Bitcoin and its mysterious inventor

[Mike Oxlong]

So, anyways, Mikey, since you seem rather informed or at least interested in the whole Bitcoin thing, which I am not in any way:

I am quite dumbfounded to see 2 working academics publishing such childishly speculative self-indulgent rubbish, and the fact they can make such ludicrous connections and present them as plausible bodes badly for the species, in MYHOMO. It's tin foil hat time for both of them from where I sit.

Soooo, in your IHOMO is my lack of interest in the mechanisms of Bitcoin and lack of insider knoweldge about the issue as a whole misleading me into construing the arguments presented by both Roberts and Penenberg as fantasy level delusional hogwash redolent of a cutting room floor edit of a De Nero Taxi Driver monologue?

Engaging in some guilty pleasures pretty much covers it. Conspiracy theories, online discussions, yada yada yada. YMMV.

[kurogane]

Engaging in some guilty pleasures pretty much covers it.

That is a disgustingly nice way to put it. I would avoid using my professional blog to do it theirein, but yeah. Fair enough.

Did you find their logic rather, shall we say, permissive? I was shocked.

I also think they should stop hounding this dude that it turns out Chokenen has met. Privacy is a right, not a negotiation. Even if he's lying ike a rug.

[Mike Oxlong]

Engaging in some guilty pleasures pretty much covers it.

That is a disgustingly nice way to put it. I would avoid using my professional blog to do it theirein, but yeah. Fair enough.

Did you find their logic rather, shall we say, permissive? I was shocked.

I also think they should stop hounding this dude that it turns out Chokenen has met. Privacy is a right, not a negotiation. Even if he's lying ike a rug.

What?! A desperate search for and tallying of coincidences doesn't pass for investigative rigor these days?

[kurogane]

Yeah. I feel reinforced. I shall sleep soundly.

[Tsuru]

Jesus they cloned Nigel Farage

[Mike Oxlong]

An interesting twist:

Bankrupt Exchange Mt. Gox Still Has $600 Million in Bitcoins, Hackers Claim

"That fat f*ck has been lying."

I can see it now...owners become insanely rich with the theft and J-gov refuses to do anything "because bitcoin is not a currency." (while they tax them on the "earnings")

Mizuho added to class-action suits against Mt Gox in U.S., Canada

Mizuho Bank, one of Japan’s largest lenders, has became ensnared in North American legal fallout from Mt Gox, once the world’s biggest bitcoin exchange, which collapsed last month after losing nearly half a billion dollars worth of customers’ digital currency.

Lawsuits in the United States and Canada represent a new legal front - and a deep-pocketed defendant - in the battle over Mt Gox, which claims hackers stole huge amounts of its own and its customers’ assets.

Mizuho, the core unit of Mizuho Financial Group Inc, Japan’s second-biggest megabank by assets, was added as a defendant on Friday to an existing U.S. lawsuit against Mt Gox for allegedly aiding in a fraud by providing banking services to the exchange.

Also on Friday, Mizuho was named in a class-action lawsuit in Canada against Mt Gox, alleging a lengthy security breach at Mt Gox resulted in “the pilfering of millions of dollars’ worth of its users’ bitcoins.”

A Mizuho spokeswoman in Tokyo declined comment on Sunday on the lawsuits, filed in Chicago federal court and the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

Tokyo-based Mt Gox closed its virtual doors on February 25 and three days later filed for Chapter 11-style bankruptcy protection with a Japanese court.

The company said it had likely lost all 750,000 customer bitcoins it was holding, as well as 100,000 of its own and 2.8 billion yen in cash. That represents $567 million of vanished assets at current market prices, as well as about 7% of the bitcoins in circulation.

Mt Gox blames systematic attacks on what it acknowledges was lax computer security. Customers - more than 99% of whom are non-Japanese - suspect a massive fraud.

On March 10, Mt Gox filed for a U.S. Chapter 15 bankruptcy, which shields the company from lawsuits in U.S. courts as the Tokyo case proceeds.

Mizuho held non-bitcoin currency on behalf of Tokyo-based Mt Gox and its customers, according to the amended U.S. complaint by Gregory Greene, an Illinois resident who has said he lost $25,000 when Mt Gox shut down.

The U.S. suit accuses Mizuho of knowing of Mt Gox’s fraud, of not segregating funds that belong to Mt Gox from those of its customers and of continuing to provide banking services that inflated losses for bitcoin customers.

“Mizuho profited from the fraud,” said the complaint.

The Canadian plaintiffs allege that “all non-bitcoin currency received by the Mt. Gox defendants from its users was held in an account or accounts” at Mizuho.

In fact, the bank by January was trying to close the exchange’s account.

