http://bit.ly/kE3Q4D


Here's the list.

6/19/2011 5:59:30 PM

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/06/bitcoin-price-plummets-on-compromised-exchange.ars

Quote :

"The Bitcoin community faced another crisis on Sunday afternoon as the price of the currency on the most popular exchange, Mt.Gox, fell from $17 to pennies in a matter of minutes. Trading was quickly suspended and visitors to the home page were redirected to a statement blaming the crash on a compromised user account. Mt.Gox's Mark Karpeles said that the exchange would be taken offline to give administrators time to roll back the suspect transactions."

Actually, this is the time to make money. Forget about long term, this slot machine is hot!

6/19/2011 8:14:21 PM

Any trades made at that time are being reversed. And supposing that they weren't, you would only be buying stolen currency.

[Edited on June 19, 2011 at 8:43 PM. Reason : being == buying]

6/19/2011 8:42:46 PM

^^hot and dangerous.

It really is a gamble.


Come out big or walk away a loser.

6/19/2011 11:52:15 PM

Bitcoin is going to die soon now. The act of reversing it will kill the currency. This type of thing HAS happened before in stock markets, but no rational person would invest in something that has this possibility. Now, I think it's damned either way, if they don't reverse it people will still have little faith in it, because in that scenario they still had the ability to protect their own money by using electronic security features - like the examples of storing part of the keys on another device not connected to the computer.

But reversing transactions is about the worst thing they could possibly do. They've defeated the purpose of the currency, which is to deny a central authority the ability to prevent transactions of money, the commonly giving example of which would be the US government preventing funneling of money to Wikileaks. This has significant non-trivial implications, and it could have offered a safe haven for certain kinds of savings, a large fraction of which would be non-legitimate, but hey, it's a market, so why not?

Every critic is totally vindicated with a reversal of transactions of any type. There does exist a sufficiently central authority to make unilateral decisions regarding the fate of currency. Ultimately it's not unlike any other fiat currency in the world - you don't actually own it. It's just an debit from some authority that has nothing backing it.

6/20/2011 12:07:56 AM

Quote :

"But reversing transactions is about the worst thing they could possibly do. They've defeated the purpose of the currency, which is to deny a central authority the ability to prevent transactions of money, the commonly giving example of which would be the US government preventing funneling of money to Wikileaks. This has significant non-trivial implications, and it could have offered a safe haven for certain kinds of savings, a large fraction of which would be non-legitimate, but hey, it's a market, so why not? "

Reversing transactions has nothing to do with reversing bitcoins. The bitcoins that mt gox has is in mt gox's wallet. Bitcoins are part of the system until a user cashes out of the system. Transactions can be reversed because there is no actual transfer of bitcoins during a trade.

6/20/2011 12:53:04 AM

Wow only 6 pages to prove the people on the first few pages wrong that it can’t be manipulated. LOL...

6/20/2011 4:16:35 AM

We're talking about an exchange written by some inept php developers (still using md5, prone to sql injection). Their last project was trading magic the gathering cards for fuck's sake.

Now what does that have to do with the bitcoin concept or code?

6/20/2011 7:43:09 AM

I'm no day trader but aren't there usually lockdown mechanisms in place set to go off in cases like this? Between that and the delays that Geniusboy has mentioned with dwolla, im beginnign to seriously doubt the infrasctructure for trading bitcoins is up to the current demands of traders. Fucking amateurs.

Mt. Gox just wreaks of inadequacy. That is one shitty exchange. You would think there would be more alternatives than just Tradehill.

6/20/2011 10:59:41 AM

It reminds me of the Looney Toons, when they're on a boat in a river and the water starts to get faster. Then there's a waterfall.

6/20/2011 11:26:51 AM

oh man, no wonder somethingawful tore itself in half raging over these things, HOW ARE YOU GONNA TAX IT OMG

6/20/2011 11:35:02 AM

People in this thread really should figure out what they're talking about before making all these claims about how Bitcoin has been manipulated or discredited in some way. MtGox is not the same thing as Bitcoin. The currency is still operating the same as it was intended and has not been changed in any way. This is more like a bank heist... it doesn't mean the currency itself is broken.

6/20/2011 2:02:59 PM

nm

[Edited on June 20, 2011 at 2:07 PM. Reason : ]

6/20/2011 2:07:03 PM

Quote :

"People in this thread really should figure out what they're talking about before making all these claims about how Bitcoin has been manipulated or discredited in some way. MtGox is not the same thing as Bitcoin. The currency is still operating the same as it was intended and has not been changed in any way. This is more like a bank heist... it doesn't mean the currency itself is broken."

It's a bit different than that. Considering mtgox is the main way that bitcoins are converted to US Dollars, a failure in mtgox should affect the value of bitcoins considering thier loss in liquidity. If you have some currency that can't really freely be traded for any other currency, you have a worthless currency no matter how great it is.

