
Mt. Gox Files for Bankruptcy Protection - adidash
http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702303801304579410010379087576-lMyQjAxMTA0MDIwNzEyNDcyWj
======
Oculus
To all the HN members who lost a lot of money in this closing, remember the
community is here for you. Don't do anything too rash and if you need someone
to talk to, myself and most other people would be happy to lend an ear.

~~~
scottcanoni
Until Mt. Gox publicly confirms that no one will be getting their BTC and/or
fiat money back, I think it's wrong to assume money owed to the users has been
lost. Please have faith that they will do the right thing.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
It seems highly unlikely that anyone will get all of their money back. They
announced that they have debts of 6.5 billion yen and assets of only 3.84
billion yen. If they can liquidate 100% of their assets that's only enough to
pay back 59% of their debts.

~~~
rbobby
6.5b yen is only 63 million USD. The 850,000 BTC wasn't included as a debt
(which is roughly 475 million USD).

~~~
rdmcfee
I believe it was included as debt at the artificially low GOX price.

------
JumpCrisscross
When you make a deposit you are extending credit. In the case of Mt. Gox, or
any other Bitcoin exchange, that credit is secured by nothing and insured by
noöne.

Advice, going forward, for managing counterparty risk:

(1) Split a $100 transaction into 10 $10* transactions executed incrementally
(send $10 of BTC to Mt. Gox, exchange it, transfer it out, and only then send
the next $10 of BTC over). This keeps exposure at any given time at a
manageable level. The downside is it increases exposure to BTC/USD volatility.

(2) Split a $100 into 5 $20 transactions executed simultaneously on many
exchanges. This keeps exposure to any single institution at a manageable
level. The downside is it increases the number of institutions which must be
dealt with.

(3) Draft a special arrangement with the institution for a large transaction.
This should include credit and speedy withdrawal guarantees. The downside is
the legal cost.

*edit: I am illustrating a hypothetical $100 transaction. Substitute, in place of $10, the most you are willing to lose in the event the exchange proves insolvent.

~~~
steven2012
I believe MtGox users have unfortunately learned the definition of
"counterparty risk". This is one of the major overlooked risks that almost
took down the global financial system in 2008. People would hedge their
worthless bonds using AIG as a counterparty, and once things blew up, these
people realized their insurance policies were completely worthless because AIG
was about to go under itself, causing them to almost go bankrupt as a result.

Unfortunately, in a world where none of the bitcoin exchanges have any sort of
regulation, there's no way that BTC use can expand via BTC financial
institutions until people have full confidence they can get their money back
in the case of another collapse like mtgox.

~~~
nostromo
The collapses we've seen with traditional currencies stem from the inherent
risks of fractional-reserve lending.

Is this a risk with Bitcoin? According to my limited understanding, it doesn't
seem to be. That should in theory reduce the need for things like FDIC and
complicated risk calculations, like counter-party risk.

MtGox doesn't seem like a "bank failure" or "bank run" to me. It seems like a
bank that forgot to lock the doors at night.

~~~
res0nat0r
At least if your money is held in an FDIC insured bank and the bank goes
under, you can rely on the government to insure your investment. With bitcoin
you have no such thing.

~~~
contingencies
That sounds very smart, however if your money is held in an FDIC insured bank,
then it's likely to be in a national currency that is systematically devalued
by the issuing institution through progressive year-on-year inflation. (Note
that I use the term _institution_ instead of government as two major issuers,
the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, are private organizations).

PS. I'm not characterizing inflation as bad, nor am I a goldbug. I am merely
pointing out that the entire population of FDIC-insured banks are paying
_constantly_ for the mystical "it might happen some day" promise of a bailout,
due to an inflationary system that reserves priveleged access to a central
clique - ie. it's not like the conservative viewpoint of " _faith in <the
national central bank>!_" comes without strings. (I am most aware of this
perspective as someone who used to live with someone on the interest rate
committee for the Bank of England.)

~~~
dragonwriter
> That sounds very smart, however if your money is held in an FDIC insured
> bank, then it's likely to be in a national currency that is systematically
> devalued by the issuing institution through progressive year-on-year
> inflation.

