Hi dear forum!
The last days have been troublesome for a few people, and not only the ones investing or trading on Mt.Gox. All sorts of ill-informed news have hit me through the overheard conversations of the last week. One of the best went as far as to state that "Bitcoins have vanished from the internet, or something".
As for the facts. There have been attacks on bitcoin daemon running servers in which on one hand the attackers attempted to slow down and max out the servers resources by any means plus the injection of wrong transaction ids into legitimate transfers. The result was the expected movement of bitcoins but a later denial of the transaction within the blockchain as it did not fit the log.
Means; Bitcoin gone, transaction never recorded.
Now this is known since about 2011 - i wrote about it in former articles - and in user applications of Bitcoin the "bug" is accounted for, whereas the owners of a server with a bitcoin daemon must implement most of these fixes themselves.
And that is not the only thing you can do with a bitcoin daemon. It supports a massive option catalog to run and organize myriads of open and private wallets and their interaction.
What has happened on Mt.Gox was that the formerly described exploit did meet a heavily customized Bitcoin daemon and lightened it by about 850.000 Bitcoin in total. (source)
It came to the point where the responsible people at Mt.Gox reportedly discovered a gaping hole of 2.8 billion Yen (~28 million Euro) in their finances. The companies lawyer though has not yet made any comments to holdings of the company in foreign locations or currencies.
Taking anybodies thoughts ahead; if it is/was a self-perpetrated heist: respect ;-) else, if not don't forget the Bitcoin market is bigger than Mt.Gox and that peoples values have indeed been stolen by a third party with (most likely) evil intentions. So please don't bash Bitcoin for your loss. If you should or should not make your anger known towards Mt.Gox is another thing. But given that it will probably only cost you time and more money moving on might be the right thing to do. By the off-chance you now think of me as a cock; how much money did you ever get back by whining about its loss? There you go.
If you count out the deadly wounded Gox and the fear-ridden sheep on localbitcoin the course is dancing between 550 and 600 $US at current (favorite source remains bitstamp as they trade the highest volume at present).
Let's see where the story leads. I will definitely keep you updated. I really do hope they can find the fraudulent transactions in Gox's logs, as the coin itself will remain traceable to other addresses that where used to distribute it.
I related news there has been a thieving bit of malware found in cracked osx apps. This presented us initially with a two edged blade, but after learning that the exploit code is hidden in apps like "Angry Birds" we do rather condemn the stingy people who think they need an apple and don't have the 2 dollars for a bird throwing app. You have no right to complain or be bewildered if you find out that pirated software contained an Easter egg you did not expect.
On the other hand - If former mentioned Apple provides the world with a zero-day-exploit for up to 5 days long - rage is very well in order. If any of you has an idea how to thank Apple that they turned your comp into a paperweight for a week - the comment section is open to you.
I fear thats all for now, but we'll be back soon.
Best regards,
Tim
