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Old 02-25-2014, 10:43 PM
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I don't have time to write up my own post board for work but I wanted to get something up about this before I left (so I can :hoot:) so I'm going to repost something someone wrote on another board (registration required to view):

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cthulhu
Aaand it's gone, :cookiemonster:.

Last week or so, the biggest (according to itself / the media) bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox, shut off outbound payments while trying to fix a known bug (basically, it was possible to change the hash / key of a transaction; MtGox didn't know how to deal with that / didn't anticipate it). As a result, people couldn't get their money or bitcoins off of MtGox, and the price on there plummeted (taking the other markets along with it).

This morning, MtGox went offline, to be replaced with a message earlier today:

Quote:
Dear MtGox Customers,

In light of recent news reports and the potential repercussions on MtGox's operations and the market, a decision was taken to close all transactions for the time being in order to protect the site and our users. We will be closely monitoring the situation and will react accordingly.

Best regards,
MtGox Team
According to sources, over MtGox' existence, 755,000 bitcoins have been stolen from the exchange, possibly due to said transaction malleability exploit going unnoticed or something, or about 6% of the total bitcoins in circulation.

The other exchanges joined forces in an attempt to restore faith in the currency and themselves as trustworthy exchanges; after all, it's their e-money on the line too.

But yeah. The developer(s?) behind MtGox were just completely incompetent. Have an annotated screenshot from the start of MtGox:



This contingency plan was leaked to the press, again underlining the theft that may have been going on for quite a while now; the plan there is to go offline for a month and reboot the service, rebranding it to just Gox. Apparently. Either way, they're in a lot of shit. The contingency plan went into effect today; the CEO, who is personally named as the person responsible for a lot of people losing a lot of money (apparently), will resign and probably go into hiding, and the company will do a complete reboot.

Edit: Also, that crisis strategy draft has a page of blacked-out stuff; those are the financial reports. Apparently you can just use copy / paste on the pdf to get the figures, censorship fail :cookiemonster:.

MtGox Financials - Google Drive
I don't think the value is done plummeting yet but it might not be a bad time to invest a certain amount of money once the value bottoms out. On the other hand who knows if this is the only forthcoming scandal about it.

See also this article in The Atlantic from a couple months ago that I meant to post (about the Dogecoin crash amongst other things) but which I forgot about: The Greatest Investment Opportunity Since Dogecoin - Matthew O'Brien - The Atlantic. The ridiculous number of altcoins is probably something worth writing about as well, but I don't have time to do it right now.
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Last edited by The Man; 02-25-2014 at 11:05 PM.
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