currency. In that case it would be quite easy to identify the user should an investigator need to.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

@CrisGerSan

I have no idea people today were so dumb that they would believe a con scheme like Bit coins would NOT be crooked.

Let me get this right, you're going beyond any arguments about whether bitcoin might or might not fail as an attempt at a currency, but actually arguing that the whole thing - Bitcoin (and not just MtGox) is a con scheme? Orchestrated by who, and how?

I'd love to hear your theories, because I'd prefer not to have to believe that you simply dismiss everything that you don't understand as a con scheme.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

Kobuta Chan: Digital cryptocurrency transaction is anonymous and move around untraceable.

Stop saying what you don't understand, every single transaction is traceable, that is how bitcoin works, here it is in realtime:

https://blockchain.info

-3 ( +1 / -4 )

Apparently, Mt. Gox was under 150,000 attacks a second from hackers. I'm amazed it's even lasted this long.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

@davestrousers

I appreciated your earlier links to informative websites about the cold wallet storage protocols etc. I wish you understand I am not totally against bitcoin as an idea - in fact I find it appealing. But I can't get past the thoughts that this is all some sort of elaborate scam.

I'd love to hear your theories.

This is not so much a "theory" as it is a thought that occurred to me. If the original creators of the bitcoin system were criminals they could have left a backdoor or two that only they would know about. When the price of the bitcoin reached a level that they felt happy about (surely $1000 would qualify) they could simply access the backdoor and ....

The anonymity of the creators is a big stumbling block for me. And all the recent news about Satoshi Nakamoto has only made me more suspicious. Why hide the details about by whom and how this was set up?

1 ( +2 / -1 )

If the original creators of the bitcoin system were criminals they could have left a backdoor or two that only they would know about.

The protocol is published, open source. If you don't trust it, analyze it yourself as many others have done. There's no mystery here.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Bitcoins are even more disparately distributed than real money. Why should I support another system that benefits mostly the rich?

-3 ( +0 / -3 )

Funny how all Mt Gox stories are listed as Crime on JT

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

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