DDoS cripples Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox after trading resumes | Hacker News Reader

DDoS cripples Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox after trading resumes

news.cnet.com

6 pointsmxk8 comments

A single exchanges influence over bitcoin, is showing us that "it can not be controlled by a single central authority" is a false claim.

Mt.Gox has became that controlling central without consent from even itself.

I am very fortunate to have cashed out at the peak of this bubble. It's a damn shame mtgox is having these problems. I consider it to be a huge vulnerability of the system.

That said, many people are working on alternatives. It's a growing pain. I need to do more research but the concept behind this project looks very promising: https://github.com/macourtney/Dark-Exchange

Interesting but it looks pretty useless until they can figure out a solution to spam trades (people accepting their own fake trades and impacting the value of the currency), something that doesn't exist yet for now unfortunately, as they admit https://github.com/macourtney/Dark-Exchange/wiki/FAQ

Email is pretty screwed when Gmail goes down, but we don't get a bunch of people talking about how centralized email really is. There's a difference between "influence" and "control".

Well that's because even the Great Gmail has not yet reached the point of being "EMail Central". I have a GMail account but I also have at least 3 other email accounts.

I don't do Bitcoin though so I guess the big question is whether a service like MtGox is actually reasonably necessary or not. It sounds like what MtGox has above and beyond GMail is the built-in network effect that has propped other exchanges up throughout history; you go there to trade because that's where the traders are. You don't have to go to GMail to exchange electronic mail.

The site is already back. This story is from last night.

As of this writing mtgox is down for everyone and has been for the last 20 minutes or more since I tried logging in to make a withdrawal.

For all the money I am sure prolexic is getting paid, this certainly makes them look useless.

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