Which may be a good reason to limit currency holdings to what you need to use
as _currency_ (that is, short-term medium of exchange for things of value),
and invest the rest in productive assets, whether those are stocks, bonds,
real estate, or digital collectibles like internet funbucks. But if you aren't
directly holding those productive assets yourself but are trusting them to
account held by someone else who promises to transfer them to you on demand or
dispose of them at your direction, you probably want to do some consideration
of their ability to keep them securely and execute the trust you are placing
in them.

------
mtgoxloser
In this incident I lost a bit more than $500,000 USD that was in my MtGox
account. I sold my Bitcoins a few months back, but the USD have been sitting
in my account waiting to be withdrawn.

This was a massive fuck up by MtGox, but I really do feel sorry for Mark
Karpeles. He seemed really enthusiastic about Bitcoin. Right by MtGox's
offices in Japan was a Bitcoin Cafe being built. You can [see
here]([http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-
BS458_mtgox0_G_...](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-
BS458_mtgox0_G_20140227225518.jpg)) the sign of a Bitcoin logo waiting to be
unraveled.

Bigger than all the victims (no pun intended) was Mark himself. He lost more
Bitcoins than any of us, and it's likely he'll be going to jail. Not to
mention the death threats he has and will be receiving.

\--

One of the (features?) of Bitcoin is its inherent irreversibility. You only
have one chance to get things right. Combined with Murphy's Law, something
like this was bound to happen.

I've been a Bitcoin enthusiast and have been mining since early 2011, and
Bitcoin has been a huge part of my life, but I will admit my confidence in
Bitcoin ever _practically_ succeeding has diminished a little.

~~~
miguelrochefort
Did you try to get your money out of MtGox? A friend of mine has been trying
to get his money (CAD) out of MtGox for 2 months. He received his money
yesterday.

~~~
mcdougle
Where is he? I've read about a few people getting their money, but they were
all in Japan moving $ into Japanese bank accounts.

I tried to withdraw a couple hundred at the start of January into a US bank
account and I'm curious if I'll ever get it. It's a very small amount of money
(and I paid even less to get the BTC originally), so it's not a big deal at
all if I lose it all but I'd still like to get it.

~~~
miguelrochefort
Canada.

------
enscr
I feel bad for Mark Karpeles but the way MtGox communicated & lied to its
users makes me sad. It's those nameless individuals who believed in him, whose
trust was betrayed - those are the ones that deserve the affection of the
community. I've been following the news and I think MtGox was handling so much
money that they should have focused on better security practices and audits.

Few examples of their lackadaisical attitude :

1\.
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_at_mt)
:

 _I arrived at MtGox early, approximately 8am, and stood outside with a sign
reading “MtGox, where has my money gone”. I got some curious looks, and a lot
of questions from passersby about my protest. Then at approximately 9.20 am,
Mark Karpeles himself came along carrying a large, and very fancy coffee in
his hand that could have passed as a dessert. I immediately confronted him and
told him we needed a chat. So he stopped to hear me out.

I told him he was playing with people’s lives, and some people stood to lose
their entire savings. Like Gonzague told me the night before, he mentioned
__technical issues_ _, and that he would look into my case._

2\.
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1x9gue/my_protest_at_mtgox_offices_5_to_7th_february/cf9dgei)

 _I was told that up until a few weeks [at time of the interview] ago, there
was hardly any development environment to test changes. Most changes were done
straight on the production environment. Typing this made me throw up in my
mouth._

3\. [http://i.imgur.com/xMeW43a.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/xMeW43a.jpg)

~~~
mbillie1
> and some people stood to lose their entire savings.

While I am not defending MtGox, having your entire life savings wrapped up in
Bitcoin is hardly a sound, proven financial decision and evokes absolutely
zero sympathy whatsoever. Losing it all in a get-rich-quick frenzy is sad -
but it's sad in a "I can't believe people are willing to bet their lives on
this" way, not a "this poor person lost his/her entire life savings due to the
corruption of the financial industry" way.

~~~
theorique
Absolutely right.

Putting 5-10% of your net worth in something like this is being innovative and
forward thinking and taking a calculated risk.

Putting 90-95% of your net worth in something like this is serious, foolhardy
gambling.

