Bitcoin Kingpin Admits Everyone's Money Is Gone

[warrior1]

http://valleywag.gawker.com/bitcoin-kingpin-admits-everyones-money-is-gone-1533315083/@sarah-hedgecock

ouch


Japan-based Mt.Gox CEO Mike Karpele—who may or may not be Chris Farley reanimated with the soul of Reddit—just copped to some very bad news: yes, he lost all your money.

We still don't know why all the money is gone, or where it went, but a combination of theft and titanic incompetence is likely. The bottom line of anyone who used the Mt.Gox exchange: your account balance is now zero.

But at least we know Karpele hasn't fled the country, yet. AFP reports Mt.Gox is doing more than just bowing with shame: the virtual currency exchange is bankrupt, and is seeking court protection accordingly. Funny, how these people only want anything to do with the government after they've fucked themselves over into another dimension. That dimension is filled with dreams of Kickstarter projects backed with internet money, Dorito-crusted sushi, Doge posters, and now lots of shame and backtracking.

snip

[FSogol]

1. Gosh! Who couldn't see that coming.

I'm shocked!

[liberal N proud]

2. Right Click - Delete

Oops, its all gone!

[Laelth]

3. This South Park episode comes to mind.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s13e03-margaritaville

And, it's gone ... all your money ... it's just gone.

-Laelth

[dixiegrrrrl]

16. "Next"

I love the way they captured the supreme indiffernce of the banker after the money was ...gone.

[KoKo]

19. Loved that SP Episode!

How soon people forget the last scam before they are on to another one.

[OregonBlue]

4. the virtual currency exchange is bankrupt, and is seeking court protection accordingly

So now he believes in the government. How convenient. Amazing hypocrisy!!!

You'd have to be crazy to put your money in Bitcoin.

[CAG]

53. Maybe we could create a virtual court

In minecraft so someone could go to virtual jail and the fools can get their virtual monoploy money back

[Flying Squirrel]

5. Amazingly enough, the silver U.S. Coins I bought are still right where I put them

And their value remains well above zero.

[Art_from_Ark]

44. Well above zero

Those silver coins, if they are all 90% silver, are worth close to 14 times their face value, assuming there are no collector coins in the group.

[Nye Bevan]

6. Feeling pretty good about my FDIC insured, US dollar savings accounts right now (nt)

[warrior1]

7. was this a ponzi scheme all along?

[Nye Bevan]

15. That's like asking if the US dollar is a Ponzi scheme because of Madoff.

This is not the end of Bitcoin, just the collapse of a company that held and exchanged Bitcoins.

[BlueStreak]

27. No. It was always a scam. It just melted down faster than the scammers expected.

Your question is like asking if the people are legitimate businessmen who phone you up out of the blue announcing themselves as "Microsoft engineers" and they just need to take control of your computer to "fix your viruses", but they will first need your checking account routing information to "reactivate your support agreement".

They are all crooks. The bitcoin people and the "Microsoft engineers" are all in the same cohort with the Nigerian princes who need your help transferring 10 million dollars out of their country if you would kindly send a $1000 money order to cover the taxes.

I don't mean to spoil everything for you, but the Easter Bunny isn't what he claims to be either.

At least we can trust the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

[pnwmom]

32. Madoff was never pretending to be an "Exchange" or a bank. There's no comparison. n/t

[Nye Bevan]

37. He purported to be holding people's money for them (nt)

[pnwmom]

38. No, he didn't. He was purporting to be investing people's money for them

and sending them false statements showing where they supposedly had their money invested.

[randome]

25. It was a Libertarian's wet dream.

That ended badly.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]

[L0oniX]

8. ...and where are those DU member Bitcoin shills now? ...

acting like it was a smart investment. Maybe is was Sarc but I didn't see that tag.

[KoKo]

11. It was everywhere on the Business News, also...

Last edited Fri Feb 28, 2014, 12:54 PM - Edit history (1)

Constant articles, stock traders all pumping "Bit Coin." It reminded me of the "Dot Com Bubble" where you couldn't get away from the hyping: "Bit Coin" is the Future--Do Away With the Fed---Cool Internet People Use Bit Coin...blah, blah. Just like "Pets.com" and other hyped up Dot Com businesses went bust after being touted everywhere...this one goes down.

It was another too good to be true...like salesmen peddling snake oil a century ago.

[Lancero]

47. Investments come in two types...

Short term and long term.

If you bought into BC for a long term investment, then you're an idiot.

