
Mt.Gox's tweets are all gone - volaski
https://twitter.com/mtgox
======
SwellJoe
So, each bit of news coming out of Gox makes me more likely to assume the
worst.

When preparing for lawsuits, often the lawyers will recommend silence, and
making sure that there are no public statements that are misleading. Given
that they've been making reassuring comments all along, this makes me assume
things are very bad indeed. I must assume they've been advised to _stop_
making reassuring comments and saying things that could make them liable for
more damages in court...or, worse, make them guilty of fraud.

Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions. Anybody else got theories on why they'd do
something so extreme? I certainly can't think of any _positive_ reason for
them to do so.

~~~
gojomo
On the other hand, destroying evidence once a lawsuit is filed is a definite
no-no. But what's one more no-no in a career of no-no's?

An account compromise is possible.

Perhaps they're about to take some steps they'd previously publicly assured
people they wouldn't, and don't want the obsolete assurances to be easy-to-
reference.

~~~
muyuu
This is criminal activity. They are tanking their market on purpose to buy up
at firesale prices and make the most of their insider position with their
customers locked without withdrawals.

I wonder what do they have in mind but this is a bonafide bucket shop and I
have little doubt that they will be facing criminal charges.

~~~
DanBC
Assuming for the moment that they are doing that - is it really criminal
activity? I understand that it would be in regulated markets, but Bitcoin
isn't regulated.

~~~
muyuu
It doesn't matter what they deal with. MtGox is a financial services provider
registered with the Japanese FSA that transmits money in multiple "recognised"
currencies (AUD CAD CHF CNY DKK EUR GBP HKD JPY NOK NZD PLN RUB SEK SGD THB
USD).

They are subject to Japanese law and International law. And also to US and EU
law regarding AML/KYC of their citizens.

Bitcoin might not be regulated in most places to different degrees, but that
doesn't mean you are above the law because you deal with Bitcoin among other
things.

~~~
at-fates-hands
>>They are subject to Japanese law and International law. And also to US and
EU law regarding AML/KYC of their citizens.

Is there any legal precedent for this? What would you sue Mt.Gox for? Do they
have contracts or some form of binding agreement with people who store their
BTC with them?

I'm not sure they're really bound by any laws in regards to currency. Maybe
contractually, but beyond that, not sure what you could sue them for without
some real concrete evidence of criminal activity.

~~~
patio11
You typically sue a company over torts, not crimes. A tort is a civil cause of
action. "They deprived me of my property in a fashion we had not agreed upon"
is a tort called conversion. There exist many other ones you could describe
Mt. Gox as having committed. Japan and the US are friendly first-world
nations; their courts routinely enforce each others' judgments. (You'd have to
demonstrate tortious behavior in the US to the satisfaction of a Japanese
court, which might not be straightforward, but that's the sort of thing you'd
want to ask an actual Japanese lawyer rather than somebody with a cursory
understanding of the matter.)

That said, most people hoping for recourse in a court of law do not understand
the expense, timeline, and likelihood of actual collection involved. (Six
figures, years, and "probably nil", respectively.)

~~~
muyuu
There are hundreds to thousands of people and many millions of US$ affected.
I'm pretty sure they will work out a way to get them to court.

------
steven2012
Are these the actions of a company that intends to stay in business? I would
hazard a guess that the answer to that question is "No." Who would be foolish
enough to keep their money with mtgox after 3 weeks of silence, and now with
them seemingly erasing their footprint off the Internet? Even the worst
businessperson would know their actions are jeopardizing their viability as a
business.

So, based on that assumption that they know they will no longer be in
business, you need to decide, are they going to make their users whole before
shutting down, or not? Again, I would hazard a guess that the high-probability
answer is that they will not make their users whole. If they had enough money,
it would seem that knowing they are going to go out of business, the best
thing to do is make their customers whole and close up shop.

The fact they aren't do this, to me, suggests they are attempting to protect
themselves. If my guess is correct, then it suggests that they don't have
enough money and are trying to figure out how best to save themselves from
being sued or worse.

~~~
sspiff
I withdrew my money a couple of weeks ago to a European bank account, shortly
before the news of their issues broke. It wasn't a fortune but it was a large
enough amount to care about. Still hasn't made it onto my account. I doubt it
ever will at this point.

~~~
scottcanoni
I have been waiting since October for a transfer of USD to my bank account for
an amount that I had sold 1 BTC for USD. I have had an open support ticket
with them for 3 months now and they have held my money hostage.

Just last week when the price of BTC was lower than what I had sold mt BTC
for, I asked them to cancel the withdrawal and credit my account. I then
proceeded to purchase back more BTC than I had sold originally over 4 months
ago.

Unfortunately my BTC is still held hostage until they reinstate BTC
withdrawals but their support has confirmed that I will be able to withdraw my
BTC.

------
gojomo
They've clearly suffered a Twitter Malleability attack.

