
New message from Mt. Gox - mxx
https://www.mtgox.com#new
======
Udo
I'm one of those who lost a good amount on MtGox. It wasn't in there because I
thought they are a bank, I put it there because I like to speculate from time
to time. As such I was prepared to lose most if not all of it anyway. I didn't
expect things to go wrong so thoroughly, but still that was the premise of my
deposits there.

So from that perspective, I'm not really mad about them losing the money. It's
unfortunate, it even really sucks, but shit happens. Sometimes that shit is an
apocalyptic event.

What makes me angry though is their utter failure to communicate, to admit
what happened. I feel like they're taunting their ex customers, or at the very
least they don't give a crap about anything at all. That's what's really off-
putting, and that's what breeds speculation about them being the ones who
perpetrated the theft in the first place (which I personally don't believe).
Instead what we see here is an absolute non-message from them.

It's like this Seinfeld episode with the shirt at the dry cleaners. We know
they shrunk it, they know they shrunk it, so they should just come right out
and admit "we shrunk it"!

~~~
sneak
> or at the very least they don't give a crap about anything at all

They were the market leader, with substantial revenue and lots of cash flow.

Why they didn't prioritize hiring some people and securing their platform is
still beyond my understanding. It's up there with the $100+ billion in cash
Apple is evidently not using to hire enough code reviewers or implement
adequate security processes for their most important and sensitive code that
supports their entire (massively profitable) business.

I really wonder where people's priorities are. They're not total morons; it
must be an interesting reason why these circumstances happen. It's not hard to
solve these problems with money - so there has to be a neat (if utterly
dysfunctional) story behind it.

Seriously, guys. Spend $20 on a flu shot for your golden goose.

~~~
colinbartlett
> Apple is evidently not using to hire enough code reviewers

It's naive to think that the more people you throw at the problem, the less
bugs there will be.

See also: The Mythical Man-Month.

~~~
sneak
Catching bugs via parallel support staff not in the primary workflow, or even
building automated infrastructure is exactly the kind of parallelism that
Brooks diagrams out as within the realm of workable in his team structure
diagrams in TMMM.

The intel agencies (both the ones where Apple lives, and all the other ones
too) are black box testing this stuff, every single point release,
automatically - you can be sure. Why Apple isn't is confusing. They wouldn't
even have to be on the team or in the building with the development efforts
themselves.

There's something we're missing here.

------
fennecfoxen
CONSPIRACY THEORY TIME.

What if Mt. Gox didn't really lose a post-Panamax boatload of Bitcoin (just a
small amount)? They're just manufacturing a panic so they can buy Bitcoins at
fire-sale prices, declare "We have all the BitCoin we need after all, we fixed
our bug, everything's fiiiine" and maybe even turn a cash profit on the
upside?

</conspiracy theory, assumes a modicum of competence, etc>

~~~
swombat
If there was any evidence of that they'd go to jail for a long time - even if
bitcoin is not directly regulated, I'm sure there are still some anti-fraud
regulations that would kick in...

~~~
kome
> I'm sure there are still some anti-fraud regulations that would kick in...

I don't know, but I don't think so. For the law you may be trading in monopoly
money at your risk.

~~~
VLM
Intentional misrepresentation of fact for material gain doesn't seem to
require currency of any sort.

So Kome I'll make you a deal, I've got a ownership title for the Brooklyn
Bridge and I'll trade this title to you for a case of beer... deal? Deal.
Sucka. Then it goes to court. Assuming you can convince the court I knew the
title was fake, and the case of beer is worth more than the fake title (maybe
the title has artistic merit, or maybe the beer was worthless American Lite
"beer" of negative worth) then its pretty cut and dried as fraud.

~~~
kbenson
What's the fake in this case? They would be convincing people that bitcoins
are worth less due to their actions (and it is worth less during this period,
as people have lost much faith), buying at the reduced priced, and then
covering their losses and supposedly restoring at least some faith in the
market, once again raising prices. Where's the fake title? Where's the lie?

------
danielweber
This reminds me of corporate announcements that say "for your convenience"
just before saying something incredibly inconvenient.

"For your convenience, all your Bitcoins have been deleted."

