One Year Later, We're No Closer To Finding MtGox's Missing Millions 178
itwbennett writes: When Mt. Gox collapsed on Feb. 28, 2014, with liabilities of some ¥6.5 billion ($63.6 million), it said it was unable to account for some 850,000 bitcoins. Some 200,000 of them turned up in an old-format bitcoin wallet last March, bringing the tally of missing bitcoins to 650,000 (now worth about $180 million). In January, Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, citing sources close to a Tokyo police probe of the MtGox collapse, reported that only 7,000 of the coins appear to have been taken by hackers, with the remainder stolen through a series of fraudulent transactions. But there's still no explanation of what happened to them, and no clear record of what happened on the exchange.
Obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Somebody buried it in Second Life.
It's Silk Road, Duh.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Has no one noticed that the coins disappeared at almost the same time the FBI seized Silk Road's Assets?
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Wallet was hidden in a Mindcraft structure.
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Wallet was hidden in a Mindcraft structure.
This would actually be quite fasinating. Something like that would imply a virtual structure acting as a stenographic hiding place. Which leads to some interesting ideas. I know the whole, "They don't need your computer, they just need a wrench" idea applies here. But just imagine, a hostile entity (FBI, Robbers, ex-wife) are attempting to take your bitcoins. So, to make a plausible case that you don't have access to it, you generate a minecraft world. Then make various structures based on the bitcoin strin
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Although I find your musing interesting... That is not the issue here. All the information for "finding" the missing Bitcoins is public; it is in the public ledger (block chain). You "wallet" is just a private key; granted you can hide that in Mincraft... But the "coins" are not "hidden". The problem with MtGox is that of all the transactions that MtGox did, which are the legitimate ones and the which the fraudulent ones.
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The to and from bits are all clearly visible...
Yes, and? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wasn't that the whole point behind Bitcoin? That you could fleece investors without leaving a paper trail?
Re:Yes, and? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bitcoins are 100% traceable, but wallets are not, and it wouldn't take much shell game playing for enough plausible deniability to be entered into the system, especially if the coins are taken off the board for several years while the currency rises to quad or five digit values per dollar. (BitCoins are too much in use to ever really go down in value for any length of time now that China is in the game.)
Say a wallet has a hundred coins in it, all "dirty". For example, the blockchain traces show they were all in an exchange's possession/wallet, then stolen. Realistically, the coins could be spent by them being put into wallets (perhaps even printed out on paper currency), and distributed/laundered via that method. A few years later, when the wallets are opened and the coins spent, the coins are owned by completely different people, and tracing the gap from when the coins vanished to when they were put back into the ecosystem becomes almost impossible... like trying to trace a dollar bill.
If tainted coins hit an exchange or other service that trades BTC for other goods (even if they just trade BTC for their own currency and back again), unless that exchange has complete records of every transaction, the trail of stolen coins will stop with them, as it takes only one single broken link in the chain to have a trail be impossible to pursue by normal means.
BTC made a lot of money for the early adopters, but it still has not yet lost momentum as a currency, and only will gain in value over time.
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They've dropped steadily for most of 2014, though. One could argue that that all of that was still correcting the bubble in late 2013, but that correction has lasted well over a year now. There hasn't really been a good time to hold on to Bitcoin since then, with a few short-term exceptions.
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The drop in value makes it more worthwhile to shed them now, rather than waiting for values to pop back up to where they were once. The ONLY thing that will add value to bitcoin isn't as an investment tool (hence the speculation bubble), but rather when they become common in daily transactions.
But that is the steep incline that we face, especially in light of all the scandals in the bitcoin trading world.
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Bitcoins are 100% traceable
Not in any meaningful sense of the word 'traceable', no. As you yourself go on to explain. Why lead with an untruth?
and only will gain in value over time.
You sure about that? It's hardly known for its economic stability...