~~~
MysticFear
I am not sure why people blame Mt. Gox for a problem within the Twitter
protocol that always 'deletions'. We discussed the solution with the Twitter
core developers and will allow our tweets to be displayed again once it has
been approved and standardized.

~~~
edelans
"our tweets" ?

~~~
vidarh
He is mocking the way MtGox tried to pass the buck for their inability to deal
with the malleability issue to Bitcoin core developers.

------
vinchuco
Initially read this as: Mt.Gox tweets "all gone"

~~~
joeblau
That would definitely be one of the craziest tweets of the year.

------
verroq
IMHO, this is a ruse. Only Gox knows if they are going under or not. By
playing up the trend of bad news, they are forcing down the prices of Gox BTC
which they can buy up at extremely generous prices.

The more they make it look like they are screwed, the cheaper people will
sell. Thus they can keep this facade up for months. As long as they don't go
under, they profit.

~~~
blazespin
It's also possible they're not doing this out of greed but as a way to
actually rescue their company. They may owe a lot of money and the only way
they can make it through this without going under is by buying all the bitcoin
back at a low value. The question is, how far do they go, and how much of the
retained earnings do they commit to rescuing the company and how much of these
retained earnings have already found their way into individual executive bank
accounts.

~~~
mcv
That's still dishonest if they hold other people's bitcoins hostage so they
have no recourse but to sell them to Mt Gox at low value. Their customers are
at their mercy, and they're taking full advantage of that.

------
Mithrandir
Here are a few of the last tweets:
[https://archive.is/eDanx](https://archive.is/eDanx)

Edit: And more at
[https://archive.is/https://twitter.com/MtGox/status/*](https://archive.is/https://twitter.com/MtGox/status/*)

------
sergiotapia
I'm kind of in the dark about Mt.Gox, is their recent downfall just the fault
of inexperience when dealing with complex code and Bitcoin or did the team at
Mt.Gox actually act with malice, attempting to steal money from people?

Is Mt.Gox just a startup made of 2 brothers and a fullstack engineer that
happened to hit it big and muck up brilliantly when they scaled?

Part of me feels really sad (granted I don't participate in Bitcoin at all)
because these guys may actually go to jail for fraud. I just want to know if
my moral compass is pointing in the right direction.

~~~
DanBC
There comes a point where incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

MtGox has had so many incidents that they would have faced sanctions in a
regulated market. But then the people giving money to MtGox should have seen
just how flaky MtGox was.

It is sad and frustrating that this happened. I kind of want bitcoin to take
off. And I especially want to avoid saying "told you so" because that's just
being a dick.

~~~
zmk_
It is easy to say these things in hindsight. A year ago Mt. Gox was the
paragon of the 'industry'.

~~~
joepie91_
Not really. A year ago, it had already been crap for quite a while... it just
still had a sizable club of apologists saying "don't be so hard on them,
they've done so much good".

------
jrockway
Not a great day to be a Libertarian.

When their domain goes up for sale, I'm going to buy it and start an online
exchange for Magic cards.

~~~
cheez
So in the current EU/US political climate, MtGox would be bailed out, meaning
people who didn't invest their money with MtGox would be forced to make the
people who did whole. Whereas in the current BitCoin climate, the investors
suffer and will be forced to sue MtGox to reclaim their money.

Which is morally better?

No libertarian will tell you that either of these is a preferred outcome, but
out of the two, the morally superior one should be relatively obvious.

Edit: The reason I say it would be bailed out is not because they are
investment accounts but precisely because it was so huge in the BitCoin
economy.

~~~
stingraycharles
MtGox is an exchange, not a bank. I'm mentioning this because there is an
important third person with a bank: the customer, not the investor.

With mtgox, every customer is an investor. When bailing out a bank, however,
the rationale is often to help out the people who cannot be blamed: the
customers.

I'm still not claiming that bailing out I banks is a good thing, but the
comparison you make is a small apples/oranges thing.

~~~
cheez
This sounds a lot like the too big to fail argument and so it is not an
apples/oranges thing. It's a sliding scale and the only reason it seems like
it is apples and oranges to you is precisely because MtGox isn't big enough.

I'm not saying that customers of a bank should suffer for the investment side
but let the investors suffer for their bad investments, if the political will
is there.

------
pmorici
Check out the recent update to this YouTube video...

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP1YsMlrfF0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP1YsMlrfF0)

Apparently liquidity problems and solvency problems are different problems,
who knew.

~~~
tlrobinson
Oh wow. I see 3 possibilities:

1\. Mt Gox is going under, probably this week.

2\. These people are utterly clueless about public relations and how the
public perceives their actions.

