Mt.Gox's tweets are all gone
twitter.com
twitter.com
When preparing for lawsuits, often the lawyers will recommend silence, and making sure that there are no public statements that are misleading. Given that they've been making reassuring comments all along, this makes me assume things are very bad indeed. I must assume they've been advised to stop making reassuring comments and saying things that could make them liable for more damages in court...or, worse, make them guilty of fraud.
Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions. Anybody else got theories on why they'd do something so extreme? I certainly can't think of any positive reason for them to do so.
An account compromise is possible.
Perhaps they're about to take some steps they'd previously publicly assured people they wouldn't, and don't want the obsolete assurances to be easy-to-reference.
I wonder what do they have in mind but this is a bonafide bucket shop and I have little doubt that they will be facing criminal charges.
They are subject to Japanese law and International law. And also to US and EU law regarding AML/KYC of their citizens.
Bitcoin might not be regulated in most places to different degrees, but that doesn't mean you are above the law because you deal with Bitcoin among other things.
Is there any legal precedent for this? What would you sue Mt.Gox for? Do they have contracts or some form of binding agreement with people who store their BTC with them?
I'm not sure they're really bound by any laws in regards to currency. Maybe contractually, but beyond that, not sure what you could sue them for without some real concrete evidence of criminal activity.
That said, most people hoping for recourse in a court of law do not understand the expense, timeline, and likelihood of actual collection involved. (Six figures, years, and "probably nil", respectively.)
The only thing anyone can do right now is pray - http://i.imgur.com/nTFj3zs.png
1. Actually, it's worse than gambling since I don't think "legit" Casinos can legally just disappear over night causing you to lose funds that you haven't even gambled with yet. There is absolutely zero protection in the wild-west of bitcoin right now.
The reality is that they are registered AND they also transmit USD, EUR, etc (see list above) which they can't retain indefinitely as they are doing.
Be very sure they are in violation of the law, whatever they say.
But, I don't think deleting things from Twitter has ever been considered "destroying evidence" in court. But, I suppose there's a first for everything.
Usually, it'd be manipulating or deleting emails that have been subpoenaed, or other sorts of contractually binding documents (email can be a contractually binding document, Twitter probably not...yet). I dunno. Maybe we're about to see something interesting and new happen in the courts. I guess we're certain to, because Bitcoin hasn't had much play in the courts, yet. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.
I'm vaguely concerned that things that should be civil matters may end up becoming criminal matters because of the way Bitcoin is viewed by law enforcement and states. But, then again, this may very well be something that should become a criminal matter. I don't know enough to know.
So, based on that assumption that they know they will no longer be in business, you need to decide, are they going to make their users whole before shutting down, or not? Again, I would hazard a guess that the high-probability answer is that they will not make their users whole. If they had enough money, it would seem that knowing they are going to go out of business, the best thing to do is make their customers whole and close up shop.
The fact they aren't do this, to me, suggests they are attempting to protect themselves. If my guess is correct, then it suggests that they don't have enough money and are trying to figure out how best to save themselves from being sued or worse.
For examples of what they are doing, they have shut down withdrawals of any manner, they have moved their offices, they have erased their twitter presence.
Thing they have not done: state they are solvent. How simple of a thing for them to do - "hey, we have a security problem right now but don't worry, we are completely solvent." Instead they state things like, "Withdrawals will resume soon." That's not very specific - it could mean, "Withdrawals of 3 cents on the dollar will resume in a year and then you can make a claim to the bankruptcy court to get anymore. Good luck with that."
But let's say that all these signs pointing to a negative outcome turn out to be wrong and a positive outcome occurs. Then it's time to really investigate a current theory that they are purposely lowering the market price of Gox BTC so they can buy low and sell high on other exchanges.
Just last week when the price of BTC was lower than what I had sold mt BTC for, I asked them to cancel the withdrawal and credit my account. I then proceeded to purchase back more BTC than I had sold originally over 4 months ago.
Unfortunately my BTC is still held hostage until they reinstate BTC withdrawals but their support has confirmed that I will be able to withdraw my BTC.
I wonder if any MtGox customers have filed a lawsuit yet?
The more they make it look like they are screwed, the cheaper people will sell. Thus they can keep this facade up for months. As long as they don't go under, they profit.
Edit: And more at https://archive.is/https://twitter.com/MtGox/status/*
Is Mt.Gox just a startup made of 2 brothers and a fullstack engineer that happened to hit it big and muck up brilliantly when they scaled?
Part of me feels really sad (granted I don't participate in Bitcoin at all) because these guys may actually go to jail for fraud. I just want to know if my moral compass is pointing in the right direction.
MtGox has had so many incidents that they would have faced sanctions in a regulated market. But then the people giving money to MtGox should have seen just how flaky MtGox was.