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Well, with real property, if you purchased stolen property, you normally have to give it up when it is discovered, whether or not you knew it was stolen. The thief would owe you restitution, but good luck collecting it. I don't see why it would be different in this case. Sure, some bit coins got shuffled around, but if we can easily identify which coins were stolen, we should be able to legally recover them, whether or not the current possessors did the stealing or not.
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BTC made a lot of money for the early adopters, but it still has not yet lost momentum as a currency, and only will gain in value over time.
it's 6-month high is ~484. it's currently ~269. as far as fluctuations go that is massive. using bitcoin for anything other than quick sales (cash -> bitcoin -> transfer) is really not smart.
not to mention, the entire market is in a constant state of algorithmic manipulation (yes, i know, so is the stock market).
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That's called "money laundering" in the real world, and CityCorp, BoA, Credit Suisse/First Boston, etc. make $50-$100 billion dollars a year doing it. It's so profitable that US Treasury Secretaries retire from "public service" to head these companies' "private banking" operations. If you want a way to deal with stolen bitcoins you're going to need to get the big money laundries involved to get the process legalized.
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But get your facts straight. The US government, and all other governments hate money laundering.
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The US government, and all other governments hate money laundering.
That must be why Dick Cheney ($100 million in bribes laundered through NY banks to bribe Nigerian officials while he was CEO of Halliburton), Robert Rubin (folded BanaMex's drug lord clients into his CityCorp 'private banking' division), and Richard Grasso (NYSE CEO who did sales calls to the Colombian jungle offering their services to the FARC, retiring with the largest bonus of any NYSE executive in history) are serving long jail sentence
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You're proposing an awful lot of centralization and regulations for something that's supposed to be decentralized and unregulated.
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It is depressing how many times people will fall for the same scam over and over again. Already we have heard of new exchanges "safer than ever" and people are lining up to put their money into them on the faint hope that it isn't a scam yet again.
Re:Yes, and? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like it was an overwhelming success, then.
Every time I see stories like this, I think ... gee, so you entrusted millions of dollars with an entity which isn't a bank, isn't regulated as a bank, and who more or less mostly just promised they wouldn't steal your money ... and somehow people are surprised by this.
On what basis, exactly, does handing strangers your money make sense when you have no legal basis to get it back?
It's hard not to see this as a self inflicted problem, and people handed sacks full of money to some guy in an alley with no receipt thinking they were investing.
Sorry, but I'm afraid this was people believing that Bitcoin was somehow magic, and that nobody would ever be a crook.
Re:Yes, and? (Score:4, Insightful)
You needn't and shouldn't keep your money in exchanges.
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Funny, when I see comments like this I conclude the poster is an asshole.
Speaking of reading comprehension, did I fucking suggest it was a failure in the protocol?
The problem with Bitcoin, as I see it, is it seems to bring out the stupid in people. As in people handing over virtual money, to a shady player, who is neither a bank nor operates as a bank, and
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I thought the whole point of Bitcoin was to provide anonymity to its anonymous creator so that he/she could be the ultimate early adopter, mine lots of Bitcoins when doing so was cheap, then anonymously sell them at any time after the idea caught on. Ain't anonymity wonderful?
Bitcoin is the only thing I've ever heard of that could potentially change the world, yet whose creator staunchly desires to remain anonymous. In comparison, Newton, Jefferson, Edison, and Einstein never hesitated to sign their name
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The person most frequently pointed at as the likely creator of bitcoin is a CIA contractor, it would not surprise me at all to eventually learn that this was a CIA/DARPA project in experimental economics. What would surprise me is if none of the missing bitcoins showed up in the wallets of the investigators that took down Mt. Gox.
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What would surprise me is if none of the missing bitcoins showed up in the wallets of the investigators that took down Mt. Gox.
Maybe Samuel Jackson knows: isn't he the one who's always asking, "What's in your wallet?'
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Illegal contraband is the best kind of contraband of all!