3\. This is all a big prank. You've been punked.

~~~
zimpenfish
4\. Mt Gox is no longer liquid because the Feds have their (encrypted) wallet

(ok, this is probably a bit too far down the conspiracy path)

------
deanclatworthy
A somewhat redundant exercise given all the tweet archiving and indexing
services that are around nowadays. I can't help but think there's nothing
sinister or suspicious here and more likely an account compromise.

~~~
volaski
There was another news a couple of hours ago that they resigned from Bitcoin
foundation board, so it indeed is very sinister
[https://bitcoinfoundation.org/blog/?p=462](https://bitcoinfoundation.org/blog/?p=462)

~~~
deanclatworthy
Did you read my first point? Whilst I understand it's perfectly normal for BTC
community members to jump to rash conclusions, I feel this time it's misguided
given the numerous ways that tweets can be recovered. So what exactly would
wiping them achieve?

~~~
DelightfulScone
I'm not much of a fan of "X probably didn't do Y because I cannot guess what
would be to gain."

There has been no word from Gox that their social account has been compromised
so the clearest conclusion to guess is that they wiped their timeline. Why?
That doesn't exactly matter before establishing who and right now the who
seems to be Gox.

------
ebbv
About 6 months ago (when Mt Gox had some other issues with people's money) I
said:

> If you trusted a company that started out trading Magic: the Gathering cards
> with a significant amount of your money, you probably need the lesson you
> are going to learn from this.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6264666](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6264666)

And was mocked/dismissed. It's disheartening to me the blind spot that
otherwise intelligent people have when it comes to BitCoin and BitCoin related
businesses.

~~~
pessimizer
Probably because what they bought the domain for was utterly irrelevant to
their competence or complete lack thereof.

The enemy is stupid the overcredulous decision-making of ideologues and the
incompetence of people who want to handle your money. Adding more dumb
information just confuses the issue.

------
beedogs
relax, they're just pivoting and will relaunch next week as an RPG card
trading exchange.

------
frade33
_grabs popcorn_

I am an asian, therefore my comment shouldn't be taken as racial. The moment I
realized, Mt.Gox was an asian enterprise, (based in asia) I became wary of
them, and put them on my least priority. I want people to transact their
wealth/money only with those companies, which are located in countries, which
have good repute for accountability and have strong judicial system. I don't
mean, Japan is not one of those. But I don't know, I still can't put faith
with any Asian company as yet, when it involves 'money'.

~~~
creamyhorror
Even though the founder isn't Asian at all, but a French techie who moved the
Japan to become an entrepreneur? And the top management appear to all be non-
Asian?

I'm not saying your concerns don't have some basis, but MtGox was not a
relevant example. Unless you mean that Westerners moving to Asia to set up
businesses automatically can't be trusted either.

~~~
frade33
I wasn't talking about individuals, instead the company and where it is based
at.

------
AdamGibbins
Their account was full of some bot gone-wrong spam, deleting all would have
been an easy cleanup. People are jumping to conclusions a tad rapidly.

~~~
kyberias
This is a valuable observation.

------
frade33
Even thinking about it, makes me feel dirty. But since things can’t get any
worse than this, let me please ask this. Is it mere coincidence that the
creator of Bitcoin is of the same origin as the Mt. Gox. I am feeling guilty
for asking this, and I would be pleased, if I remain guilty forever for asking
this, than otherwise.

~~~
Aqwis
Neither the founder nor the current owner of Mt. Gox are Japanese. And Satoshi
is unlikely to be Japanese anyway.

------
booleanbetrayal
I think it's evident that frameworks are being drawn to wrestle "the bitcoin
question" into some mechanism of control / oversight. Look to US exchanges
that partner and work within these frameworks to remain in good graces. I
imagine that's the reality of it.

------
kmfrk
Hey, at least there's a chance they might finally delete all the sensitive
user data they have on hand - presumably stored in a less-than-secure fashion.

Apparently, this is what it takes.

------
erichurkman
Well, that's certainly interesting. I wonder if it was Mt Gox themselves
removing them, or hackers seizing the account.

~~~
volaski
It's actually been building up, so probably intentional
[http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230342630...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303426304579401883794330454)

------
Oculus
Wow that's eerie. It's as if they're trying to pretend it all never happened.

------
gamebak
Hmm if Mt. Gox doesn't plan to get back it will be a huge backside for
bitcoins :(

------
carrja99
Did you ever read their twitter feed? It was nothing but auto-responders!

------
tommaxwell
Has to be some real shit 'bout to go down

------
webkike
Mt. Gox was weak, and they died.

------
soheil
Rebrand?

~~~
SwellJoe
Merely rebranding won't resolve the millions in obligations they have to
customers. There's real money at stake here; it's very unlikely that it will
be something that can be swept under the rug.

------
DelightfulScone
Google cache:
[https://www.google.com/#q=site:twitter.com%2Fmtgox](https://www.google.com/#q=site:twitter.com%2Fmtgox)