6/20/2011 3:03:56 PM

I would be surprised if a slew of more secure exchanges didn't pop up. There is a huge opportunity here for the people who start them.

6/20/2011 3:29:03 PM

^ Exactly. There are already competitors, Mt. Gox just had the most momentum. Obviously that's going to change now. The currency is still very new as are the various businesses being started around it. Sure, it has a long way to go but this leak by Mt. Gox in no way indicates an issue with the currency itself.

[Edited on June 20, 2011 at 4:43 PM. Reason : .]

6/20/2011 4:43:07 PM

Correct me if I'm wrong, but a bitcoin exchange has to provide a fundamentally different service than all other exchanges due to the technical fundamentals of bitcoin, right?

Normal exchanges have some sort of clearing house which, yes, keeps the ledger of ownership and transactions as required by the market, but a bitcoin transaction actually has to have a secure transmission of a code that fully represents that bitcoin which is then mirrored in the public database, and when a transaction occurs, something has to be changed in the public database.

Unlike conventional clearinghouses, if something goes wrong and a bitcoin code is intercepted, then there is no reversing it. Am I correct in saying this, or is someone willing to disagree?

It would be easy to say that competition would allow different exchanges to emerge, but the fundamentals require something that's clearly different from existing financial markets, and I imagine (although I'm not sure) that Mt. Gox was revenue-negative anyway.

6/20/2011 4:53:19 PM

Mt. Gox exists as an exchange between different types of currencies. If you want to send Bitcoins to someone else, you can do so on your own computer with just the client. You do not need to use an exchange. Mt. Gox is an intermediary which allows you to create an account and add funds (Bitcoins and USD) and then exchange those funds with other users in their market. They are a trading house, and their service is not at all required to use Bitcoins. As more vendors begin accepting direct Bitcoin payment, the need for exchanges would lessen. Just like I would rarely have any reason to exchange my USD for Canadian dollars.

Because they are a centralized service, they do have transaction records and are going to reverse the trades that have occurred. However, Bitcoin transactions between users cannot be reversed.

[Edited on June 20, 2011 at 5:24 PM. Reason : .]

6/20/2011 5:22:46 PM

It seems like you are saying that there is no problem, then continuing to describe the problems. There may not be any problem with the "idea" of the bitcoin, but there are most certainly problems with it's practical use, and I don't see any reason to differentiate.

6/20/2011 5:39:24 PM

Which problems with its practical use are you referring to? The only problems I've pointed out are that the currency and its community are still young and it will take time for robust, secure services to be developed. These are not technical issues, just logistical ones that will improve as the community grows.

6/20/2011 6:00:42 PM

Normally a stock is a piece of paper that entitles you to some amount of ownership of something. This works in the case of a clearinghouse because you have the weight of authority behind it, going all the way up to the sovereign government which sanctions and regulates its activities. This ownership is accounted for in electronic records as long as the records are associated with your existence and the power of authority is behind it.

On the other hand, Bitcoins, are entirely defined by their electronic records. Now, it is impossible to have value in this form, I know, so it's really defined by the combination of those records and the electronic community that maintains parallel public records using the technical properties of hash codes and whatever.

In those terms, I imagine that the breakdown of the exchange is before the actual bitcoin transactions themselves. But I don't know, it's confusing.

6/20/2011 6:04:32 PM

I don't think you quite understand how it works. Mt. Gox is not involved in transferring bitcoins between individuals. All bitcoins are stored in local wallet files and no third-party is necessary to send those coins to another individual. You just put in their address, the number of bitcoins, and send.

Mt. Gox is a separate service which operated as an exchange for users who wished to trade to other users for different currencies. To use Mt. Gox, you had to first deposit bitcoins or USD to Mt. Gox, and then exchange, and then you can withdraw. Many people had large amounts of bitcoins or dollars in their Mt. Gox accounts, and it was this service that was compromised, not the Bitcoin infrastructure itself.

6/20/2011 6:46:22 PM

Pretty sure the general view of bitcoin among geeks who aren't tinfoil hat types now is "bitcoin pwned, stay home".

6/22/2011 5:45:02 PM

An important component of the Bitcoin ecosystem was pwn3d

While such government-fiat currencies as USD and EUR are the primary units of account and media of exchange in the world, exchanges will be vital for all Bitcoin holders.

6/23/2011 2:04:04 AM

I've been hearing noise about this whole bitcoin thing for a few days, but I'm only now reading up on it. I still don't know much about it, but based on all the hype it's getting I feel like I've been missing out on something big.

[Edited on June 29, 2011 at 8:22 PM. Reason : grammar nazi]

6/29/2011 8:20:06 PM

Quote :

"It seems like you are saying that there is no problem, then continuing to describe the problems. There may not be any problem with the "idea" of the bitcoin, but there are most certainly problems with it's practical use, and I don't see any reason to differentiate."

