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Comment by lwat | Hacker News Reader

That 2000BTC the thieves made off with is worth about $32,000 at the moment.

It wasn't thieves, was it? It was just a guy who bought bitcoins during the crash and withdrew some. That's perfectly legal, from where I'm standing.

EDIT: It looks like the guy I'm talking about only withdrew 640ish coins, so this must be someone else.

No, MtGox said that the thief was able to make a larger withdrawal (approximately 2000 BTC) before our security measures stopped further action.

I wonder if they don't really mean, "2000 of the coins created by the thief and then sold to buyers were withdrawn before we could shut things down"

"withdrawing the coins" in this case means moving them out of the BitCoin wallet owned by MtGox and moving them back into the BitCoin P2P block chain (as far as I know). There is no way to magically print more BitCoins like this (preventing this is one of the core design goals of BitCoin). This BitCoins had to come from somewhere. MtGox have admitted this and will have to buy/trade/get/acquire replacement BitCoins: "the 2000 BTC withdrawn did have real wallet backing and they will be replaced at Mt. Gox’s expense"

I'm surprised they weren't able to raise the amount they could withdraw at once; I would imagine the limit is database-backed.

Probably hardcoded, not in the DB.

In case it isn't clear, MTGox wasn't exactly what you'd call a professional operation.

And unless the government gets involved, the thieves will have taken it scot-free.

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