
“A call center has been established to respond to all inquiries” - Le_SDT
https://www.mtgox.com/index.html
======
drakaal
Answers to questions they won't answer:

Will you get your Bitcoins back?

Most of the time when a company has "unfulfilled orders" as they enter
bankruptcy what happens is that what ever is left is divvied up. A company
rarely has Zero Assets. In the case of MT. Gox they likely have about $4M in
assets that will be sold to cover those who are owed something. Depending on
who you ask that could be a few billion to a few hundred million. So let's
make the napkin math easy and say they owe $500 Million and they have $5M in
assets, every bitcoin you had would be paid at a penny on the dollar.

Will anyone go to jail?

Most likely not. Mt. Gox claims they were wronged, not that they stole your
money. If that is true, or a bug caused them to lose your money it would be
the same as if a bank was robbed prior to FDIC insurance (if they were robbed)
or if the bank just invested poorly. They didn't do anything criminal. They
were just stupid. Prior to FDIC putting your money in a bank meant if the bank
failed your money was gone. (FDIC insures you up to $100k in a bank, but does
nothing for Cryptocurrency). If Mt. Gox was a Ponzi scheme that would change
this answer, but I don't hear people saying that.

What should you do if you want to get your money back?

Make sure that you are named at the bankruptcy hearing. Yes, that may mean
going to Japan. If you lost $100k or more it may be worth going. There will be
tiers of payback, and those who were most injured will get the most back.
Someone who lost $29 is likely going to get nothing, ever. But if you lost $1m
you may be able to get 10% of that back. If you lost more than $100k you may
want to sue Karpeles out side of bankruptcy. While the Bankruptcy protects him
from being sued for losses, it doesn't fully protect against negligence. He
has personal assets. You need to talk to a lawyer about this, as the rules are
complex, and your losses would have to be near catastrophic, because this
would be a punitive reward, not something based on debt.

Can you sue the VC's?

Only if you think you can prove that they knew Mt. Gox was doing something
illegal, that the public didn't know. Bankrolling Silk Road wouldn't count for
example.

~~~
sarah2079
The FDIC limit is now $250k. It was originally raised as a temporary measure
in fall 2008, but the higher limit has now been made permanent.

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socillion
Here are some links on Japanese bankruptcy processes taken from IRC
discussion.

[http://www.jurists.co.jp/en/topics/others_4007.html](http://www.jurists.co.jp/en/topics/others_4007.html)

[http://japantax.org/?p=84](http://japantax.org/?p=84)

My understanding is that Mtgox is using Minji Saisei.

~~~
patio11
That understanding is confirmed by, among other places, the subject of the
page: [民事再生手続開始の申立てに関するお知らせ].

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einhverfr
Interesting that the call center has been established to respond to all
inquiries, as long as you don't ask for information.

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perlgeek
Why don't they answer the most-asked questions ("will I get my money/bitcoins
back?" / "how much of my money/bitcoins will I get back, and when?") up-front
on the homepage?

~~~
k-mcgrady
They probably don't know the answer or can't legally tell you. I wouldn't be
surprised if most answers the call center gives are "Sorry, we don't
know/can't tell you".

~~~
perthguppy
If japan is anything like other countries, there will likely be a date set for
a creditors meeting, and the call center will simply be instructing people to
attend the creditors meeting to have their questions answered.

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gkoberger
Also interesting is that Mark Karpeles signed it "Representative Director"
rather than "CEO". Maybe that's a legal thing (since they're under bankruptcy
protection), or maybe he stepped down?

~~~
jmgao
It's the Japanese equivalent of CEO.

~~~
arsemouflon
That's sooooo un-american of them!

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shocks
Can anyone explain what is going on here[1]?

1: [http://pastebin.com/rmtUxwbu](http://pastebin.com/rmtUxwbu)

~~~
danielweber
The typical way that chapter 11 bankruptcy works, in America at least, is to
imagine a big wedding cake. The bottom layer in the shareholders, the next
layer up is the bondholders. When the company goes bankrupt, you slice the
bottom layer off the cake: the shareholders get 0, and all the bondholders
become the new shareholders.

That's for chapter 11, when the business is trying to stay as an ongoing
concern. Lots of businesses that are bankrupt on paper still have quite a bit
going for them -- if they could escape their legacy debts, they have more
money coming in than going out, and it's socially good to keep the company
going. Many people keep their jobs and the creditors have the best chance of
becoming as whole as possible.

Mt Gox is not going to reorganize. Like Arthur Andersen after they failed to
properly audit Enron's books, whether it's their fault or not they have failed
at their one primary mission and no one is going to trust them ever again in a
business that makes trust paramount. They are gone, dust, over. It's hard to
even imagine what pieces of their corpse would be useful to other businesses,
besides gox.com which is a three-letter domain name.

IANAL, and I'm especially not a bankruptcy lawyer.

~~~
CamperBob2
Sadly, gox.com may be a nice three-letter domain name, but you'll have to
depreciate it on the same schedule you'd use for a barrel of cesium 137.
Nobody is going to want a piece of _that_ action for a long time.

~~~
shocks
Hah, I've got to remember that expression!

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guybrushT
Completely tangential - but does anyone know how to setup a call center this
quickly? Is there a service that one can use?

~~~
pbreit
The "virtual PBX" market is pretty crowded. Grasshopper is a good introductory
service. There are some Skype/Gvoice-based options like Zaplee and PrettyMay.
Moving up a bit you'd find RingCentral and Phonebooth which are a bit more
capable.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Also, there are turnkey call centers, fully staffed. You get a number that
gets routed to certain agents, and they answer as your org, have your
flowchart/website/whatever. You're typically charged a setup fee, monthly fee,
and per minute, but you don't have to go hire your own people.

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leoc
Not a job I would relish having.

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asogi
Does anyone know why they're using Javascript to load such a simple page?

~~~
dangrossman
3rd-party DDOS protection.

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panacea
Hello? Is it me you're looking for...

