Sifting Mt. Gox's Logs Reveals Suspicious Trading Patterns 143
This analysis of trading logs from the Mt. Gox Bitcoin exchange analyzes a subset of the transactions that took place there prior to the exchange's collapse, and makes the case that two bots (the writer calls them "Willy," and "Markus") were making suspicious transactions which may have been used to intentionally manipulate the trading price, and which can explain the loss of Bitcoin inventory on which the exchange's failure was blamed.
The author of the analysis says "[T]here is more than plenty of evidence to suspect that what happened at Mt. Gox may have been an inside job. What I hope to achieve by releasing this analysis into the wild is for the public to learn the truth behind what happened at Mt. Gox, how it affected the Bitcoin price, and hopefully for the individuals responsible for the massive fraud that occurred at Mt. Gox to be put to justice. Although the evidence shown in this report is far from conclusive, it can hopefully spur a more rigorous investigation into Mt. Gox’s accounting data, both by the public (using the leaked data) and the authorities (forensic investigation on the actual data)."
Re:This just in: flim flam currency is flim flam (Score:0, Informative)
There's nothing wrong with the currency. It's working just fine. Some of the websites that integrate with it? Not so much.
Nice piece of work (Score:4, Informative)
Merchants never see or touch a bitcoin ... (Score:3, Informative)
By definition, BitCoin is money. Troll more elsewhere. "any article or substance used as a medium of exchange, measure of wealth, or means of payment, as checks on demand deposit or cowrie."
It currently fails as a stable measure of wealth (alternatively described as a store of value), its a bit too volatile. Although it is currently a good medium of exchange.
As evidence for the proceeding notice the growing popularity of exchange merchant services where merchants who accepts bitcoins as payments (from the customer's perspective) never in fact sees or "touches" a bitcoin. They specify a price to the echange in fiat, the exchange provides the equivalent price in bitcoins and provides a payment address. The bitcoin payment in fact goes to the exchange which immediately converts to fiat and credits/pays the merchant.
Re: Myth of the Obama Bank Bailout (Score:5, Informative)
.... Do you remember those hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers money, Obama and his team of banksters handed over to commercial privately held banks?
Not quite. Not quite.
Personally, I recall the $700 billion dollar TARP program [wikipedia.org] advocated by Henry Paulson and signed into law by George W. Bush. Can you provide us with links describing the Obama bailout program you refer to? (Don't worry, I'm not holding my breath).
I also recall Obama announcing that the banks had paid back their loans with interest, such that the government made a profit on TARP. [politifact.com]
In summary, you are entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own facts!