~~~
sanbor
Here in Argentina the government does this all the time. For example, Today
they have announced that Nic.ar, the entity that handles .com.ar domains, will
start to charge 200 $AR to register a domain. And the guy that made the
announcement said "The users were asking for this from long time" (yes, of
course, users are asking to pay for something that is free). Source
[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lanacion.com.ar%2F1666972-comenzaran-
a-cobrar-por-registrar-dominios-comar&act=url)

~~~
klzns
If it's free, how do you discourage people from registrering a domain just for
speculation? Paying for it is a good way.

------
donquichotte
The current message means absolutely nothing:

"Dear MtGox Customers,

In the event of recent news reports and the potential repercussions on MtGox's
operations and the market, a decision was taken to close all transactions for
the time being in order to protect the site and our users. We will be closely
monitoring the situation and will react accordingly.

Best regards, MtGox Team"

~~~
reedlaw
Sounds very passive. "Closely monitoring"? "React accordingly"? As if they
were not the ones running the site.

~~~
dblacc
Words chosen very carefully in an attempt to keep everyone calm..

~~~
madaxe_again
Words chosen very carefully that potentially hold a subtext. Are they hinting
at a security service takedown and gag? MtGox would be a potential target if,
say, someone wanted all the data to do a statistical analysis and tie MtGox
accounts to SR accounts.

Way out there, but it's anyone's guess right now, and I thought I'd throw this
hat in the ring.

------
EarthLaunch
I think they might be manipulating the market. Here's my translation:

"Because people discovered that we lost or stole money, and that would destroy
our operations, someone who doesn't want to be responsible for making a
decision decided that we could try causing a market crash by dramatically
wiping our accounts, lowering the price enough that we could buy our way back
to solvency. It didn't entirely work, so we're making this announcement, which
is also meant to lower the price, or if that doesn't work, allow us to segue
back into operations. We will be monitoring the Bitcoin price and will react
accordingly."

------
jorisw
What are they doing in the page source there? Storing a message in a cookie
then refreshing the page to display it?

The second time you visit the page, you'll get your cookie-stored statement.

Almost seems like they want to be able to change their statement without
previous visitors seeing the changes.

~~~
TophWells
I don't see anything like that. Here's the page source for me:

<html> <head> <title>MtGox.com</title> </head> <body> <p><img
src="/img/mtgox_logo_mail.png"/></p> <p>Dear MtGox Customers,</p> <p>In the
event of recent news reports and the potential repercussions on MtGox&#39;s
operations and the market, a decision was taken to close all transactions for
the time being in order to protect the site and our users. We will be closely
monitoring the situation and will react accordingly.</p> <p>Best regards,<br/>
MtGox Team</p> </body> </html>

~~~
TophWells
Wait, I refreshed the page a few times, and once, I got:

    
    
      <html>
    	<head>
    		<title>MtGox.com</title>
    
      <script type="text/javascript">
        var AKSB=AKSB||{};AKSB.q=[];AKSB.mark=function(b,a){AKSB.q.push(["mark",b,a||(new Date).getTime()])};AKSB.measure=function(b,a,c){AKSB.q.push(["measure",b,a,c||(new Date).getTime()])};AKSB.done=function(b){AKSB.q.push(["done",b])};AKSB.mark("firstbyte",(new Date).getTime());
        AKSB.prof={custid:"223233",ustr:"",originlat:0,clientrtt:19,ghostip:"23.51.248.44",ipv6:false,pct:10,xhrtest:false,clientip:"130.223.174.194"};
        (function(b){var a=document.createElement("iframe");a.src="javascript:false";(a.frameElement||a).style.cssText="width: 0; height: 0; border: 0; display: none";var c=document.getElementsByTagName("script"),c=c[c.length-1];c.parentNode.insertBefore(a,c);a=a.contentWindow.document;a.open().write("<body onload=\"var js = document.createElement('script');js.id = 'aksb-ifr';js.src = '"+b+"';document.body.appendChild(js);\">");a.close()})(("https:"===document.location.protocol?"https:":"http:")+"//aksb-a.akamaihd.net/146060/aksb-a/aksb.min.js");
        </script>
        </head>
    	<body>
    		<p><img src="/img/mtgox_logo_mail.png"/></p>
    		<p>Dear MtGox Customers,</p>
    		<p>In light of recent news reports and the potential repercussions on MtGox&#39;s operations and the market, a decision was taken to close all transactions for the time being in order to protect the site and our users. We will be closely monitoring the situation and will react accordingly.</p>
    	<p>Best regards,<br/>
    	MtGox Team</p>
    	</body>
      </html>
    

This is very odd behaviour.

~~~
sonoffett
Someone already mentioned in a previous thread that this is an anti-dos
method.

------
malka
I would not like to be in the shoes of mtgox CEO... He lost about 400M USD,
some of them probably belonging to shady peoples (drug dealer, mobs, etc.)