It is sad and frustrating that this happened. I kind of want bitcoin to take off. And I especially want to avoid saying "told you so" because that's just being a dick.
It seems like he probably wanted his overhead to stay low and avoid paying people who were better than he was to fix the rather significant problems with their BitCoin implementation. Which means this isn't just a tale of incompetence it's a tale of greed.
When their domain goes up for sale, I'm going to buy it and start an online exchange for Magic cards.
Which is morally better?
No libertarian will tell you that either of these is a preferred outcome, but out of the two, the morally superior one should be relatively obvious.
Edit: The reason I say it would be bailed out is not because they are investment accounts but precisely because it was so huge in the BitCoin economy.
With mtgox, every customer is an investor. When bailing out a bank, however, the rationale is often to help out the people who cannot be blamed: the customers.
I'm still not claiming that bailing out I banks is a good thing, but the comparison you make is a small apples/oranges thing.
I'm not saying that customers of a bank should suffer for the investment side but let the investors suffer for their bad investments, if the political will is there.
Except that it isn't. Hence why many smart people disagree on the issue.
The difference is meta-ethical. The TBTF argument is fundamentally a utilitarian one - it's saying, "This is distasteful, but we're going to do it anyway because we believe it will result in a better final outcome." The Libertarian take on the issue frames it in a fundamentally deontological light, as you have. It's concerned with the actions themselves, and doesn't even attempt to speculate on long-term practical consequences of any particular choice of action because they aren't relevant to the argument under that particular framing.
Which is fine, both are legitimate approaches to ethics. What bothers me is when the two camps start just talking past each other. Which is what seems to be happening when one makes a statement such as "the morally superior one should be relatively obvious" in this context. In terms of persuasiveness, it's reminiscent of the Verizon "Which one is bigger?" ad campaign - there's an attempt to get at something legitimate there, but it's overshadowed by a rhetorical approach that could make even the best argument in the world feel unpersuasive.
Cherry-picking one high-profile catastrophic failure isn't exactly an intellectually honest indictment of Libertarianism. It's not like there's a shortage of better indictments to use.
It is a good day for schadenfreude, though.
That said, this whole episode might serve as an interesting case in relation to many Libertarian talking points, such as the relative merits of many regulations covering savings & loan organizations in most countries.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP1YsMlrfF0
Apparently liquidity problems and solvency problems are different problems, who knew.
1. Mt Gox is going under, probably this week.
2. These people are utterly clueless about public relations and how the public perceives their actions.
3. This is all a big prank. You've been punked.
(ok, this is probably a bit too far down the conspiracy path)
They are able to service trillions of transactions between countries, but are not capable of servicing a couple of millions to a website.
Yeah, right.
Note I'm not saying that is sufficient to explain MtGox's current predicament, but there's also every reason to assume that they have some degree of banking problems.
There has been no word from Gox that their social account has been compromised so the clearest conclusion to guess is that they wiped their timeline. Why? That doesn't exactly matter before establishing who and right now the who seems to be Gox.
> If you trusted a company that started out trading Magic: the Gathering cards with a significant amount of your money, you probably need the lesson you are going to learn from this.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6264666
And was mocked/dismissed. It's disheartening to me the blind spot that otherwise intelligent people have when it comes to BitCoin and BitCoin related businesses.
The enemy is stupid the overcredulous decision-making of ideologues and the incompetence of people who want to handle your money. Adding more dumb information just confuses the issue.
I am an asian, therefore my comment shouldn't be taken as racial. The moment I realized, Mt.Gox was an asian enterprise, (based in asia) I became wary of them, and put them on my least priority. I want people to transact their wealth/money only with those companies, which are located in countries, which have good repute for accountability and have strong judicial system. I don't mean, Japan is not one of those. But I don't know, I still can't put faith with any Asian company as yet, when it involves 'money'.
I don't think that being Asian gives you super powers just like being Westerner gives me any more insight about the financial stability of Western countries.
If you know something specific about laws or business practices in Japan that may shed a light on the whole issue then feel free to enlighten us.
I would say though that your trust in Western institutions is a bit misplaced. Enron lost billions and ruined lives. You could say that some of the culprits are in prison but that's poor consolation for those who lost everything. More recently, the whole of the banking industry almost collapsed under the weight of its own greed and malpractices, bringing down with it whole countries and forcing tax payers to foot the bill to prop up these honorable institutions.
I'm not saying your concerns don't have some basis, but MtGox was not a relevant example. Unless you mean that Westerners moving to Asia to set up businesses automatically can't be trusted either.
Just as a point of fact, it is logically possible to be racist against one's own ethnic/racial group.
That said, I don't think your remark is at all racist, so I'm not sure why you felt the need to mention your background.
Apparently, this is what it takes.