~~~
ericb
Highhorses are fun to ride, but if you put in 5% of your networth at any point
> 8 months ago, it is likely that you ended up with 90-95% of your net worth
in Bitcoin.

~~~
stingraycharles
I had not considered this, and you have a very good point. Most of those
people had been getting used to the idea of being rich, that it will be very
rough for them to adjust.

Besides, the way their money is lost made it so much worse. The global value
of btc crashing would be one thing, corruption would be another, but this
level of incompetence.. it's almost harder to digest since they most likely
are not guilty of any crimes either, unless stupidity would be a crime.

~~~
ericb
Too true. It is interesting that rationally speaking, considering windfalls or
lottery winnings "house money" is incorrect--money is money. This attitude can
lead you to cognitive errors that cost you more money in the long run.

On the other hand, if we think about the coping strategy for people who've
been Goxed, I can see where if you can disregard the winnings as "paper gains"
it is much easier to get on with life thinking "I only lost 10k."

~~~
Carltonian
This thread is awesome. Goxed is now my new favorite word (sorry for the more
initiated if I'm already late to the party). It's just like being doxed - you
exposed yourself in some way, and some clever bastard got the better of you
for it.

------
JumpCrisscross
> _The company 's lawyer also said at a news conference at the Tokyo District
> Court that Mt. Gox had outstanding debt of about ¥6.5 billion ($63.6
> million) with assets worth ¥3.84 billion._

This implies a debt ratio of 170%. Assume: (1) no outside debt (only customer
deposits) and (2) only 100% liquid assets (only currency). Even in that case,
a depositor would recover no more than 59 cents to the dollar (the maximum
recovery rate).

Fifty-nine cents is clearly rose-tinted. Assets include office leases,
computers, and other things not easily liquidated at book value. And outside
debt is senior to deposits. That is the bite of being unregulated (deposits
are at the top of regulated banks' capital structures). After factoring in the
cost of chasing bankruptcy claims in Japan I do not see depositors recovering
a penny.

~~~
pakitan
> a depositor could expect to recover no more than fifty-nine cents to the
> dollar

59% is a wet-dream scenario. Apparently they are trying really hard to value
the lost 750K BTC at the closing MtGox price which was around $100. And
Bitcoin is actually $566 now. It looks more and more that if anyone gets
anything at all it will be under 10 cents to the dollar.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _Apparently they are trying really hard to value the lost 750K BTC at the
> closing MtGox price which was around $100._

Comical. The equivalent of a shipper, having sunk its cargo, claiming the
damages it owes are diminished by the cargo being worth less for having
dropped to the sea floor.

------
ck2
It's easy to be angry at them and/or see how stupid they were about
accounting, security, etc.

But I guess on the other hand we do have to realize they are victims of
massive theft, as far as we know this massive loss was not due to their own
profiteering or internal theft, it was an organized outside force targeting
them.

It occurs to me it is like blaming someone for getting mugged, although they
were stupid enough to walk down a really bad street at a bad time of night
with their cash out in their hands, it did take a criminal to make the crime
happen, not the victim.

~~~
bodski
It seems it is too early to state with any certainty that MtGox are also a
victim here.

[http://falkvinge.net/2014/02/28/the-gox-crater-crowd-
detecti...](http://falkvinge.net/2014/02/28/the-gox-crater-crowd-detectives-
reveal-billion-dollar-heist-as-inside-job/)

[http://letstalkbitcoin.com/the-ghost-in-the-machine-at-
mtgox...](http://letstalkbitcoin.com/the-ghost-in-the-machine-at-mtgox/)

~~~
danielweber
The allegation that an address that MtGox's controls still holds all the
Bitcoins but that they've lost the key is fascinating.

If true, how can MtGox prove it lost the key? If he walks away, he can wait 10
years and then transfer the funds out and spend them.

But if false, can we demand he produce the key?

What if someone else entirely different has the key?

It's all fascinating.

------
NotOscarWilde
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but they still have not said how much of the
(700k + 100k) BTC was stolen and how much was just "lost" by technical
incompetence, right?

As another Mt. Gox loser (sent my money back a few months before the end, of
course they never arrived) this is one question that pains me the most. I
don't care too much whether Karpeles goes to jail or not, but I want to know
whether theft was made or just gross incompetence.

~~~
300bps
_they still have not said how much of the BTC was stolen and how much was just
"lost" by technical incompetence, right_

Unfortunately, they are known liars. Right up until days before bankruptcy
filing they were telling people they were working to resume withdrawals. It
doesn't matter what they say at this point or anything they've said in the
past because their words do not in any way reflect reality.

The only thing left is to investigate and if the facts show fraud has
occurred, then prosecute.

------
akerl_
If only Bitcoin exchanges had some degree of regulation to ensure they were
properly securing their users' funds, or perhaps some level of insurance to
prevent their users from suffering financial losses due to the exchange's
misfortune.