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In a free society, one where government has no rights to invade privacy and personal lives of the people, using money is not a crime. The fact that the coins are nearly untraceable is the desired effect, similar to actual cash money. Yes, the side effect is one where people buy illegal contraband (oxymoronic in a free society) using nearly untraceable currency. But the same could be said for CASH, which has nearly all the same risks in a free society.
However, if you want to give up your rights to avoid som
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The fact that the coins are nearly untraceable is the desired effect
This shows you have NO idea how BT works. The coins are super traceable and that is a feature of BT. Each and every transaction is noted in the public ledger (block chain). You wallet is just a private key (with some meta data). The actual amount in "your possession" is determined by the aggregate of transaction towards your "wallet" (public key). Where pseudonymity comes in to play is associating identities (keys) with real persons, but that has proven time and again to only be relatively thing veil. (Like
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I would say that illegal activity is a large part of it, but I do think it serves an important purpose. If everyday buying of bitcoins wasn't more expensive than using my credit card on a website(try buying bitcoins online it's expensive) I would be all over it. Private transaction without the worry of someone stealing my credit information. Someone online can only fleece me out of what I put in without linking to an account with a credit card of bank account attached. There are other options in this are
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Private transaction without the worry of someone stealing my credit information.
that's funny. because with bitcoin, you sure don't have to worry about someone stealing the knowledge that you bought a six pack at the local grocery, but you have to worry about them stealing THE ACTUAL CURRENCY.
credit cards get a bad rap, but for the consumer, it's pretty low risk. it's in the companies' interest for it to be low risk, because they want you to keep spending money with it.
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You are right, you have to weigh the pro's and con's of it. My point was more on par with that there is a need beyond illegal activities when it comes to online transactions and bitcoin. Most use case scenarios people would still be using credit card or something with similar features. Credit Card companies are awesome at charge backs and fraud cases.
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My point was more on par with that there is a need beyond illegal activities when it comes to online transactions and bitcoin.
what are those reasons?
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With Credit Cards, you have a few central banks skimming a huge amount of profit from the bulk of commercial activity, basically inflating costs for all of society. With cash, the government (at taxpayer expense) has to continually print more while exchanging/destroying old notes and simultaneously fighting off counterfeiters. Maybe bitcoin can reduce these overhead costs to society while simultaneously making it easy to conduct a long-distance economic transaction.
I basically agree with you, crypto currency is an interesting vehicle to transfer wealth. But BT is quite wasteful; if you take the amount of energy required and wasted to authenticate each transaction (mining), the drag on society is not fully removed. I would like a crypto currency that is less wasteful. But that is the Catch 22 of crypto currencies. Make the authentication to simple and you are open to abuse, make the authentication hard and you waste lots of resources.
Re:Yes, and? (Score:5, Insightful)
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And the worst part is supposedly grown and adult individuals using childish terms like "libertard".
Seriously people, nobody thinks you're clever when you use those terms. I'm pretty sure most of us just go "yup, they have nothing of worth to say"
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Second not all libertarians are for "anarchic capitalism."
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A free market is a market where you take what you want for free, literally and literal definition. So the freest market is living as a nomad in the wild as stone age man, watch out for the real predators because running around completely free means not being able to rely on anyone else when it comes to tackling that pride of lions or that pack of wolves or tiny, tiny critters that infect you body and that you would not be able to survive with out any outside cooperative assistance. Freedom can not be share
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You do understand the huge difference between public relations and reality, how one is designed to sell stuff and truth has no relation to the sale and the other well, it might not sound nice at all but it more accurately reflects reality. No proponent of the free market generally tells the truth about the free market except to other insiders. The definition of the free market varies according to what proponents of the free market are trying to sell and to whom they are trying to sell it.
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Karl Menger was not writing a public relations book; neither was von Mises.
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AC child, please stop making yourself look like a fool.
I realize that in your circles using terms like "buttcoin" is effective, but around adults it just looks juvenile. Grow up.
