This is a really sad moment but let's hope it teaches everybody lessons. One very nice thing about cryptocurrencies is that they can be kept safe in cold storage without too much trouble. Some people kept all their coins there. It's a shame, but too bad.<p>Otherwise, I really hope Gox dies, in a darwinian business sense. Forest fires destroy big trees but makes way for new shoots.
Wow. Check out the people who lost serious money on MtGox: <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1yv26o/gox_horror_story_thread_how_much_did_you_lose/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1yv26o/gox_horror_s...</a><p>One person lost 1998 btc. That was anywhere from $500,000 to a million bucks.
It's interesting to watch ordinary people attempt to dabble in currency. How many criminal organizations, governments, and financial institutions (redundant?) the world over have people who wake up everyday just to manipulate the value of currency? For example, a common criticism of China is that they purposely manipulate their currency to devalue the US dollar. In which ways could such organizations impact a new currency like bitcoin? Simple theft doesn't work very well unless immediately converted to cash, just like tangible goods being fenced, often below true value. Was it really just theft?
This is a bit bigger than Silk Road in terms of the amount of money people will probably lose but it wouldn't surprise me if something similar to the rally that followed the Silk Road take down happens. It's going to put Bitcoin in the news, this is the best entry price in the past 4 months, and Mt.Gox going under means the unethical players continue to shake out which can only be good.
How traceable are bitcoins. Suppose Gox released their logs, would it be possible to track when someone tried to offload the stolen bitcoins on one of the major exchanges?<p>given the alleged value of the stolen coins are in the range of 0.5B USD it's not unreasonable to suspect that some government capacity would investigate this.<p>If the stolen coins can indeed be detected - how would they go about extracting the value? Seems like a large scale, risky money laundry effort would be needed.
hypothetical question for someone who is knowledgeable about bitcoin: since bitcoin is an experiment, what happens if it completely fails? what does a total failure scenario even look like, in terms of symptoms?<p>where does all the 'real' money go?<p>i don't understand how 6% of bitcoin can disappear when one of the supposed selling points is that you can verify all the transactions.
Times like these I'm glad I didn't have a dime in gox--but I was never trustful of them, they didn't to seem to be as legit to me as Coinbase or Bitpay -- I'm not 100% sold on some of the other exchanges either - coins-e has left me with a bad taste in my mouth when they held onto my dogecoins for 2 weeks during a transfer request...<p>Luckily I have no money in BTC at all - other than 2k for mining equipment(scrypt) - and the coins earned from my small operation is only about 1 BTC so far -- which I'm planning on holding onto till it rallies, WHICH it will (too much investment money in too many companies) for it not to.<p>Lots of companies have spent a lot of money to integrate it, and there will be a vacuum for a few weeks, maybe even months, but trust will come back into the market and it'll grow...<p>One thing I'd like to see is some sort of P2P exchange service where exchanges don't happen on any network --ie all funds remain in wallet until time of exchange, -- of course this wouldn't work for usd necessarily, but for coin to coin exchanges it would, unless it was also tied into some sort of site like coinbase where they can store a fiat currency value like a bank for deposit at a later date.
The most interesting part in that text for me was "Released in 2009 by an anonymous creator known as Satoshi Nakamoto"<p>It was news to me that the creator of the bitcoin technology is anonymous. Heard the name several times before, but never knew it was a pseudonym for an anonymous person or group of persons.
I'm just hoping I can get home after work and buy some coins at the price the are now before it goes up again. I feel that this is mostly already discounted in the price, everyone was expecting it. It may drop further but it's not going to last.<p>I should add that I only plan to spend perhaps 1% of my money available for saving/investing in bitcoin. I think it's a good investment but the risk is too high to risk more.
I wonder if law enforcement is already questioning him; I am sure FBI has eyes on him already. Yes. I want him to come out and explain to us. Any employees should come out and give us insider stories. Whoever took advantage of this (whether it's criminal or Mt itself) should be punished.
All those arguments about whether or not they ever traded Magic: the Gathering cards look kind of frivolous now, DON'T THEY. Sounds like Bitcoin is about to have its Enron moment...
I really wish I had some BTC just to separate some fools from their money. Either through trading on the market or some sort of BTC based gambling. BTC isn't very liquid but I'd bet you could extract 50K in USD from it a year without too much trouble.