~~~
nkrba
Elliptic Vault[1] is an example of a startup attempting to solve this.

[https://www.elliptic.co/vault](https://www.elliptic.co/vault)

------
sillysaurus3
Should the owner Mark Karpeles go to jail?

On one hand, there may be a chilling effect if Karpeles is sent to jail,
because fewer companies may be willing to participate in an area where the
penalty for failure is time behind bars.

On the other hand, it feels very inequitable and unjust that Karpeles made
millions off of MtGox, lost our money and then is free to enjoy life. But
that's a vengeful mindset, and it seems counterproductive. Is it really just a
bad situation with no recourse? Karpeles walks, MtGox shuts down, and
everyone's money is gone. Poof.

The most persuasive argument for jailtime seems to be that if he's not
penalized, then others may attempt to orchestrate similar disasters. Bitcoin
has a very, very small chance at becoming the next gold standard, but it's a
chance nonetheless. Therefore whoever is willing to flaunt the law and steal
>5% of all bitcoins that will ever be created has a very, very small chance at
becoming extremely powerful in the future, and wealthy in the short term.

I don't know. There's probably nothing to be done, and taking away years of a
person's life out of a sense of retribution probably isn't the best answer.

What does everyone think?

~~~
hanswesterbeek
After this, you still say "Bitcoin may be the next gold standard"?

~~~
Tenoke
Personally, this fiasco hasn't affected in the slightest my beliefs about the
protocol. Hell, if anything it might've been a small point in favour of
decentralization.

~~~
hanswesterbeek
That sounds like the reasoning of the gun-lobby. When bad things happen to do
with guns, they tell us we need more guns.

~~~
lukifer
I would've preferred to let the banks fail in 2008, short-term economic
consequences be damned. That experiment is now playing out in the unregulated
crypto-economy. (I've got my popcorn.)

------
terranstyler
My take: If the money was stolen this year, it was theft by a third party and
they were maybe incompetent, however, this is not punishable, see politics.

If it was stolen last year, they made all existing (and even worse: new)
costumers since the time of the theft believe that they would get their money
back. This is fraud.

------
TomGullen
What I wonder, is if Mark was actually the only one internally who had access
to the cold storage wallets, what would happen if he got hit by a car and
died? Have other exchanges got plans for this sort of thing? Some corps don't
let their programmers fly on the same aeroplane.

I wouldn't want to own that many Bitcoin and be the only one who has access
also because someone could profit considerably from your death.

~~~
M4v3R
At Bitalo [0] we use multi signature wallets all over the place - for user
wallets (so we cannot move them without users permissions), but also for
company wallet for storing fees. For the latter, all board members have keys
for them, but you only need a subset of them to access the funds. That way
even if one of them loses the key or something bad happens to them, coins can
still be moved by the others.

For example, you can have 2-of-4 wallets, where 4 people hold the keys, and
you need only 2 of them to move funds.

[0] [https://bitalo.com](https://bitalo.com)

~~~
hierro
Please, don't ever send money nor coins to these guys, they're scammers. M4v3R
used to run [http://bitmarket.eu](http://bitmarket.eu) and lost all the users'
coins while running some sort of (according to his own words) "hedge fund"
around December 2012. Around April 2013, with bitcoin around $50 he "kindly"
offered to reimburse everyone over time, valuating each coin at 10€ arguing
that it was their value when he lost them. I told them wanted my 10btc, not
money, and they still owe me to this day.

See
[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=134208.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=134208.0)

------
thefreeman
So are they claiming they literally lost ALL of their bitcoin? How is that
even possible to have happened without them noticing... It just seems much
more likely somebody got greedy on the inside.

I am sure they lost some. But I can't help but wonder if that was taken as an
excuse to loot the ship as it was sinking.

------
oznathan
No one stole anything from them. Or at least not something remotely close to
what is reported. How can 800k btc go missing?

Even people with few hundred btc split them between several different offline
wallets. Can't be stolen. Their hot wallet being hacked is a total
possibility, but it would contain no more than 5% of their coins. So, they
just emptied the cold storage until it was completely empty?