~~~
ekianjo
Well that's what people say, yet I haven't seen lots of executives in large
companies where scandals have occurred suddenly getting randomly killed by
hitmen in the streets. And Madoff's still alive, too.

~~~
AmVess
Well, a gentleman flew all the way from the UK to Japan to have a polite chat
with him, so it's not outside of reality for someone to do bad things to him
fairly easily.

Beyond that, CEO's of large companies are generally under guard when the crap
hits the fan, and Madoff was protected by police.

I wouldn't be surprised if the "CEO" of Mt. Gox soon finds out what a tire
iron tastes like.

~~~
thrillgore
Death threats on HN. That's a first.

~~~
BlackDeath3
Oh, please. How sensitive can people get? That was hardly a threat.

------
o_nate
Best case speculation: they really are being acquired by a more competent
exchange, or consortium of competent exchanges, who decided to step in to
prevent further harm to Bitcoin's reputation. Hence the hidden message in the
html, the acquisition of the "gox.com" domain, and the suspending of all
transactions until the official announcement.

~~~
clauretano
hidden message in the HTML? Nothing as of right now
[http://pastebin.com/yi5j88FG](http://pastebin.com/yi5j88FG)

~~~
mcdougle
He's probably talking about earlier, when there was an HTML comment about an
acquisition

------
sneak
When has the passive voice ever actually worked to calm a lynch mob?

~~~
TillE
I'm getting a little tired of every (justifiably!) angry group of people being
called a "lynch mob" by default on the internet.

You might want to wait for something resembling actual violence before
applying such an ugly characterization. A bunch of people saying mean things
is not a "lynch mob".

~~~
sneak
There are literally dozens of people on reddit's /r/bitcoin right now casually
discussing contract killings, with various shades of joking (from "kinda" to
"not at all").

I'm not being hyperbolic.

~~~
goldilox
Isn't that the kind of shit bitcoin was made for? Drugs/contract killings in
the "deep web"? Would not surprise me at all if some of those guys are
serious, especially if they just lost their life savings.

------
denzquix
And it doesn't seem to have been proofread very well. "In the event of
[something that has already happened]..."? I don't consider myself a
particularly picky person, but come on, you could at least make the effort at
a time like this.

~~~
jaibot
Panic doesn't lend itself to careful writing.

~~~
denzquix
Well, sure, but it's not like this message was rushed out within minutes of
anything in particular. They seemed quite content to have a completely blank
site for hours on end before putting this up.

------
lettergram
I don't understand why people put their money/BitCoins in MtGox, if you
researched them (previous to this incident) you would find a large number of
complaints and shady dealings.

Personally, I put my coins in BTC-e, Virtuex, and CoinBase (and thank god I
did). Even though BTC-e and Virtuex seemed fairly sketchy they still allowed
me to withdrawal my coins with no issue.

~~~
jliptzin
Why not set up a secure offline wallet and keep your coins there?

------
amvp
www.gox.com is now redirecting to mtgox.com.

For an organisation which is insolvent they must have invested a fairly
significant sum on a 3 letter .com domain. This happened yesterday! What's
going on here?

~~~
bdcravens
Insolvent != no money in the bank

~~~
amvp
Yeah, but shouldn't they try to pay people back before they spend what's
likely tens of thousands of dollars on what amounts to superficial marketing?
I mean, it's not even much of a re-brand!

~~~
dragonwriter
> Yeah, but shouldn't they try to pay people back before they spend what's
> likely tens of thousands of dollars on what amounts to superficial
> marketing?

"Should" based on the assumption that they are profit-maximizing entity, or
"should" based on the assumption that they are a moral actor? Because, you
know, the answers are quite different.

~~~
SilasX
I think that "should" is based on "wanting to avoid prosecution for operating
while insolvent".

------
alexchamberlain
So I have n bitcoins and $x in MtGox; will I get this back? Will there be a
haircut? Is MtGox winding down? So many questions...

