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Comment by dustcoin | Hacker News Reader

"In order to re-establish the trust squandered by the failings of Mt. Gox, responsible bitcoin exchanges are working together and are committed to the future of bitcoin and the security of all customer funds."

As someone with funds stuck in gox, I optimistically hope that "all customer funds" includes gox customers, in the form of some sort of industry-led bailout.

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Nothing personal (I don't know you at all)but I find it ironic that you want bitcoin users on other exchanges to pick up the tab for your poor investment decision. Cavest investor, and all that. The irony of a bitcoin bailout is pretty damn thick.

Not necessarily - there could be a variety of reasons that other companies would pitch in to cover holders of BTC in Mt Gox - not the least of which is faith in the bitcoin economy as a whole. There's nothing about an unregulated currency that means "screw you".

For people with money on MtGox this is an unfortunate situation. There is no way other exchanges would take money from customers and give it back into MtGox users. That would be absolutely unethical. The other option is for exchanges to collectively absorb the financial cost of Gox stupidity. At $350m, I'd say no chance of that happening.

The Gox price already tanked and a huge chunk of their funds already moved out. It was the mistake of anyone who invested in Gox, and more importantly kept their money in Gox, to do so with a company that time and time again proved its incompetence.

They'd still have their money if they had just avoided BTC altogether. You, as an end user, are probably never going to be in a position to really make an informed judgement about any particular exchange, the validity of the protocol, or much else, really. The latter things you can feel reasonably sure of because they've been vetted by a lot of people, but there's always the possibility that someone has missed something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry

Before the news of gox's massive 740k BTC loss, I had considered the possibility that a competing exchange would buy out MtGox, cover the small hole in customer balances (10-50k BTC) and gain a larger customer base while also boosting the confidence of the bitcoin community.

A "bailout" could have been mutually beneficial. 740k BTC is way too much.

Yeah, I should have added that by bailout I meant financed by other industry participants rather than via some notional hit on everyone's BTC holdings - but ultimately the cost would have to be passed back to the users in the form of increased transaction costs.

Sounds like you should stick with Bernankes.

The difference is that this would be industry-led and new bitcoin can't simply be printed.

There's actually some precedent for this in the March 2013 blockchain fork, when miners on the abandoned fork were reimbursed for lost block rewards from Bitcoin Faucet funds.

Also Save Dogemas was a community effort just a few months ago. It's goal was to reimburse Dogecoin users who lost their funds on a hacked/scammed web wallet (although Save Dogemas may have itself been a scam-- I don't know and didn't follow up on it).

But if it's 700k+ Bitcoins, no way it's happening.

Your username brings to mind a song.

"Duuuuuuuuuuust in the wiiiiiiiind...all my coins are duuuuussssssssst in the wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind..."

(in doge we trust)

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