

Bitcoin Prices Down As Mt. Gox Concerns Escalate - dcawrey
http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-prices-mt-gox-concerns-escalate/

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JacobAldridge
Hmmm... If you removed 6% of the world's gold supply (or even, if it were
knowable, 3.5% of all the world's gold supply ever) you would expect the price
of the remaining gold to rise.

Bitcoin dropping is a sign of panic and uncertainty in the market about the
long term viability of it to retain value. If you're confident the underlying
value still exists, as many people would do with gold, then this is a great
buying opportunity.

/s/gold/commodity-of-your-choice I'm not trying to debate fiat currencies and
gold standards here.

[Edit: Thanks to the commenters below for pointing out that the MtGox money
hasn't been lost to the world.]

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stan_rogers
It hasn't been _re_ moved, just moved. Scarcity hasn't changed, but a question
about what "ownership" means has been introduced. When I have a buck in my
pocket, I have a buck in my pocket. When I "have" a coin in my wallet, do I
really have a coin in my wallet, or just some bits that represent a previous
state of a coin that has long since moved on?

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aidos
I haven't looked in to the details but if it was in your wallet it would be
safe. The issue is people leaving coins in online wallets where the security
is in the hands of others (who really don't have the experience required).

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stan_rogers
The thing is that you can have many more than one copy of a wallet. Are you
sure that you have control over all of them, and that they're all secure?
Again, to go to the cash analogy: I know that the buck I have in my pocket is
the only copy of that particular buck, that nobody else can spend that buck as
long as I'm sure its in my pocket. Yes, bummer if I lose the buck, since
there's no backup pocket with the same buck in it at home or in a safe deposit
box somewhere. But at the same time, nobody can take my backup pocket and
spend the buck that's in it, evaporating the value of the buck that I know is
in my pocket.

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aidos
I don't totally understand your analogy. I have my own wallet and I can keep
that secure. If someone takes that from me it's akin to being mugged, or
having my house burgled. That sucks but it's a bit different from giving
someone else my wallet to look after.

With these exchanges, most people don't seem to know better, and treat them as
banks. They're not banks, banks are regulated and governments make sure they
don't just close their doors and walk off with your money.

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NotOscarWilde
I think the core of the analogy is not in the security itself, but in the user
experience.

Unless you trust a third party, carrying a Bitcoin wallet with you becomes a
hassle -- you have to set up software to pay from a given PC, and if you move
between a lot of devices, you have to assume even your private keys for your
wallet may be compromised.

I think at least when it comes to the experience, people would like to have
BTC operations as seamless as sending money via their internetbanking or
paying with a debit card.

BTC then becomes less useful if you still need a large entity to trust so you
have a pleasant experience sending and receiving money. (Useful still, but
less so.)

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aidos
The usability is a huge and totally valid critisism, though I don't think for
the reason you suggest. You can use software to allow you to sync keys between
your devices. I use 1password - that's a fairly minor usability hurdle.

More of an issue is the bitcoin client software itself. It's a usability
disaster. From every point of view - it's hard to use / understand for the
layman. But even as someone technically minded, it's hard to figure out what
you need from the software to manage your wallet. Given that all you need to
keep your coins safe is a tiny bit of text that you can take with you - why is
it so hard to get it out and in to the client software?

Edit: for a layperson the 1password hurdle is a lot bigger so you're right
about how that's a major usability issue.

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yardie
Cough, E-gold[1], /cough.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold#Criminal_abuse](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold#Criminal_abuse)

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fnordfnordfnord
I'm a bit surprised/confused that the price has held as well as it has.
[http://bitcoinity.org/markets/](http://bitcoinity.org/markets/)

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dharma1
so someone got away with 740,000 bitcoins? at $500 per bitcoin, would that be
the largest robbery ever?

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rst
Rogue traders at conventional financial institutions (Nick Leeson at Barings;
Jerome Kerviel at Societe Generale) each cost their employer over a billion
dollars, but they didn't keep the money. So, if the perp here got away with
all the stolen BTC, it's big. Even if not, it's up there...