Re:Yes, and? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I am a Libertarian and you won't find me making those whines. The only people I hear actually whining are those that didn't do their due diligence and put all their eggs in one insecure basket. The ones whining are those that are now calling for government interference where none is really needed, and people like yourself who don't understand libertarian principles and yet feel entitled to mock them.
Trust me, you look like a fool to libertarians like me.
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The notion that cash is available for " "all debts, public and private."" without government oversight is naive at best.
Here is a test, go buy a brand new car with CASH money and that you want the MSO (google it if you want to know what it is). Technically it should be possible, without any government interference. But it isn't.
Here is another test, pay your taxes with coins (real coins) see if the government that issued the money will take the money it issued. Again, good luck.
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The notion that cash is available for " "all debts, public and private."" without government oversight is naive at best.
Here is a test, go buy a brand new car with CASH money and that you want the MSO (google it if you want to know what it is). Technically it should be possible, without any government interference. But it isn't.
Here is another test, pay your taxes with coins (real coins) see if the government that issued the money will take the money it issued. Again, good luck.
I actually did that once - bought a car with notes. You can pay your taxes with notes as well. They accept cash money, which is what the OP claimed. Sure, there are some qualifiers, like you can't pay with a dumptruck filled with coins, but you can pay with cash.
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Eh, you're confused. You can buy a car with cash, but ID and insurance check will also be done to get title. Cash doesn't mean you won't be known.
You can pay income tax with coins, that's been done look it up. One famous case was trucker who paid in pennies and had court reprimmand IRS dude for not taking it.
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people have paid income tax in coin, look it up.
couple friends of mine have paid cash for cars and got title from MSO (ID and insurance is verified of course anyway when you purchase a car), you really have me confused on what isn't supposed to be possible.
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If you just show up with a pile of money and can't document where it came from, well, that's a different story.
It came from private debts. Just like the note claims ... "all debts, public and private"
ALL is a qualifier, and negates any limitations, including documentation of origin.
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First off, the whole $10,000 thing is just an arbitrary number, that is easily bypassed. It solves nothing, prevents nothing. It just makes it harder to do legitimate business under the watchful eye of government. Suggesting that it prevents unlawful acts is unproven at best, and woefully naive at worst.
The assumption being, that if I had $10K in cash, I must be a criminal is also insulting.
The number $10,000 used to be a huge sum of money, like the average yearly wage for middle class worker. It isn't any
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The assumption is that, if you're conducting $10K transactions in cash, it might be worth taking a look at you, because a lot of people who do that are criminals. Same principle as suspecting the husband if the wife is murdered: it may not be fair to any individual husband, but the husband is involved in enough murders to make it worth checking out.
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Assumption of guilt. Good one!
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You're simply wrong because:
1) Legal tender can be refused if the debt didn't exist at the time of the payment (aka the purchasing of a car).
2) The US has something called "invitation to bargain" which allows a shopkeeper to refuse cash. This is backed up by case law that is nearly 150 years old.
So, no, that wasn't the original intent and isn't backed up by any US case law.
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Scam currency goes missing in scam (Score:1)
Shocking!
One year later, I'm not closer to caring. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Would you leave your cash with any random stranger in some Thai web cafe for safekeeping?
No I would not. But then again those Thai women in the bars who keep wanting to have a drink with me all seem on the up and up.
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I'm Shocked SHOCKED there is gambling goin on here (Score:2)
Your winnings sir!
Yes, thank you.
If you go swimming in the shark tank with the bookies, expect to loose your money or worse.
Thats a lot of cards (Score:2)
$180M is a lot of Magic the Gathering cards.
Haven't they gone down significantly in value in recent years. That's probably enough to own all of them.
"Real" money (Score:2)
I wonder how much of those bitcoins represented "real" money (as in bitcoins that were purchased via cash), versus bitcoins that had only been mined? If they did not represent actual money that flowed into the system, then perhaps the impetus for tracking them isn't very high?