No.

Something else is going on and we will all know soon enough. Don't let
yourselves be manipulated like that.

------
kphild
I was selling a significant amount of Bitcoins in January. I wanted to use Mt
Gox because of higher rate. I did not think there was a real possibility of
the whole exchange going down. However, I did not pass identity verification
because of some minor problem. So I sold the Bitcoins on Bitstamp and had
money in the bank a day later. I was really really lucky.

------
ChuckMcM
Pirates buried their treasure in hidden locations rather than let someone hold
on to it for them [1] :-).

[1] I realize this isn't strictly true, as there were organizations the
pirates did use, but they had the same challenges with them being crooked or
getting captured by England or some other authority at the time.

------
mcphilip
>One Japanese small-business owner that accepts bitcoin as payment said
Japanese banks had expressed skepticism toward the payment method, and that
the business's lenders this week asked that the company wouldn't use bitcoin
in the wake of Mt. Gox's stopping all transactions on Tuesday. "They're
approaching bitcoin very conservatively," the owner said.

I don't think that the demise of mtgox will destroy the ecosystem. However, I
suspect this will be a major setback in mainstream adoption as a method of
payment. Bitcoin speculation (and difficulty of shorting) may very well prop
up the price for the foreseeable future, but... so what? The interesting thing
about the Bitcoin saga is seeing it work its way into mainstream.

I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though.

~~~
interstitial
And is this because it will make you rich with your bitcoin stash, or because
somehow "Society Needs This" and you'll just happen to get rich while being so
magnanimous. It's a new paradigm, I know.

~~~
ivanca
Everything you use for your benefit made someone else rich, from your
toothbrushes till the banks you use... and you know this to be true, so your
discourse is only an attempt to be rude and cynical.

------
wintersFright
what happens to the BTC in their wallets that they didn't lose? Liquidated to
pay creditors 1c in the dollar?

with 63 million in debt, I imagine customers aren't first class debt holders
either?

~~~
broolstoryco
> 63 million in debt

it is still not clear if it is 63 million + 750k BTC in debt, or in total. If
in total it is not clear how btc are valued.

~~~
Yuioup
Zero. Bitcoins are worthless.

~~~
gambiting
Just like everything, until we decide to give it value. Gold is completely and
absolutely worthless to us humans, we don't need it to function and it serves
no biological function in our organisms whatsoever. But because we like it and
there is a scarcity of it, we will trade goods for it. Just like with
bitcoins.

~~~
betterunix
Who trades goods for gold?

~~~
gambiting
Unless you interpret what I said literally,and are going to point out that no
one trades apples for gold rings, then the answer is - literally everyone who
buys gold. You might pay with a fiat currency,but then you obtained it by
either selling something that you produced or work that you carried out - so
"goods".

------
happpyherp
Can anyone explain to someone who didnt follow whole story from the beginning
what exactly happened to Mtgox that caused them to lose all this money?

~~~
ZachPruckowski
No, because nobody knows for sure. The most common theories are stupidity,
fraud, and theft (or some combination thereof).

------
Havoc
I just don't see how they missed it. Since they used a hot-wallet system this
had to be over a pretty substantial period of time. Surely if you're running
an operation with that much cash involved you've got some kind of rolling
reconciliation between debt owed vs reserves available?

Who misses a 500MM hole in their assets? Or is reckless enough to hide it
(trading whilst insolvent)?

------
pbjorkmarker
Perhaps naïve question but can't see any info on this one. So, the Bitcoin
ledger is still intact. 750,000 is quite a lot of Bitcoins to be stolen.
Mt.Gox may have been shitty built but they must have kept some logs, account
databases, etc. What are the odds of recovering the coins/exchange money that
was lost? Technically sounds like pretty good odds? No?

~~~
n1c
At the same time it's quite easy for it to all be gone forever due to good old
fashioned incompetence.

------
josephlord
_The company 's lawyer said at the news conference that Mt. Gox had
outstanding debt of about ¥6.5 billion ($63.6 million) with assets worth ¥3.84
billion._

That can't include the value of the bitcoins lost can it? So presumably the
assets doesn't include the value of any bitcoins that they still have which
all makes this statement rather meaningless.

------
elif
It seems like the bitcoin community should collectively decide to not honor
transactions for the stolen bitcoins.

Not only will it prevent the market from completely crashing as the thief eats
up remaining buy orders, but it would moderately discourage future thieves if
such a mechanism were in place.

------
yread
> bitcoin industry

What the? They certainly do seem to consume a couple of factories worth of
electricity

------
hanswesterbeek
Hilarious. Can't wait to hear from the choir of libertarian crypto-currency-
zealots, who will sing the praises of the Ponzi scheme that is Bitcoin.

On a serious note: who benefits?

