Comment by sillysaurus3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sillysaurus3 | Hacker News Reader

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Interesting. I wonder what will happen to Mt. Gox's 200k BTC? If it's true that repayments will be in USD, then it logically follows that the 200k BTC will be liquidated into USD, which will then be distributed evenly among debtees.

Liquidating 200k BTC would be quite a sight to behold. For example, there are only 18k BTC of orders on Bitstamp right now: http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/bitstampUSD_depth.html

... meaning, selling 200k BTC would blow through the entire order book eleven times over. I have no idea how the market would react to that. I'm sure bitcoin would survive it, just like it's survived every other disaster, but it will be quite the rollercoaster.

The reason I say the 200k BTC would be sold off if the repayments are all in USD is because, if I remember correctly, Mt. Gox had almost no cash when it shut down. Most of its cash had been seized by the US government long ago. So if Mt. Gox are going to repay anything of significance, then it seems like those 200k BTC will be sold off. What's the alternative? Those 200k BTC have to wind up somewhere. I know nothing of Japan's legal system, but the alternatives seem to be "either the government ends up keeping the coins, or the coins are redistributed to Mt. Gox debtees, or the coins are all sold off and the proceeds are distributed to Mt. Gox debtees."

Anyone have any theories about what will happen to the coins?

Anyone have any theories about what will happen to the coins?

Smart money says "A lawyer at a downtown Tokyo legal firm with sterling reputation informs the bankruptcy trustee of their desire to purchase certain assets of Mt. Gox. The lawyer demonstrates that they've been engaged by a consortium of foreign investors. The trustee looks diligently for other options to liquidate 200k BTC, finds that the Bitcoin ecosystem is a hive of scum and villainy, and says that he's willing to consider the consortium's offer. They offer $PICK_A_NUMBER, which represents a substantial discount to what many Bitcoiners believe the spot price of 200k BTC to be, but which is -- crucially -- actually available, in actual honest-to-the-Constitution yen, from someone who is almost certainly not a criminal enterprise. The bankruptcy trustee, satisfied that he has diligently explored the options, counteroffers with regards to the price. Terms are reached, a contract is hammered out in an afternoon, and payment is made via a wire transfer. Physical delivery of the Bitcoins is accomplished by the technical experts nominated by the buyers, in the company of the bankruptcy trustee and the representative director of the company. The bankruptcy trustee writes them a receipt and enters the transaction into the books of the company. The universe quivers in anticipation but then realizes 'Wait, much more interesting commerce happens in Tokyo every day.' The bankruptcy trustee then begins drafting a memo to stakeholders of the corporation on the likely amount of liquid assets which the corporation controls to satisfy claims made against it."

but which is -- crucially -- actually available, in actual honest-to-the-Constitution yen

I will happily predict this is how it will play out:

1. Someone buys the BTC, like you said

2. Everyone on /r/bitcoin is horrified at the price, like you said.

3. Everyone on /r/bitcoin is pointed at your very comment right here, which is now months old, for the sober explanation that if the deal was so good, then they should have gotten there and put in a bid as well.

4. Commence the gnashing of teeth.

There are times when being reputable is a big win. Unwinding a cluster-fudge is one of them. They want to get through this mess as cleanly as possible.

I don't follow your logic. A forced sale of bitcoins to assuage creditors is different to speculators losing confidence in the currency and trying to exit their positions. The latter causes market volatility and price crashes. Temporarily increased liquidity is not inherently disastrous.

Except that the quantity is roughly 11x the amount currently for sale (at that one exchange). It's going to depress the price like crazy, unless the court authorizes it to be sold in pieces over time.

Not disastrous, but merely a matter of supply and demand. Also as an individual, if I don't like the market price, I can go "meh" and not sell. Court will order sales, so it'll be forced market incentive.

Very true, and that's a solid theory. Unfortunately I've learned from experience that the market rarely follows anyone's theory. The simplest example: many moons ago, when people were trying to explain bitcoin's meteoric rise in price, the general consensus was that the price was linked to (or at least influenced by) Silk Road, because Silk Road was the only practical use for bitcoin. Then Silk Road collapsed, but bitcoin's price hardly moved. Theorycrafting is fraught with dangers like that.

I noticed from some brief experience with bitcoin trading that if people suspect a huge downward plunge is happening presently, then people with a lot of bitcoin will step in and start putting up "floors", i.e. a large buy order about $50 to $100 lower than the current price. So they might offer to buy 1,000 coins for $75 less than the current price, because they expect it to plunge.

However, when it actually does plunge, what happens is that the plunge eats into their buy order to the tune of about 50 BTC, and then they cancel that buy order and move it even lower. This makes sense because if there's downward pressure, you stand to earn even more if you adjust your "floor" as far down as possible in order to buy the cheapest coins.

So, if 200k coins are sold off all at once, it seems like most of the big players in the market will set a "floor" of about $50/BTC, then sit back and watch what happens. And since everyone else will be completely panicking at that point, a significant number of people will probably hit "sell at current market rate" in order to get out of their BTC position as quickly as possible. (I've seen it happen; sometimes huge orders of 1,000+ BTC are sold at current market rate, which plunges the price way down, and then the price ticks back up as the market adjusts. But 200k BTC is two orders of magnitude higher; it seems like that will smash the price all the way down to sub-$10.)

Hopefully whoever is in charge of Mt. Gox's assets will take a more nuanced approach to selling off 200k BTC than "put them on Bitstamp and sell at current market price."

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