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I wonder how much of those bitcoins represented "real" money (as in bitcoins that were purchased via cash), versus bitcoins that had only been mined? If they did not represent actual money that flowed into the system, then perhaps the impetus for tracking them isn't very high?
You don't understand how this works. All bitcoins have been mined, and there are no money "in the system". There are only potential buyers and sellers, which some times settle on a price and a trade is executed. When someone buys bitcoins they give money to some other person, and unless that person changes his mind they won't be used to buy back any coins.
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Mt Gox is an exchange, and exchanges exchange "real" money for bitcoins, correct? So say I paid $2,000 for bitcoins at Mt Gox, and I left those coins there instead of transferring to my own wallet. Thus if those particular coins went missing, I would have been out exactly the $2,000 I paid for them. Now on the other hand, say I mined bitcoins and transferred to Mt Gox for them to be sold, and those coins went missing. They never had any "real" value attached to them - only whatever resources I claimed t
Re: "Real" money (Score:2)
The problem with that logic is that they have the same value regardless of how you obtained them. If I get your point, you are saying that the person who mined a bitcoin will value it less because mining it was easier and took less money than the person who paid $2k for a bitcoin someone else mined.
I guess if you feel that way, there are likely others that do as well. However, it doesn't make much sense because either of those bitcoins could be exchanged for $2k at any time.
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There's lots of things I can either buy or find/create/grow myself. Potatoes I buy in a store are neither more nor less potatoey than potatoes I grow.
Anybody actually looking? (Score:3)
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If there's missing millions then there's missing fraction-of-millions in taxes. So there's a motivation to go looking for it right there. And then, also, once it's in their hot little hands they can always decide to keep it. Even if all they do is sit on it for a while and then eventually cough it up, it can make them money.
Somebody has a huge fat wallet that they're going to tumble over the months and eventually cash out and unless they screw something up there's not much chance of being caught.
No rush.
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Is the threat of FPMITA prison the only thing that keeps you from tax fraud? From theft? From murder?
Yes, no, and no, in order.
With proper representation, taxation would not be so odious. But the will of the people is being soundly ignored at every possible turn...
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Re:Anybody actually looking? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's bigger than some countries' entire currency, Amazon and Newegg both take it as a form of payment,
No, they don't. They point you to an exchange because they only take real money. They absolutely will not let a single BTC touch their system. They do not accept it as a form of payment. They do, however, point you to an exchange at time of sale.
it's approved as a security backing now by the SEC and FINRA,
So are CDS, houses, stocks, commodities, etc. That don't make any of them a currency, or money.
and all serious investors take it seriously.
Name three.
So come back out of 2010 and join us in 2015 please and stop calling it a pretend currency.
On this you're absolutely correct. It is not even a pretend currency.
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Is there anybody with real authority actually looking for this?
Who knows. What I remember is that the thieves actually exploited MtGox's system, as opposed to Bitcoin proper. Their system reconciled transactions independently from the public block chain for performance reasons. So it doesn't surprise me that there is no public record that can be investigated.
