Statement on Mt. Gox

&quot;Some exchanges were in fact completely unaffected, revealing as false Gox’s claims that this was a bug in bitcoin.&quot;<p>This reveals a lack of objectivity here. There IS a bug in bitcoin. There are workarounds, and some exchanges implemented those properly.<p>Of course, MtGox should have followed best practices and implemented a workaround, but the above sentence is - on its face - flawed and biased. The fact that some exchanges were immune to the bug does NOT mean that bitcoin bears no fault or that Gox&#x27;s claims are false. This was and is, in fact, an acknowledged and widely known bug in bitcoin.

A little regulation and over sight might have prevented all this. And with out it going forward all anyone can do is advise best practices, and then watch as some ignore them and also have their money stolen. Very wild west. Totally something I&#x27;ll be staying well back from

Under the presumption that it is true that ~750k BTC has been stolen, has anyone considered the possibility of orchestrating a 51% attack on the attacker(s)?<p>Gox probably has logs of withdrawal requests. It might be daunting but feasible to sift the tx-MAL withdrawals from legitimate ones, then work with major pools and exchanges to double-spend stolen coins back to Gox.<p>Gox could then be forced (by the same 51% majority) to pay legitimate requests for reimbursement by vendors or 3rd parties holding stolen coins they transacted for goods or services, given reasonable documentation. Leaving us with some but not unacceptable collateral damage.

It puts all the blame on Mt. Gox, assuming that their lack of good management is to blame. But I still see the lack of reversibility of transactions (one of bitcoin&#x27;s strengths) as the major problem here. We live in civilized in a world where there are laws and polices and judges and banks and governments, but bitcoin tries to workaround them for no good reason.<p>I&#x27;m still hoping that banks will take what to me is the bitcoin&#x27;s biggest feature (multiple wallet addresses and the ability to easily make cash transfers to other wallet address) but without pretending that centuries of legal and financial traditions somehow don&#x27;t matter.

<p><pre><code> “Cold storage” does not “leak”. The idea that the funds were stolen, unnoticed, from cold storage, due to Transaction Malleability, strains the credulity of even the most gullible observers. </code></pre> This part of the story still doesn&#x27;t make sense.<p>One possible explanation that I haven&#x27;t seen anywhere else is that MtGox lost control of the private keys to their cold storage.<p>How else could 744,000 BTC disappear, without anyone noticing, from cold storage?

Two important items:<p>a) Adreas is the Chief Security Officer of Blockchain and a well known &#x2F; respected digital currency personality.<p>b) The most interesting part of the article was a link to another post reviewing Coinbase&#x27;s security practices (1) where he concludes &quot;it appears that the Coinbase system contains the expected funds and their cold storage system and process appear to be operating according to security best practices.&quot;<p>(1) <a href="http://antonopoulos.com/2014/02/25/coinbase-review/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;antonopoulos.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;02&#x2F;25&#x2F;coinbase-review&#x2F;</a>

<i>&gt;&gt;I was part of the team helping to coordinate between the other exchanges to ensure that they could quickly resume operations which they did no more than 48 hours later. Some exchanges were in fact completely unaffected, revealing as false Gox’s claims that this was a bug in bitcoin.</i><p>I don&#x27;t think that reveals anything about what happened in MtGox. Also, don&#x27;t know if anyone&#x27;s noticed... but mtgox.com has a message now. <a href="http://i.imgur.com/YDONE4d.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;YDONE4d.png</a><p>And note the word &quot;DONE&quot; in that imgurl URL. Ominous...