~~~
theklub
Unfortunately I get the feeling more and more everyday that this really is
just a ponzi scheme built on really cool new technology. I mean honestly most
people who buy bitcoin aren't looking to spend it or use it because of
convenience, they are looking to hold it in the hopes that the price continues
to go up and on the way encouraging everyone they know to buy in to drive up
the price.

~~~
gnaritas
> I mean honestly most people who buy bitcoin aren't looking to spend it or
> use it because of convenience, they are looking to hold it in the hopes that
> the price continues to go up and on the way encouraging everyone they know
> to buy in to drive up the price.

Even if that's true, that doesn't make it a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme is an
investment in a phony entity run by a fraudster (the Ponzi) who's promising
guaranteed returns and lying about the existence and nature of what the
investment is. New money making early investors rich _is not_ a defining
feature of nor unique to Ponzi schemes.

Ponzi schemes require a Ponzi, intentional fraud, and a fake investment.
Bitcoin is none of these things; it's not even remotely similar to a Ponzi
scheme. No one is being lied to about what Bitcoin is, there's no fake
investment here, Bitcoin is a real and functional payment network. There's no
guarantee of returns here. Stop spreading FUD. Gox is not Bitcoin, Mark being
a criminal doesn't make Bitcoin a Ponzi scheme.

~~~
danmaz74
Bitcoin is much more like a speculative bubble than a Ponzi scheme.

~~~
gnaritas
Correct.

------
stef25
Serious question - is now a good time to buy Bitcoin?

~~~
SquareWheel
Are you planning to buy it as an investment, or to use it as a currency? If
the latter, this is not a good time because the currency is less stable than
ever. But it could arguably be a good time to "invest" if that's your thing.

~~~
stef25
Invest

~~~
dangrossman
What makes BTC a better investment opportunity for you than, say, some stock
in Tesla or Amazon?

~~~
stef25
I feel like doing something different. I'm sure Amazon would be a better
investment.

------
rondon2
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but did Mt. Gox have their wallets? Why
didn't these people keep their wallets with them?

~~~
steveklabnik
The way that exchanges work is that they hold a wallet for you, you deposit
money into it, and then you do off-blockchain trades with other users. At some
point, you ask to withdraw, and give them your local wallet address, and then
they send you the coins.

~~~
rondon2
ok so Mt.Gox should still have the digital wallets. The whole point of bitcoin
is that you don't need a central bank/exchange holding your wallet. But people
used one anyways and now Mr.Gox doesn't know where the money went.

------
negamax
So much speculation and theories. Seems like Occam's razor wins again.

~~~
gdulli
I don't think that applies here. Neither incompetence nor theft strains
credulity.

------
jgalt212
Is this the largest heist in history?

~~~
gaadd33
I don't think the numbers even reach the low billions, so no Madoff still
takes that award.

~~~
jgalt212
I guess it depends how you define heist. I think I would put Ponzi scheme in a
different category, but I do see your point in that a theft is a theft.

------
carsonreinke
So much for cold storage

------
antocv
Learn your lessons and move on.

Money, bitcoin, value, economy. Its like a game, like chess, sometimes you
loose.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUcXI2BIUOQ&feature=kp](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUcXI2BIUOQ&feature=kp)

Aint got no, ive got life, by nina simone.

------
diestl
Anyone stupid enough to invest a significant portion of their net worth in a
nascent currency like BitCoin only have themselves to blame, high risk.

~~~
dangrossman
Bitcoin hasn't suffered any loss; the exchange rate has been relatively flat
all year. People who let a third party hold their assets lost those assets due
to that entity's negligence. That can happen to shovels in a storage unit --
the underlying asset is irrelevant to this particular risk.

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diestl
A currency is only as good as it's exchanges, AFAIK Mtgok was the biggest and
most trusted, for me this is a death blow to bitcoin.