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and you never will find the money (Score:5, Insightful)
people who seek to get a currency away from "evil" government control get exactly what they want: worse. no government, no accountability. no accountability, you get screwed, and the only answer you will ever get is "oh well"
you can't run from government regulation in hatred of it as a great evil, and then expect government to come to rescue you when you inevitably get fucked. you got fucked, because there's no regulations... which you *asked for* and were enthusiastic about, moron
all this episode boils down to is some economically clueless fanboys needed to learn the hard way what the rest of us already know: that a currency backed by a government is obviously better than "free" alternatives
all the evil shit a government can pull (and they do, i'm not defending government, i'm just noting there is far worse out there) is nothing compared to the evil that exists without a government backed currency and government oversight, accountability, and regulations of finance and banking. i'm not in love with government, i just recognize it as the *least worse* evil when it comes to currency mechanisms
you can petition and redress your grievances to government, and get a hearing, and maybe justice (if you actually understand right and wrong and you aren't some deranged crackpot out for "justice")
you can't do that against random assholes whom you trusted with your deposits for some ignorant reason that just basically boils down to uneducated enthusiasm
it's like the people who rant and complain about how evil the police are. and then their car gets broken into... and... drum roll please... they call the police. you want to reform the police, fix the police, fight corruption. not fight their existence. you need the police. without the police, civilization quickly falls. of course there are crooked cops and bad cops. so fight that, the bad apples in the system, rather than fight the entire system. which you need, and want, despite the fact you aren't educated enough to see or understand that far worse problems exist without them. the same with government regulation of finance and banking. it is warped and corrupt and crooked. so fight the corruption. don't fight the whole system. because without the system, far worse shit will befall you
people need to be educated enough on economics and history to know what kind of abuses exist out there without government oversight of banking
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all this episode boils down to is some economically clueless fanboys needed to learn the hard way what the rest of us already know: that a currency backed by a government is obviously better than "free" alternatives
Sure, theoretically. But is the currency you're getting worth the currency you're getting? And are you actually getting equal protection?
Re:and you never will find the money (Score:5, Insightful)
look at the article we are commenting under. there is your answer
without protections, you get fucked
it's kind of like antivaxxers: they have no fucking clue how horrible a world of constant deadly diseases was. so in this bubble of ignorance, created by progress, they only see the tiny "evil" in what we have to do to maintain the advance: get injections. they react to that as the evil that needs to be defeated. as if that's the only evil possible. and when enough of them allow enough attack vectors for a deadly disease to proliferate, people die. so here we have the real evil at work: ignorance
the world is not a choice between unicorns and rainbows versus shit and broken bones
the world is often a choice between various shades of bad situations
wisdom is picking the least bad situation, and comparing it versus the other bad options. rather than ignorantly comparing the least worse bad situation against uneducated perfection fantasy. so government regulations, with all of the corruption and rent seeking and regulatory capture, etc., is better than no government, or weaker government
people need to fight corruption, not government itself. in fact, those who corrupt government are often the ones loudly proclaiming government to be the enemy, rather than the corruption they create. and uneducated fools fall for their lies
another example: the FDC
like antivaxxers, certain paranoid economically illterate wackjobs see great evil in the FDC. and in their abject economic and historical ignorance, they have no clue of the historical suffering that led to the FDC. no, in their mind these controls exist because of vast conspiracies and assorted nutbag fantasy rantings about efforts to control us all, because reality is apparently an episode of scooby doo
why does the FDC actually fucking exist in the first place? study your economics and your history. don't trust the low iq herp derp hysterics of alex jones types to "educate" you
the reasons are mundane and sensible for the FDC. not dark and creepy. a world without them, the world before the FDC, is far, far worse:
every dozen years, there would be a banking panic, and people would lose their life savings
simple history. simple economic fact
that's the real reason why we have the FDC (cue paranoid historically and economically illiterate whining about "freedom")
and here we have bitcoin enthusiasts losing their deposits by entrusting them to random assholes without any government oversight, and guess what?
"oh well"
that's what life is like without "evil" government regulations in finance
Re:and you never will find the money (Score:4, Insightful)
without protections, you get fucked
Right, and with government "protection", you also get fucked. They take our money and then spend it oppressing us. I don't know that getting secure banking out of it is all that great a trade.
Re: and you never will find the money (Score:5, Insightful)
You didn't even read what I wrote
Here, I've excerpted for you. Educate yourself, try again:
>the world is not a choice between unicorns and rainbows versus shit and broken bones
>the world is often a choice between various shades of bad situations
>wisdom is picking the least bad situation, and comparing it versus the other bad options. rather than ignorantly comparing the least worse bad situation against uneducated perfection fantasy. so government regulations, with all of the corruption and rent seeking and regulatory capture, etc., is better than no government, or weak government
You don't want to be oppressed? Ever try living in a place with no government or weak government?
