
Mt. Gox new announcement ( February 26th 2014 ) - ing33k
Copied from https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.mtgox.com&#x2F;<p>February 26th 2014<p>Dear MtGox Customers,<p>As there is a lot of speculation regarding MtGox and its future, I would like to use this opportunity to reassure everyone that I am still in Japan, and working very hard with the support of different parties to find a solution to our recent issues.<p>Furthermore I would like to kindly ask that people refrain from asking questions to our staff: they have been instructed not to give any response or information. Please visit this page for further announcements and updates.<p>Sincerely,
Mark Karpeles
======
snitko
This statement at least seems like he stopped trying to bullshit people. He
openly said that staff was instructed to not give out any info, which probably
means they can't talk. I do not think this is the choice they or their lawyers
made, but rather it is more likely to be an external factor, like a gag order
or an acquisition deal.

Having said that, chances of getting our money back are still extremely slim,
but the update strikes me as containing less bullshit and as an attempt to
reach out. My hope is that the truth will be revealed sooner than later and we
can all move on. I'm saying it basically having lost all of my money with Gox.
I think the time we've lost following this drama is probably more valuable.

~~~
kyro
The possibility of them being acquired is discussed quite a bit, but of what
value is Gox to a potential acquirer at this point, considering they've indeed
hemorrhaged money? What remaining assets or loyal customer base would make it
worth millions of new capital?

~~~
snitko
If indeed they lost 770k BTC then, in my view, there can only be two reasons
someone would buy them:

1\. A buyer truly believes that Gox death would mean Bitcoin death or
stagnation for 5-10 years and, thus, his own coins would be worthless anyway.

2\. A buyer believes he can make more than 770k BTC he'd have to pay back
customers.

However, I don't really think they've lost that much. It is simply insane. I
don't believe anyone can be that incompetent, especially after reading Mark's
2012 message about security here:
[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=23938.msg1177353#msg...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=23938.msg1177353#msg1177353)

Update. Rumor on twitter about the acquisition:
[https://twitter.com/paulbuitink/status/438428157948219392](https://twitter.com/paulbuitink/status/438428157948219392)

~~~
dangrossman
3\. The buyers are only interested in acquiring the domain/brand, not the
company's obligations and debt. They would get sold off in bankruptcy anyway.

~~~
snitko
And what would be the point of that? No one would ever trust anything to Gox,
unless it returns the money.

~~~
dangrossman
Thousands of links, including mentions in every major news publication. They
aren't going to disappear or be retroactively rewritten.

Nor would the previous owner's past be reason for someone not to trust the
current owner of the brand. You wouldn't stop trusting Bitstamp or BTC-e if
they happened to buy the MtGox domain. Nor would someone reading an old NY
Times article stop to research the past owner's history.

The grand vision of Coinbase isn't to capture as much of the Bitcoin
speculation market as possible, it's to capture as much of the e-commerce
payment market as possible by offering lower transaction fees and eliminating
chargeback risk for merchants. If, for example, they took over the MtGox
domain, and that helped stabilize Bitcoin and continue its push towards the
mainstream, then "snitko's and 0.02% of our target market's image of us is
tained by Gox's past" is probably a good tradeoff.

~~~
snitko
I think no one would be willing to buy MtGox knowing they wouldn't be paying
the debt. Imagine MtGox customers going to mtgox.com, then being redirected to
Coinbase: it's like saying "Hi, we bought MtGox. We know you've lost your
money there, not gonna return it. Come do business with us instead!". That's
nuts and is going to hurt buyer's image a lot.

------
alexchamberlain
Dear Mark,

Should you be reading this, please could you answer a very simple question...

For each of the currencies you support - including BTC, USD etc: 1) How much
do people have in their MtGox account? 2) How much do you have in the
bank/wallet?

Thanks,

Alex

~~~
lnanek2
There's a nice chart in the PDF that was leaked, which was later confirmed by
him on IRC. It had BTC/fiat currency assets vs. holdings vs. debts, etc.:
[http://www.scribd.com/doc/209050732/MtGox-Situation-
Crisis-S...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/209050732/MtGox-Situation-Crisis-
Strategy-Draft)

------
runn1ng
Mt.Gox has single-handedly the worst crisis communication I have ever seen.

~~~
caruana
Well, them and Yahoo

------
MWil
It's worth 0% assurance that you are still in Japan, Mark. Just sayin.