But short term buys, timed properly, can be profitable.

Really, Bitcoin is like the lottery. You buy coins hoping to eventually strike it rich, you buy lottery tickets/scratchoffs hoping to win big.

I haven't struck rich or won big yet, but I have flipped some coins today and made 800 from it, and I bought 3 $1 scratch off tickets and won 50.

I've done short term bc a lot of times in the past, haven't lost money yet. How much I make varies a lot though.

[L0oniX]

50. Ah ....and here I thought they all disappeared.

I've heard gamblers promote gambling while they go down the tubes before.

[Lancero]

61. Not really.

I'm not so much a shrill for BC as I am just taking advantage of it.

I'll readily admit it here and now - BC is a unstable bubble, only idiots see it as a long term investment, and you can easily lose on it if your not careful.

As I said though, it's all about timing. Hold em to long, you'll inevitably lose money on them. Dump em to early, you'll not make as much money as you could have.

It's more like poker then anything else. Most people can't play worth a shit but still try, some people can play well enough and make some money off of it, but only a few can make a living doing nothing but poker.

[CAG]

54. "Bitcoin is like the lottery"...ah then thats

A very solid investment!

[Lancero]

60. Not really?

Solid investment would imply longterm, which is what I said you shouldn't do.

Most buy in hoping to strike it rich instantly, and those are the ones who end up losing the most. They also tend to be the ones who think long term.

If you just flip them, you stand to make some money. Not a whole lot, but some money is better then none.

[L0oniX]

62. Stop playing with it.

[snooper2]

9. are the concoin promoters going to show up in this thread?

I'll bet you $120,340 bitcoins!

[Nye Bevan]

12. The concept is actually a good one.

Bitcoin enables dissidents in countries with repressive regimes to fund resistance activities without their government knowing, for example. But what this incident shows is the danger of entrusting any kind of money to an unregulated third party.

[pnwmom]

33. Bitcoin is evil, according to Paul Krugman.

For one thing, it allows people in progressive countries to avoid taxes on their earnings.

[Nye Bevan]

36. So does cash (nt)

[muriel_volestrangler]

40. Rubbish. What suppliers to resistance activists accept bitcoin?

What you could buy with bitcoin was drugs, and the occasional pizza in a hip western city.

Perhaps bitcoin could enable people outside a country to send in money - if there are people inside the country willing to use bitcoin for something else in exchange (ie drugs). Eventually, the local money dissidents would need would have to be exchanged for something tangible. Someone outside the country could send bitcoin, the dissidents could buy drugs with it inside the country (because the drug dealers have the way to smuggle drugs in sussed out), and then they'd have to sell the drugs in the country to get the local currency.

[Nye Bevan]

42. "Dissidents in Iran or China can use Bitcoins to buy premium blogging services from WordPress"

to name one example.

http://reason.com/archives/2013/11/19/bitcoin-more-than-money/print

[muriel_volestrangler]

43. Blogging on Wordpress is a 'resistance activity'?

PR is not 'resistance'.

[Nye Bevan]

45. Wow. You have never heard of bloggers in these countries being imprisoned?

How about underground resistance newspapers during World War 2, of which these blogs are the modern day equivalent? Blogs can expose government atrocities and repression and rally like-minded dissidents. You really weren't aware of any of this?

[muriel_volestrangler]

46. Buying premium Wordpress facilities is PR

It's literally to make your pages look prettier. It's advertising. And if they think that the only way they can be tracked is by the way they've paid for that, then they don't understand the internet.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

18. "I'll bet you $120,340 bitcoins!"

I'll trade you for a hotel on St. James Ave.

[BlueStreak]

28. I will name a star in your honor.

[central scrutinizer]

10. dammit

I just traded all of my Beanie Babies for bitcoins! There goes my retirement nest egg!

[KoKo]

13. lol's...although I felt worse about the Beanie Babies collectors losing all than

I do for these hucksters/traders pumping their Libertarian crap thinking they'd be the next Billionaire.

And, I think the Federal Reserve's policy has sucked since Allan Greenspan...so it's not that I don't have sympathy with those who think the Fed controls too much...but this was OTT!

[Tommy_Carcetti]

59. At least Beanie Baby collectors got some cute stuffed animals out of the deal.

Bitcoiners get wasted computer space.

