Mt. Gox Shuts Down, Loses $409,200,000 | Hacker News Reader

Mt. Gox Shuts Down, Loses $409,200,000

forbes.com

52 pointszvanness20 comments

    744,000 MtGox 2014
    400,000 MtGox 2011
    154,000 MyBitcoin 2011
     43,000 Bitcoinica 2012
  1,000,000 Satoshi early mining estimate
  ---------
  2,341,000 ~20 % of all bitcoins in circulation (12,400,000)

Assuming no overlap at least around 20 % of all bitcoins are not in circulation or stolen. Just throw away the block chain, start over and make less mistakes the second time. This would at least make the thieves unhappy, too. ^^

This is why I'm not putting my money into any other crytocoin, even if something like peercoin is better than btc in every way. It just has momentum you can't just say "ah well, we done fucked, reboot time". The money is in bitcoin and it isn't going anywhere, at least not yet. Also, we have already endured those early losses.

Not sure what not in circulation has to do with anything - it just increases the value of all other bitcoins, it isn't a problem.

Also, this isn't how many bitcoins are stolen, this is how many have been stolen at some point. How many dollars have at some point been stolen? Quite a lot I bet

That is why I said "assuming no overlap". The number I wanted to estimate is the number of bitcoins (currently) not in use or in illegitimate possession; the number of bitcoins that would not hurt anybody or hurt the right people if one would abandon the current block chain. Satoshi not caring to lose one million bitcoins is of course a wild guess. And don't take the whole thing to serious because it makes a lot of not necessarily justifiable assumptions, for example that the thieves did not already cash out their booty.

No source beyond the 'leaked' presentation of questionable reliability. I don't see how this adds any value to previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7294762

  Thus, your Bitcoin losses will be deductible forever until
  you’ve used them all. This means that the $409.2 million
  dollars is worth a potential $122.8 million dollars in tax
  refunds.

That looks like value to me.

I assume you did not read the article?

I'm not an accountant, but doesn't this assume that the person has already paid taxes on the capital gains? Can you claim the loss if you never claimed the gain? I can't imagine that many people with Bitcoins were rushing to pay their taxes to the tune of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last couple of years...

If you make a $100,000 loss on an investment and the next year make a $100,000 profit on a (different) investment you can point to the loss and point out that overall you have made no profit and therefore are liable for no tax. Obviously each loss can only be used once.

I think he's asking if your initial 1k becomes 200k and you lose 100k from the 200k, can you use that loss of 100k to offset before you have been taxed on the 199k gain.

That is a possible reading although I'm not sure if it was the intended one. That would just be a 1k loss that you could carry forward.

I am not a lawyer, accountant or American.

No; you can't lose more than your principal. So your initial 1k would be all you "lost". UNLESS you locked those gains in by paying taxes on them; though in that case you would just be re-collecting tax you already paid very slowly...

Is that true? Again, I'm not an accountant, so it's an honest question. I was always under the impression that you can write down that $100,000 loss only $3,000/year. So the 2nd year, you'd have $97,000 profit to be taxed on.

I think you can take up to $3K/year in losses if you have no gains. So if you have 0 gains, you adjust your income down by $3K. If you have 10K in gains, you can negate out that 10K. That's my early morning understanding of it though.

In the US, capital losses can be applied to capital gains without any such limit. Perhaps you are thinking of the amount of carried forward cap loss that can be applied to offset ordinary income.

Yes, it's generally true. Capital losses can generally be used to offset subsequent capital gains, or up to $3000 of ordinary income a year.

The referenced document was leaked and it's authenticity is uncertain. Meanwhile mtgox is serving the following index file

     <html>
	     <head>
		     <title>MtGox.com</title>
	     </head>
	    <body>
		    <!-- put announce for mtgox acq here -->
	    </body>
    </html>

What does "acq" stand for? Acquisition?

Either that or acquiescence. :)

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