Exactly. If it's this easy to fuck with the entire currency base by having a few inept exchange coders, then clearly there's a pretty glaring hole in bitcoin's concept. "No no it works great in theory as long as exchanges are coded by the adept"

Quote :

" I've been hearing noise about this whole bitcoin thing for a few days, but I'm only now reading up on it. I still don't know much about it, but based on all the hype it's getting I feel like I've been missing out on something big. "

You missed out on something small that, when suckers invested in it, they hyped up themselves as a way to convince themselves they weren't, in fact, suckers.

[Edited on July 1, 2011 at 9:45 AM. Reason : .]

7/1/2011 9:44:11 AM

I've had a buy order in at 15.85 when I went to sleep.


The overnight low was 15.86

[Edited on July 1, 2011 at 10:30 AM. Reason : .]

7/1/2011 10:29:46 AM

Appear to be stabilizing around 14

surprising

7/13/2011 11:10:12 AM

Tension is building. People want it to be volatile. Soon someone is going to get paranoid and sell a shitload.

7/13/2011 2:00:23 PM

If people want it to be volatile it's likely to become stable. Trading makes prices more stable, and that's probably what's happening now. You'll probably have to wait for people to loose interest in it to see something new, which might not take long.

So far bit coin seems to be succeeding in its purpose. Maybe we could inflate another bubble, who knows?

7/14/2011 10:23:52 AM

Over $200 today. Some people in this thread probably look like idiots.

$100 invested four years ago is worth $4 million now.

Its up from $13 to $200 since January

4/9/2013 12:56:05 PM

Exactly zero people in this thread predicted bitcoin would skyrocket because of bailout politics in Cyprus and resulting speculation frenzy, so the top idiot right now is you.

[Edited on April 9, 2013 at 1:11 PM. Reason : .]

4/9/2013 1:09:49 PM

People also use them to buy drugs off of the internet from Silk Road.

4/9/2013 3:52:59 PM

I bought 10 about a year ago but only had about 1 left when this madness started. Still pretty fun to watch. When is it going to burst? 300?

4/9/2013 5:24:25 PM

Bitcoin was not designed to be a game for speculators. All those speculators can go fuck off.

4/10/2013 10:17:33 AM

Up 25% to $250 today.

And youre wrong ive been posting about currency collapse for years

4/10/2013 12:28:13 PM

Quote :

"And youre wrong ive been posting about currency collapse huffing paint and reading blogs for years"

4/10/2013 4:11:03 PM

lol

4/10/2013 4:12:00 PM

Half value gone: http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/04/bitcoin-crashes-losing-nearly-half-of-its-value-in-six-hours/

4/10/2013 5:14:28 PM

^posted on teh Facebookz

4/10/2013 5:51:52 PM

OH NO BITCOIN WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME

4/10/2013 6:02:40 PM

Quote :

"Up 25% to $250 today. And youre wrong ive been posting about currency collapse for years"

I love that you posted that!

4/11/2013 1:03:31 AM

So why would I want money that is guaranteed to fluctuate this much?

4/11/2013 9:00:34 AM

It's only guaranteed to fluctuate this much due to news mania. It'll flatten out after the news quits reporting on it every day and people quit tweeting: "har har nerds in their parents basements lost 50% of their fake money."

I completely sold out last night at $180 after selling a quarter for 240 the night before. I bet it drops to $50 or less and still has 40% swings for a while.

4/11/2013 1:40:41 PM

I doubt it will ever flatten out. It's commodity based money. Commodities have large price fluctuations. Especially ones people view as a wealth store. It will always be up and down, and that's why people will never normally use it. It's an advantage of fiat money that libertarians always ignore because they are too busy shouting CURRENCY COLLAPSE!!!! like face

4/11/2013 3:10:06 PM

I was referring to flat more as not plus or minus 100000%. I can see 10 - 20% swings, but options could help to stabilize that.

I think there is an air of fooled me once to this, as most things only have a limited amount of press capital. Once it hits the public consciousness it's very hard for something to hit that kind of rally. New startups have the same problem after they do a big launch if it isn't compelling enough for people to tell their friends it kind of dies out.

4/11/2013 3:58:06 PM

If there was a good way to stabilize commoditiy money we might still be using the gold standard. But if nothing else, it's a better commodity to use as a money store than gold, considering it would free up gold for actual uses and not require people to dig it out of one hole in the ground to put it in another.

4/11/2013 4:13:02 PM

the winkelvoss twins own 1 out of every 10 bitcons

so good luck with that shit

[Edited on April 11, 2013 at 6:52 PM. Reason : .]

4/11/2013 6:50:40 PM

Does anyone argue that it's still worthwhile as money?

It's pretty much an investment mechanism at this point, just like the traunches and credit swaps of recent memory.

4/11/2013 7:23:40 PM

Wikileaks and Silk Road. As long as people keep doing drugs and Silk Road exists it's going to have value as money.

4/11/2013 7:56:22 PM