~~~
TophWells
Probably not. But don't give up hope yet.

~~~
astrodust
Give up hope. This thing is toast.

------
650REDHAIR
Are you kidding me?

This message is likely worse than staying silent.

~~~
ctdonath
Silent would be worse. At least we know that the site is deliberately disabled
by its owners, as opposed to a host of other hypotheticals we'd be discussing
otherwise.

~~~
650REDHAIR
No. Because this shows that they aren't using some sort of professional crisis
management team and are trying to handle it in house. That's ridiculous. They
keep showing themselves incapable of handling such a high profile company.

~~~
yebyen
Do they have to hire a team if someone with deeper pockets just came in and
said "Shut it down, we're buying you out"?

You may be right that they are incompetent and it shows, but it doesn't
necessarily follow that the answer is to right now immediately hire a new team
and let them handle it.

------
nhangen
Is this a joke? What's worse than a non-response? Lies. That's what.

------
taybin
That's it??

~~~
ekianjo
Yeah, kinda disappointing. That's a company which does not care a bit about
their users...

~~~
_pmf_
> That's a company which does not care a bit about their users...

Yes, but they cared about their user's bits.

------
shawabawa3
I guess this could be taken to mean "the leak was a fake and unanticipated, we
closed the markets to prevent even more panic selling"

Maybe there is a faint glimmer of hope for gox... (I personally doubt it)

------
tjaerv
[http://www.coindesk.com/mt-gox-statement-claims-made-
conscio...](http://www.coindesk.com/mt-gox-statement-claims-made-conscious-
decision-halt-transactions/)

------
biot
Sometimes it seems like Mt.Gox is a corporation in EVE Online. Like in EVE,
they're trading in virtual goods and there's zero regulation. Similarly, scams
are part of the game.

~~~
rasz_pl
Playing EVE Online taught me to spot scams, pyramids and ponzi schemes in an
instant. When I first read about bitcoin I couldnt stop laughing, "people
really pay for pretend money counting on price going up so they can sell and
earn $? AHAHAHA" was all I could hear in my head.

Turns out I was too smart for my own good. Almost every ponzi scheme can be
exploited _if_ you get on board early enough.

At the current stage of bitcoin only suckers are left holding the bag. Of
course no one will see it, because "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)" (its a
book, read it).

~~~
lutusp
> Turns out I was too smart for my own good. Almost every ponzi scheme can be
> exploited ...

You're misusing the term "Ponzi scheme". A speculative system that relies on
volatility and wishful thinking isn't necessarily a Ponzi scheme (might be but
not necessarily).

A classic Ponzi scheme has layers or levels that are treated differently.
Ordinary speculation about a volatile entity doesn't have this property.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponzi_scheme)

Quote: "Typically, extraordinary returns are promised on the original
investment[5] and vague verbal constructions such as "hedge futures trading",
"high-yield investment programs", or "offshore investment" might be used. The
promoter sells shares to investors by taking advantage of a lack of investor
knowledge or competence, or using claims of a proprietary investment strategy
which must be kept secret to ensure a competitive edge."

------
negamax
Seems like they concluded that panic selling is over and they can't benefit
from this anymore? Too bad many of their customers already sold at much lower
prices.

------
fiatjaf
If Bitcoin were a government currency, all Bitcoin users would have to pay for
MtGox losses and every MtGox users would get their money back.

That's the price of anarchism.

------
RankingMember
So at this point, what exchange should someone who has, say, a ton of LTC, go
to convert their holdings to Dogecoin?

~~~
rasz_pl
Cognitive dissonance is strong with you my child (or irony, in which case I
failed at detecting it).

------
antonwinter
Their way of protecting the site and the users is doing precisely the opposite

------
tibbon
Well putting together that statement clearly took a lot of work...

------
gulbrandr
> _recent news reports_

Of which recent news reports are they talking about?

~~~
shawabawa3
I'm guessing that gox lost ~$400m and is insolvent?

Perhaps the leak was fake, so gox shut down to prevent people panic selling

------
NigelTufnel
This is insane. No <!doctype> declaration? Come on!

------
postscapes1
They are just trolling everyone now...