FIX it, don't destroy it.
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You don't want to be oppressed? Ever try living in a place with no government or weak government?
What I actually want is weak central government. I don't know that we need less government (well, in certain areas we certainly do, like military) but what we certainly need is less centralization. Pare the feds back to handling disputes and actually defending the country, making treaties.
I also want representative democracy, and for the people to ratify bills directly. If that makes it harder to pass laws, OK. We have too many already. Let's get rid of some before we make more.
I'm more likely to get my uni
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well said
and it's exactly like the antivaccine morons
have them sit down and talk to an old person from when polio was a constant worry, or heck, just look at tombstones in old cemeteries from the 1800s: read the ages of the dead, how many children would routinely die before age 10... sometimes what killed them is listed: pertussis, whooping cough, measles, etc., regularly killed scores of kids every year
there's people with ignorant beliefs created in the bubble that vital modern protections afford them. vit
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What does the Democratic Front of Cabinda have to do with Bitcoin?
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you can't run from government regulation in hatred of it as a great evil, and then expect government to come to rescue you when you inevitably get fucked. you got fucked, because there's no regulations.
Sure you can. Americans call them Tea Party Republicans.
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Unlike cash based scams where the money always turns up.
Re: and you never will find the money (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure you're joking, but just to clarify, there are free market fundamentalist morons who actually believe that
Re: and you never will find the money (Score:2)
I stopped reading after your first sentence
This is what I wrote:
>all the evil shit a government can pull (and they do, i'm not defending government, i'm just noting there is far worse out there) is nothing compared to the evil that exists without a government backed currency and government oversight, accountability, and regulations of finance and banking. i'm not in love with government, i just recognize it as the *least worse* evil when it comes to currency mechanisms
Did you try reading what I wrote bef
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Selective memories of how Governments really screw up.
USSR
China
North Korea
Cambodia
Germany (Nazi kind)
These governments killed hundreds of millions of people. You're just lucky you don't live in a place with oppressive government and thus confirmation biased towards government.
The problem isn't what you think it is. Good People doing nothing allows evil to prosper. Be it Somalia or Nazi Germany.
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Ahh Yes (Score:2)
more than bitcoins are missing (Score:2)
More than bitcoins are missing. If you sold bitcoins through Mt. Gox, back when they peaked at US$1200, Mt. Gox delayed depositing them into your bank account. And delayed. And delayed. And delayed. And eventually went belly up without every paying.
I had to deal with some of this, with an estate I was at the time administrator of.
Check the blockchain (Score:1)
I thought the point of the blockchain was that it recorded every transaction.
I have no idea if it's practical, but in principle, it should be possible to trace the coins from a known point in time, taking into account the "dilution" when they are mixed with other coins.
In other words, if you give me your entire wallet consisting of 1BC that is later determined to be "dirty money" (as declared by the police/a court/whomever) and I put it in my wallet consisting of 9 other BC, my wallet is now "10% contaminat
The Goldfinger Gambit (Score:3)
I wonder if the point wasn't to steal the Mt. Gox Bitcoins, but just to delete them, forever removing them from the system, like the several million dollars worth on that hard drive buried in a landfill somewhere. By removing a bunch from the system, it reduces the supply and raises the price for those who are holding lots of them.
(Fans of 1960s James Bond movies might recall that this was Auric Goldfinger's reason for setting off a nuke in Fort Knox.)
Timeline of Events (Score:2)
For those wishing to catch up, I made a news timeline of the rise and fall of the site [newslines.org]
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What are you quoting?
Hey, let's find out [lmgtfy.com].
Looks like Steven L. Woodrow, a partner at law firm Edelson, quoted in a Reuters story from last year.
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