An unnamed Mizuho manager at Mizuho bank, in a recording leaked on the internet, asks Mark Karpeles, Mt Gox’s 28-year-old French CEO, to close his firm’s account with the bank, citing compliance issues and moves by other banks to cut ties with the exchange.

The recording was confirmed as authentic by a person familiar with the situation.

If Mizuho had to close the account forcibly, the manager warned, it could damage Mt Gox’s business.

“There would be confusion when your regular users try to deposit money. We don’t think that’s right,” he says. “If there’s confusion, we’d come under criticism and you’d be in trouble as well.”

Karpeles told the Mizuho official Mt Gox was unwilling to cooperate.

The Canadian suit was filed on behalf of “all persons in Canada who paid a fee to Mt Gox to buy, sell or otherwise trade bitcoins” and all those who had bitcoins or currency stored with Mt Gox on Feb 7.

While the U.S. bankruptcy stopped American courts from issuing orders against the Tokyo company, it does not protect Karpeles, the parent company Tibanne or Mt Gox’s U.S. affiliate. On March 11, the U.S. assets of those three were temporarily frozen by the federal judge overseeing Greene’s lawsuit.

The amended U.S. complaint said that despite the asset freeze, “evidence suggests” defendants continue to receive bitcoins in the United States.

The amended complaint also added as defendants two executives of Mt Gox, Jed McCaleb and Gonzague Gay-Bouchery...

[Mike Oxlong]

Failed Mt Gox exchange finds 200,000 bitcoins in old wallet

Failed bitcoin exchange Mt Gox says it has found 200,000 coins worth $116 million in an old “digital wallet”, after it collapsed in February admitting it had lost half a billion dollars in a possible theft.

The Tokyo-based digital currency exchange filed for bankruptcy protection in Japan last month, saying it had lost 850,000 coins worth nearly $500 million at present prices.

But 200,000 bitcoins were left in a “wallet” used before June 2011, the company said in a statement on its website.

Bitcoin wallets are used for online transactions between currency holders.

The new find would be worth $116 million, according to the CoinDesk Bitcoin price index. The discovery has been reported to the court overseeing the case, the statement said.

Mt Gox, which at one time reportedly processed 80% of global bitcoin transactions, said that the 200,000 bitcoins—discovered on March 7—had been moved to an offline wallet.

“Taking into account the existence of the 200,000 BTC, the total number of bitcoins which have disappeared is therefore estimated to be approximately 650,000 BTC,” the statement said.

The company filed for protection under U.S. bankruptcy law earlier this month, 10 days after doing the same in Japan after a huge loss of the digital currency.

Mt Gox’s lawyer said 750,000 bitcoins belonging to customers had gone, along with Mt Gox’s own store of the currency, which she said was around 100,000 units.

Japanese officials have said they are closely monitoring Mt Gox’s bankruptcy proceedings, as they try to get a handle on how and why the exchange imploded.

“The reasons for their disappearance and the exact number of bitcoins which disappeared is still under investigation,” Mt Gox said.

The global virtual currency community was shaken by the shuttering of Mt Gox, which froze withdrawals in early February because of what the firm said was a bug in the software underpinning bitcoin that allowed hackers to pilfer them.

According to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, Mt Gox suffered a massive assault by hackers, coming under some 150,000 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks per second for several days ahead of its spectacular failure.

Under DDoS attacks, hackers hijack multiple computers to send a flood of data to the target, crippling its computer system.

Unlike traditional currencies backed by central banks, bitcoin is generated by complex chains of interactions among a huge network of computers around the planet.

After trading for cents per bitcoin for the first two years of its existence, it began a frenzied climb in 2011 that took it to $40 a coin in late 2012 and $1,100 last year, before falling off to the current $580 level.

Its relative anonymity and lack of regulation has been attacked by critics who fear it could be used to finance organized crime or terrorism.

Earlier this month, the Japanese government said bitcoin was not a currency but transactions involving it should be “subject to taxation”.

Tokyo also said that banks could not broker bitcoin transactions or open accounts holding the virtual unit.

But as regulators around the world grapple with how to handle bitcoin, Japan did not specify if Tokyo would immediately begin cracking down on it, or how it would do so, given the unit’s opaque nature.

“While comprehending the actual situations, we will consider taking measures if necessary,” the cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in a statement on Tuesday.

U.S. Federal Reserve head Janet Yellen has said the Fed had no powers over a currency that only exists virtually with no central authority behind it. Several countries, including Russia and China, have heavily restricted how bitcoin can be used.

[yanpa]

So they found the coins in ' an old “digital wallet”'? Maybe they should check down the back of the virtual sofa too.

[Wage Slave]

I enjoy the irony in all this. People who don't agree with Government and regulation running as fast and hard as they can to the law as soon as someone someone takes advantage of the lack of same to rip them off.

