Bitcoin Corralito?

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syngirl

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I don't have anything invested in bitcoins, but I know it's been a popular topic on the board, so would love to hear what those in the Bitcoin know have to say now about the latest plunges in the value of bitcoin? Apparently Mt Gox is running it's own version of a corralito?...

http://valleywag.gawker.com/if-you-have-bitcoin-in-mt-gox-you-are-probably-fucked-1529946212/@sarah-hedgecock

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2014/02/25/bitcoins-price-plummets-as-mt-gox-goes-dark-with-massive-hack-rumored/

http://www.coindesk.com/companies/exchanges/mtgox/page/2/
 
They 'say' 750,000 bitcoins were stolen/hacked without them realizing for a long time. Now they don't have the money to cover the amount they are holding on the books. Who knows what the truth is, all I know is I'm happy to not be involved in bitcoins. Who needs headaches like that. The website has been shutdown and transfers have been frozen for a long time. Stay tuned.
 
Following a time worn trend here for new technology.

Rapid growth, flaws (tech or business model) become evident leading to some degree of failure or downturn in usage / performance followed by new iterations of the technology controlled by incumbents (the big banks and govt financial bodies).

I fully expect peer 2 peer virtual currency to be a major factor in our lives over the next 20 years but right now the model is flawed (no regulation regarding minimum security levels required for exchanges to operate and some sort of deposit guarantee to protect the customer. Needs to operate with much lower level of risk to become "mainstream"
 
errr
the point of bitcoin is to get out from under the banker controlled 'regulations'.
You treat it like cash, personal responsibility to take care of what you have.
That Mt. Gox was not on the up & up has been known for a long time.
 
If it is like cash, then is there no serial number attached to each bitcoin that could identify it and stop it being traded?
 
Magic The Gathering Online eXchange a website originally created to exchange virtual cards for a children's game, which already had a card exchange system built in, has supposedly lost hundreds of thousands of dunning krugerrands!

They managed to do this because a "feature" (totally not a bug that was raised years ago....) of bitcoin allows random people to change the Transaction Identification number of any new transaction.

Each transaction identification number is calculated by hashing all the data in each transaction. By rearranging the data, the transaction is still valid but the identification number changes.

Mtgox initially stopped sending money out to many countries as they had their bank accounts closed and had their money taken by the authorities because they were acting as an illegal "currency" exchange. This drove the price up as the idiot bitcoiners could only get bitcoins out of Mtgox. No one cared then because their dunning krugerrands were worth thousands!!!!!

Mtgox then closed all transactions about a month ago saying bitcoin was broken. Every bitcoin exchange shouted from the rooftops saying "no its not, we don't have a problem with the transaction ids...".

Someone then started to spam the bitcoin network with changed transaction id numbers for the fun of it. Suddenly all the bitcoin exchanges shutdown to fix the problem they claim they never had. Mtgox never opened back up.

Some claim unlike the other exchanges Mtgox had an automated system so if their designated transaction id does not appear on the huge blockchain ledger (now over 14 gbs) they sent it again and again and again.... Somehow they missed the fact that their system had a lot less bitcoins than they were supposed to.

The transaction id "feature" has not been fixed, but the exchanges still around appear to have hacked together workarounds on their unregulated exchanges to no longer be affected by people having fun spamming changed ids.

Its also possible they may have just shut up shop and ran off with all the bitcoins but i suspect they were just incompetent.

Incidentally Silk Road 2 claimed to have lost all their bitcoins via this problem but many people think they ran off with all the bitcoins.
 
Following a time worn trend here for new technology.

Rapid growth, flaws (tech or business model) become evident leading to some degree of failure or downturn in usage / performance followed by new iterations of the technology controlled by incumbents (the big banks and govt financial bodies).

I fully expect peer 2 peer virtual currency to be a major factor in our lives over the next 20 years but right now the model is flawed (no regulation regarding minimum security levels required for exchanges to operate and some sort of deposit guarantee to protect the customer. Needs to operate with much lower level of risk to become "mainstream"

peer 2 peer virtual currency has a lot of problems. how do you get a fast distributed ledger? Why waste so many resources when a centralised system works?

Bitcoin and all the copy paste version of it all carry the same flaws.

It might push the antiquated American banking system to upgrade to at least European levels though.
 
BTC is proving to be resilient, despite the recent setbacks with Mt.Gox. The biggest exchange just blew up and there is all sorts of negative press and BTC is only down 35% since Feb 1. Yes a very big drop, but not catastrophic.

As Ejcot mentions, Mt.Gox was always a bit of a joke. It is probably better for BTC that they are done.

Now, the issue here is that it appears that a 350 million dollar (or more) heist took place, which would go down as one of the biggest robberies in history. Something that massive will almost assuredly involve police, lawmakers, and more negative press.

The value of BTC is entirely based on the demand for BTC. If BTC can withstand this storm it could be in a good position.
 
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