[Nye Bevan]

14. As long as your Bitcoins were not held by Mt Gox you are fine (nt)

[BlueStreak]

29. Uhhhh. No.

This was a Ponzi scheme where the initial operators dealt themselves the entire value of the money system. And that only works out as long as people are putting new money into the system, which ain't gonna happen now unless there are a lot more morons with money than I think there are. There were plenty of morons to get it this far, but most of them should be able to read.

Seriously, just how gullible does a person have to be to believe that a computer can't be hacked and that an unregulated pile of money can't be embezzled?

[mythology]

48. You really don't understand the system

Additionally the initial operators didn't give themselves the entire value. They put the bitcoins in solving mathematical equations. To get a bitcoin your computer had to solve a problem. You didn't buy them from the person who created it.

You don't have to keep your bitcoins in something like Mt Gox. You can store them in a bitcoin wallet that is kept off line. The only time you should have them online is if you are actively trading them.

And given that bitcoin value hasn't fallen to zero in the last couple of days, it's hard to believe that it will now.

[oldhippie]

49. I think the whole concept behind bitcoin ....

... is too complex and financially sophisticated for the vast majority of the people here on DU, or the internet in general, to grasp. All these discussions by people who only think they have an idea of how it works are pretty worthless.

[Travis_0004]

51. At least somebody on this forum gets it

It seems like most people don't understand anything, and think bitcoin is just going away because of this.

Saying bitcoin is suddenly going to go away because of one scam is a bit like saying nobody will trade stocks because of Bernie Madoff. Yes, one company was running a scam, but that doesn't mean the entire system is flawed.

[BlueStreak]

58. You don't seem to understand even the most basic supply-demand concept.

The thing shows a value now because they just just vaporized better than 3/4 of the product overnight. Even though a lot of the suckers have woken up to reality, obviously 3/4 of the suckers have not yet done so. The sucker-to-bitcoin ratio is high at the moment.

[pnwmom]

34. You are at just as much risk as people using Mt. Gox. You just don't know it yet. n/t

[dixiegrrrrl]

22. I've got some Pet rocks you can have

for a good price.

[closeupready]

17. LOL, Bitcoin is actually - at this moment - more expensive today

than just yesterday. More evidence that 'experts' on the internet likely know as much about complicated stuff as your dog knows.

[central scrutinizer]

20. sure, supply and demand

Since a bunch of bitcoins just vanished - pooft! - there are now fewer bitcoins, hence rarer and worth more. Oh wait, they never did really exist so how could they go pooft?

[closeupready]

23. Keep pimping that point.

[pnwmom]

35. They aren't rarer because they still exist. They're just untraceable

and no longer in the accounts of those who thought they owned them.

[Adrahil]

21. Yup... it's classic, they want privatized profits and socialized losses. NT

[TampaAnimusVortex]

39. Actually, most of what I've seen from them is they like the fact Gox is gone...

I saw this posted in one forum...

Ivor Thomas
Yesterday 4:47 PM

"If Bitcoin owners were hoping for regulatory help from the Federal Reserve..."

We were not, so you can stop writing now. 

[Pretzel_Warrior]

24. Wait. We're losing out on Doritos-crusted sushi

Because of this?

[BlackM]

26. Maybe now they'll realize

Maybe now they'll realize just why we have 'central banking' and bank regulations in place. Take an unregulated 'ecurrency' based on smoke and mirrors, unleash it into a blackmarket world of currency speculators, ponzi schemers, criminal cabals and money launderers and *poof*, watch it all vanish in an act of incompetence and malfeasance.

Who'da thunk it?

[Orrex]

30. As long as you can still use Bitcoin to buy Baltic & Mediterranean, it'll all be ok.

[pinboy3niner]

41. LOL, for that you go directly to jail, Orrex

Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200.

?imgmax=800

[Mosby]

31. you know one thing that is odd about bitcoins

Is that they say you should print out the encryption key for every coin you own and keep it in a safe place. There are companies offering the service.

So in reality it's only partly an e-currency.

[CAG]

56. I use mine as stuffing for my beanie baby

Collection. I'm gonna strike it rich!

[Loudly]

52. It's Japan, so... Seppuku! n/t

[CAG]

55. I have created a much more stable

Virtual currency; its called "Bitbucks", bucks are clearly much more valuable than coins. Anybody want to give me $100 US for, say 1 gazillion bitbucks?

[kestrel91316]

57. Just one week ago the young man at the print shop next door was telling me how he had a bunch of

money in Bitcoins and was doing very well. I said he should pull his money out right away because they were going down, and he said he didn't think so.

Sigh.