MtGox Finds 200,000 Bitcoins In Old Wallet 227
thesandbender writes: "Today brings news that MtGox has 'found' 200,000 Bitcoins in a 'forgotten' wallet that they thought was empty (PDF). The value of the coins is estimated to be $116 million USD, which happens to cover their $64 million USD in outstanding debts nicely and might offer them the chance to emerge from bankruptcy. There is no explanation yet of why the sneaky thieves that 'stole' the bitcoins used a MtGox wallet to hide them."
Smelling more fishy every day. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's amazing how they "found" these... I would have thought that computers would make it impossible to "lose" such funds - even with the most simplistic of accounting programs. The more I hear, the more it sounds like something else is going on (like the principles of Mt Gox trying to run off with as many BitCoins as they can). It's like watching a soap opera.
Thieves (Score:4, Insightful)
Thieves often place stolen goods nearby so they can retrieve them later
Possible (Score:4, Insightful)
As Falkvinge says (Score:5, Insightful)
As Falkvinge says, this looks like a copycat fraud.
In one of the first major bitcoin scams, mybitcoin com in 2011, the owner also said hackers took everything and "luckily" recovered a percentage of the funds some weeks later. This is a classic con man move, called cooling the mark out. You're supposed to accept that you were stupid, take your losses and go home, rather than pursue the scammers for the rest.
Re:More likely duplicates (Score:2, Insightful)
I have not understood the concept of BitCoin exchanges:
1: Unlike banks which are similar in "just keep your money with us... yes, you can trust us", banks have insurance where if they go under, your cash is safe up to a certain amount. A BitCoin exchange going under, those coins are lost forever, period. I don't know any BitCoin exchanges that have insurance, much even an independent auditor coming in to check that they have a basic set of security standards.
2: If an exchange takes all the coins it has, dumps them into a wallet, and walks off, there is no criminal liability for doing so. Just using the excuse of being hacked is good enough to get off the hook. Then the wallet can be sold, the goods transferred into other wallets, etc. BitCoin by itself can be traced, but some shell games with wallets make for easy laundering.
3: What does an exchange do for a person? If you want any security against double spending, you have to walk the whole blockchain history for every transaction, and this only will get hairier as time goes on and coins get split up into satoshi. Only use for an exchange is turning BTC into another currency and back. To trust one for storing coins is idiocy at best.
4: Do exchanges have any internal protection if hacked? There should be a layer between the wallets and the outside world, something that isn't easily breachable by a single phish attempt or two.
If MtGox hadn't been hacked... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ooooohhhh theeeeere's your money! (Score:5, Insightful)
She was just being nice. As the parent of an 11 year old, they make very bad liars. I just take everything my children say with a grain of salt. The thing with lies is if you understand peoples motivations in life, what they are interested in, what they desire. Then you can easily see when they are lying, withholding information or distorting their own memories to match with a current assumed reality.
I find that it's good practice to firstly identify peoples motivations and character and then look at everything they say through that prism.
Re:More likely duplicates (Score:4, Insightful)
The GP already alluded to that. But that gives you control over the funds in a new wallet, not control over the original wallet. If someone sends new funds to the old address you won't have exclusive control over them until you've transferred them elsewhere.
Think of wallets as free, unbreakable safes with fixed combinations. If someone else learns the combination, you can move the contents to a different safe that only you know the combination to (as long as you get to it first), but the other party will always be able to get into the original safe.