[legion]

I enjoy the irony in all this. People who don't agree with Government and regulation running as fast and hard as they can to the law as soon as someone someone takes advantage of the lack of same to rip them off.

Always the way isn't it, anarchist groups were complaining in the UK a while back that the police weren't playing fair, deep cover cops infiltrating them by foul means and not so fair.

[wagyl]

A surprising development:

Dorian Nakamoto gets $23,000 payout over Bitcoin invention saga
Maintains he didn't create cryptocurrency, but will join community

The California man who says he was mistakenly identified as the inventor of Bitcoin is accepting a $23,000 gift from backers of the cryptocurrency.

Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto said that he will be joining the ranks of Bitcoin users after receiving a wallet of 47.925 bitcoins (valued at roughly $23,300) from members of the community by way of a fundraising effort.

The rest

[Mike Oxlong]

Police make bitcoin-linked drug arrest

A suspected drug importer who allegedly used bitcoin to pay his Mexican suppliers has been arrested in Japan, police said Friday, in reportedly the country’s first case of its kind.

Police forces in Tokyo and Fukuoka teamed up for the operation to arrest Ayumu Teramoto, 38, on suspicion of buying a “stimulant drug” from abroad, a spokesman for Tokyo Metropolitan Police said.

It was not clear what the drug was, but the phrase is often used to describe substances such as cocaine or methamphetamine.

Media, including national broadcaster NHK, said it was the first time someone had been arrested in Japan for a drug transaction that involved bitcoin.

While the virtual currency is yet to gain broad-based acceptance in Japan, its profile has been given a boost by the recent collapse of Tokyo-based Mt Gox, once the world’s largest bitcoin exchange.

Teramoto used bitcoin to buy some 50 grams of the drug, worth 3.5 million yen, NHK said, citing police sources.

The package arrived at Narita airport near Tokyo, concealed inside a tablet computer, NHK said.

Tokyo police declined to discuss financial and other details of the suspected deal, only confirming that Teramoto used an online service to import the drug via the United States and was arrested on Wednesday.

The arrest will likely give support to critics of the virtual currency movement, who say its anonymity and lack of regulation make it ideal for use by criminals.

Bitcoins were used by dealers on the underground Silk Road website, where U.S. prosecutors say buyers could use it to purchase drugs and even to organize assassinations.

Bitcoins are generated by complex chains of interactions among a huge network of computers around the planet and are not backed by any government or central bank.

Mt Gox is going through bankruptcy proceedings after it admitted that it had lost 850,000 coins, worth nearly $500 million at the time due, in what it blamed on security lapses.

The Japanese government has banned banks from brokering bitcoin transactions or opening accounts holding the virtual unit.

[Russell]

The package arrived at Narita airport near Tokyo, concealed inside a tablet computer, NHK said.

[...]

The arrest will likely give support to critics of the tablet computer movement, who say its size and lack of regulation make it ideal for use by criminals.

What was this guy thinking, having drugs sent to him by mail?

[Coligny]

The arrest will likely give support to critics of the tablet computer movement, who say its size and lack of regulation make it ideal for use by criminals.

Please, don't tell me someone wrote that and managed to keep his job...

Teramoto used bitcoin to buy some 50 grams of the drug, worth 3.5 million yen, NHK said, citing police sources.

Is that cop math at work ?

[IparryU]

Is that cop math at work ?

Yup. I would prefer to see what he had paid for it. 50 grams is some weight if it is coke (in Japan terms...) and could dish out for JPY 3.5M if dished out by the gram.

Plus you could step on it and make a fuck of a lot more.

But 50 grams of crystal would be too steep for JPY 3.5M...

Gots to be some silly j-cop numbers.

Sent from my SC-03E using Tapatalk

[Taro Toporific]

His third arrest...

Tokyo cops: Mt. Gox CEO used embezzled funds on prostitutes
---Mark Karpeles is alleged to have spent embezzled funds on women he met at fuzoku parlors---
TOKYO REPORTER 2015/10/28 --– In applying additional embezzlement charges to the head of the bankrupt Mt. Gox exchange, Tokyo Metropolitan Police on Wednesday revealed that a portion of the funds were used on prostitutes...more...

bitcoin.jpg

[TennoChinko]

The police, when they entered the bedroom of Mark Karepeles were greeted by a Y6 million elaborate canopy bed with a steel frame and sets of ropes & pulleys designed specifically for bondage.:

likely similar to this one ...



article in Japanese:

http://www.gruri.jp/article/2015/10070815/

archived version: https://archive.is/bbOMK

[matsuki]

His third arrest...

In the black hole known as Japanese detention....I wonder, theoretically, how many times they can arrest him before they have to either charge him or release him?