[karajorma]

I loved the way the second post put it.

stupid usa regulations got me kidnapped. i really wanted to get in the cocaine refining business but all the laws here meant i had to go to colombia. then the farc got me. stupid us government, they made me do it.

[S-99]

It's funny with that reddit thread with someone saying that people had to use gox. Of course people didn't have to use gox in light of other bitcoin exchanges popping up. But, a lot of people who chose gox probably did so out of the fact that it was well known, popular, and had been around for a while. Most reasons for not using gox include an easier and faster time converting your currency into and out of bitcoin with an exchange that's a lot closer, also other exchanges were cheaper to buy bitcoin as gox had an inflated price.

Other than that the blame game on reddit there is just down hill

Who cares whose fault it was, but i wouldn't place the blame squarely only on the people who did business with gox. This is like saying that it should have been expected that corrupt gox was going to disappear with everything and offer basicly no reason for it.

[Mongoose]

Again, if people want to play with Monopoly money, they shouldn't be shocked if/when they get burned.  I'll stick with my full-faith-and-credit, thank you very much.

[S-99]

I am not here defending bitcoin, but his monopoly money currently still does have value (this is a separate topic though). It could easily not have value at a moments notice (also a separate topic). Now when a company that deals in physical currency that decides to pull a move like gox did to clients the reaction should somehow be different? Would you still then fault that physical currency such as the american dollar if that is what that business had used, and is used all over the world just simply because you didn't like it?

That's ok if you and others don't like bitcoin. But, i don't see how bitcoin itself makes much of a difference when the company just made off with everyones stuff. That the clients all dealt in monopoly money should be that they all should get robbed, punished, and have their noses rubbed in the ground for doing business with gox?

This has nothing to do with the folleys of bitcoin, this has to do with gox running off with everybody's stuff. Any business can run off with everybody's money no matter what kind of currency it uses. The folley of bitcoin will be when that damn currency actually collapses and then people all over the world get ****ed. What gox did shutting down running off with everybody's money has nothing to do with the folleys of bitcoin. I just don't trust that it does when gox can't give a clear explanation, story, reason, or cause when all they give out is vague statements.

Focussing only on bitcoin is what gox wants people to do since that will pull people's attention away from the bread crumbs on the trail to find out exactly what gox did.

I just can't follow you mongoose.

[Luis Dias]

Jesus ****ing christ, let the darwin award continue! I fully support these kinds of experiments!

[S-99]

Uh, what?

1.   No regulated exchanges in USA.
2.   People turn to a Japanese exchange.
3.   People get burned.
4.   It's all the fault of regulation.

What the actual ****?

You win a ****ing golden medal in olympic-level mental gymnastics. Jesus titty-****ing Christ.

I think this summarizes that reddit page good enough for the dominating of stupid versus smart on it. It's not worth reading, it's full of misinformation all the way from the first post made by someone who deleted their account. Someone just wanted to make one post methinks. It's not worth reading.

[MP-Ryan]

Jesus ****ing christ, let the darwin award continue! I fully support these kinds of experiments!

I love self-described anarcho-capitalists.  Generally it's a red flag that the person probably hasn't thought their position through.

"I am going to abolish the state and all regulation and the free market will rule all people will never do anything antisocial because OH LOOK SPRINKLES AND SPARKLES AND UNICORNS SHINY!"

Edit: really, autocorrect? Four attempts to get anarcho-capitalists by you, but unicorbs isn't an issue?

[Mongoose]

I just can't follow you mongoose.

Look, I'm not saying that the people responsible for this shouldn't get the book thrown at them; they definitely should.  But at the same time, I'm of the opinion that people going head-over-heels for Bitcoin as a concept are no better than those poor souls out there who think those e-mails they get are really from Nigerian royalty who want to send them millions.  Sure, someone else is scamming you, but at least some of the blame falls back on you for being that stupid to fall for it in the first place.

[S-99]

Ok. I find nigerian scammees and bitcoiners incomparable. I know you have your reasons for coming up with your opinion of course. The only thing I would say in support of your comparison is that bitcoiners of gox made a very bad decision leaving their bitcoins in an online wallet with gox since in my own opinion, i think gox clients definitely got scammed. Gox did turn off the ability to withdraw, but you could keep depositing (shady).

Following up with those people is gox setting up a call center.

Even with coinbase, as soon as i got my bitcoins from them, i immediately transfered them to my laptop. A web wallet is really only good for temporary holding if your intention is to sell all the contents in your web wallet immediately on the exchange.

[666maslo666]

Jesus ****ing christ, let the darwin award continue! I fully support these kinds of experiments!

I love self-described anarcho-capitalists.  Generally it's a red flag that the person probably hasn't thought their position through.

"I am going to abolish the state and all regulation and the free market will rule all people will never do anything antisocial because OH LOOK SPRINKLES AND SPARKLES AND UNICORNS SHINY!"

Edit: really, autocorrect? Four attempts to get anarcho-capitalists by you, but unicorbs isn't an issue?

How do you know that person is an anarcho-capitalist, and not a minarchist or libertarian? In that case, there would be no hypocrisy, since those agree with the existence of state and some minimal government intervention (like punishing frauds).

[The E]

Claiming that "Free Market means no regulation", and in the same post claim that that does not mean that people are free to steal, and later claiming that there should be laws that are enforced to keep the market honest, is a sign of a mind deep in the grip of cognitive dissonance.

No matter what particular philosophy you claim to follow, that position is incoherent. You cannot have an unregulated market with rules that punish wrongdoing, simple as that.

[666maslo666]

When people speak about market *regulation*, they generally mean higher level state interventions, not basic things like outlawing frauds or stealing. Free market does not mean free to steal. Do not confuse free market with total anarchy.

[The E]

Then where do the regulations to outlaw fraud and steal end, and "high level state interventions" begin? Because, if I recall the thread correctly, one big point under discussion in there was this idea that "this wouldn't have happened if US regulations hadn't made running a bitcoin exchange prohibitively expensive".

Which is true, to a degree, but those regulations? They're in place to protect customers against exactly this sort of thing. So, would those regulations have a place in a free market?

[Phantom Hoover]

Yeah no I don't think it's inherently hypocritical to desire a state which exists to punish those who steal but doesn't intervene otherwise.

[The E]

Probably not. Although I don't think that such a system would ultimately serve the people living in it very well.

[karajorma]

Without regulation, how are you going to know fraud took place anyway?

Someone perpetrating a deliberate fraud in an unregulated business can very easily make money disappear. Then they can simply claim something along the lines of "Server and administration costs ate up all our money so we had no choice but to go bankrupt" How are you going to dispute that without the paper trail that regulation requires them to leave behind them?

[Phantom Hoover]

Meanwhile, the mystery of how all that money went missing is solved.

[The E]

Is there documentation for that bug? I don't read PHP....

[Phantom Hoover]

I don't either, but it's apparently just really ****ty code in general.

e: note that the money is stored using floats

[ngld]

Ars Technica already wrote a short report on this.
There's also an ongoing discussion on Hacker News

It seems the paste is just a part of Mt. Gox's server-side code which was most likely written by Mark Karpeles (CEO). I'm not sure if there's an exploit in there but since this code handles all transactions anyone with access to it would have been able to redirect them.