------
mxx
What are the issues?

~~~
patio11
If you haven't been following along, the brief version:

Mt. Gox is a Tokyo-based company which, most famously, took deposits in
dollars, yen, and a few other currencies and also Bitcoin, and allowed people
to trade Bitcoin for dollars/etc and vice versa. They charged traders a
commission, and so earned a percentage of transaction volume. Transaction
volume was massive -- Mt. Gox was the leading exchange for over a year.

They had a rough year in 2013, partly because their US subsidiary was closed
by the US for being a money laundering operation and because, in their haste
to exit the US regulatory environment, they attempted to engage a US company
to serve the US/Canadians markets. This went poorly, as their counterparty was
transparently also going to get shut down for money laundering. Between the
feds and the counterparty, Mt. Gox had several million dollars of customers'
funds frozen.

Some time after funds were seized, Mt. Gox started delaying outbound wire
transfers. They variously blamed technical issues, issues with partner banks
(including "The second largest bank in Japan can't process more than 10 wire
transfers per day"), regulatory issues, etc etc. They didn't seem to have much
problem with inbound transfers. They also didn't seem to have problems with
domestic Japanese transfers until about December/January, which they blamed on
the end-of-the-year holiday.

Waits for withdraws stretched from weeks to months to unbounded. During this
time, they routinely transferred out Bitcoins in minutes. As a consequence,
people wanting to exit Mt. Gox would buy BTC on the exchange and withdraw it.
This caused the price of BTC at Gox to exceed that of other exchanges in a
sustained fashion, since at least August.

Some weeks ago, Mt. Gox started delaying BTC withdraws as well. Their excuse
for this was that their bookkeeping systems did not handle an edge case in the
Bitcoin "protocol", where a) the One True Bitcoin Client searches for
transactions by ID, b) the One True Bitcoin Client identifies a transaction by
ID immediately upon creation, c) despite the above two facts, an emergent
"feature" of the protocol is that that ID can change for up to about an hour
after creation of the transaction.

People freaked out, because Mt. Gox now allowed neither real money nor
Internet money to leave their company.

In the last 48 hours, it has been credibly alleged that Mt. Gox has suffered a
theft to the tune of 700k BTC (worth somewhere north of $300 million) and that
they are insolvent -- they owe debts to their customers far in excess of the
Bitcoin and hard currency they have on hand.

People are quite concerned. Mt. Gox's crisis communications have been wildly
below the level of professionalism one would hope to see from a company with
several hundred million dollars of financial assets.

This is getting wide play in the media both internationally and in Japan, and
it is possible that Mt. Gox has _finally_ woken Leviathan, who may now take
adverse notice to the fact that no-account foreigners are in his capitol
making him look stupid and potentially ruining the livelihoods of some of his
citizens.

Mt. Gox customers currently are unaware when (if ever) and to what degree
their claims against Mt. Gox will be satisfied. People interested in Bitcoin
are worried that this will tarnish the system's reputation and/or lead to
additional adversarial interest from government and other parties.

[In evaluating whether I've been accurate with the above description, you
might consider it useful to note that I'm a Japan-based entrepreneur with a
fair bit of understanding about Bitcoin technically and systemically, and that
I'm an open and notorious critic of it.]

~~~
sillysaurus3
I believed in Mark (the owner of MtGox) and his team, defending them
vigorously, and got screwed as a consequence.

The support staff was on IRC every day saying "Yes, we have customers' funds.
No, we aren't insolvent. Everything is fine, everything will be fine." They
answered every question in a level-headed fashion.

They were either being paid to lie, or being fed lies, or somehow MtGox didn't
become aware of the fact that they were missing >700,000btc until a day or two
before they shut off their website.

So I was pretty gullible. And I just want to thank Patrick (patio11) for being
a constant throughout this whole ordeal: constantly skeptical, and with good
reason.

~~~
serf
there is a lot of knowledge to be gained from being as humble in 'defeat' as
you are right now.

It's an admirable trait that I myself often times lack, even when my defeat is
obvious and ensured.

Thanks for being a good person, at least in that respect.

------
markhahn
If the loss is due to mutability (failing to canonicalize transaction
components before hashing them as the ID), why hasn't the BTC world just
tracked down all the bogus double-spends: which wallets they went into, etc.
The whole blockchain construction permits tracing the complete graph - at
least until it exits via a physical exchange (money, gold, beer, whatever).

------
shawabawa3
Well... At least this update includes _some_ information (he's in Japan).
Would be nice if he could mention anything about anything people actually care
about (are they insolvent? Have they lost 700,000BTC? If not, how many? etc)

------
abc123xyz
Its funny that people referred to bitcoin as a ponzy scheme

Now we know that the protocol itself is actually quite good (despite mtgox
trying to blame it)

And the problem lies at the interface between bitcoin and the traditional
payment systems (exchanges)

Its a pitty that Satoshi never solved the problem of distributed TRUSTLESS
exchange, tho I suppose that is a problem that didnt exist until bitcoin
became popular.

~~~
Cthulhu_
> tho I suppose that is a problem that didnt exist until bitcoin became
> popular.

Sure it did. Cash money. Exact same problems.

------
madaxe_again
Tum ti tum.

"I haven't jumped the country... yet." \- thanks for letting us know you're
considering it.

------
uptown
"working very hard with the support of different parties to find a solution to
our recent issues."

And yet still no explanation from Mark as to what those issues specifically
are.

------
caruana
They still have staff?

------
mfukar
I'm in Japan and I'm having some delicious sushi while working very hard with
the support of different parties to find a solution to my recent issues.

Sincerely, mfukar.

