We use Bitcoin ;) - page 18
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Apparently the website is up, but with this message
Mt. Gox receives subpoena from federal prosecutor - WSJ
Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox has received a subpoena from federal prosecutors in New York, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Mt. Gox, once the world's biggest bitcoin exchange, abruptly stopped trading on Tuesday and its chief executive said the business was at "a turning point," sparking concerns about the future of the unregulated virtual currency.
The subpoena was sent this month and asked Mt. Gox to preserve certain documents among other things, the Journal said.
source
Apparently the website is up, but with this message
I am having a bit different page :
As it seems stuff is instructed not to give any information - which is bad enough. Reassuring that someone is not fleeing is even worse (any PR expert would say that a statement like that achieved only the opposite from what is told)
U.S. attorney subpoenaed Mt Gox, other bitcoin businesses
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has sent subpoenas to Mt. Gox, other bitcoin exchanges, and businesses that deal in bitcoin to seek information on how they handled recent cyber attacks, a source familiar with the probe said on Wednesday.
In the attacks - known as distributed denial of service attacks - hackers overwhelmed bitcoin exchanges by sending thousands of phantom transactions. At least three exchanges were forced to halt withdrawals of bitcoins on February 7, including Mt. Gox, which was the largest at the time.
Mt. Gox never resumed service before going dormant on Tuesday, leaving customers unable to recover their funds. The Tokyo-based company's chief executive, Mark Karpeles, said earlier on Wednesday that he is working with others to solve the problems.
"As there is a lot of speculation regarding Mt Gox and its future, I would like to use this opportunity to reassure everyone that I am still in Japan, and working very hard with the support of different parties to find a solution to our recent issues," Karpeles said in a statement posted on the Mt. Gox website.
A spokesman for Bharara declined to comment.
Bitcoin, a form of electronic money independent of traditional banking, relies on a network of computers that solve complex mathematical problems as part of a process that verifies and permanently records the details of every bitcoin transaction that is made. At current prices, the bitcoin market is worth about $7 billion.
Investors deposit their bitcoins in digital wallets at specific exchanges, so the Mt. Gox shutdown is similar to a bank closing its doors - people cannot retrieve their funds.
While proponents of bitcoin hail its anonymity and lack of ties to traditional banking, regulators have become increasingly interested in the digital currency due to its usage by criminal elements and its volatile nature.
It has been a rough month for bitcoin investors, with cyber attacks on several exchanges, a sharp fall in bitcoin's value, and rising pressure from regulators. Bitcoin's price varies by exchange, but the losses were most dramatic on Mt. Gox, where it fell to about $135 from $828.99 before February 7.
"Mt Gox has been broken and it was obvious there was something really bad going on there for nearly a year. They were processing withdrawals very slowly and generally being very opaque about what was going on there," said Mike Hearn, a bitcoin developer in Zurich, Switzerland.
A second source familiar with the case said U.S. federal law enforcement is investigating Mt. Gox. A third source said the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation was monitoring the situation.
Japan's Finance Ministry and police are also looking into the abrupt closure of Mt. Gox, according to the Japanese government's top spokesman.
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Mt. Gox bitcoin customers could be out of luck, experts warn
What can you do if you deposited bitcoins at Mt. Gox, which shuttered on Tuesday with little explanation? Probably not much.
Customers of the bitcoin exchange may have little chance of recovering their funds if they prove to be missing, legal and regulatory experts said.
Clients could file lawsuits, claiming negligence or breach of contract, but the virtual currency is subject to very little regulatory oversight and no government guarantees.
Japan-based Mt. Gox went dark on Tuesday, weeks after a spate of cyber attacks, leaving customers unable to access their accounts and underscoring the risks associated with bitcoins.
Bitcoins, which exist in electronic form, depend on a network of computers to solve complex mathematical problems in order to verify and record every transaction. Investors deposit their bitcoins in digital "wallets" at various exchanges; Mt. Gox had been the largest as recently as February 7, when it and other exchanges were forced to halt withdrawals following several cyber attacks.
Unlike bank accounts in the United States, bitcoin deposits have no government-backed insurance. Instead, customers would have the same avenues of legal redress as anyone who entrusted property to an institution that failed to keep it protected, such as negligence, breach of contract or even fraud, said James Grimmelmann, a professor at the University of Maryland who focuses on Internet law.
"To me, the first really important conceptual hurdle to get over is that these things really are property," he said. "When you take money from the public and store it somewhere you claim is secure, you put property law in play."
If Mt. Gox has no assets, however, individual claims would fail to recover any funds, said Daniel Friedberg, a lawyer with Riddell Williams in Seattle who specializes in financial regulatory matters.
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who would of thought it, bit coin goes bad and now no one trusts it
no one panic they can still use the other currency's, especially the Dollar
The Dollar and Petro Dollar will be protected at all costs, even if it means going to war
so a few cyber attacks are nothing in the fight to keep the Dollar the dominant currency
and no prizes for guessing where the attacks originated from
YELLEN: Fed Has No Authority To Regulate Bitcoin
Fed Chair Janet Yellen was just asked by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin about Bitcoin.
Yesterday, Manchin sent a letter to the heads of the government's financial regulatory bodies warning of Bitcoin's potential for criminal abuse and the possibility for disrupting the economy.
Here is how Yellen responded:
"Bitcoin is a payment innovation that's taking place outside the banking industry. To the best of my knowledge there's no intersection at all, in any way, between Bitcoin and banks that the Federal Reserve has the ability to supervise and regulate. So the fed doesn't have authority to supervise or regulate Bitcoin in anyway."
She continued: "One concern with Bitcoin is the potential for money laundering. [FinCen] has indicated their money laundering statutes are adequate to meet enforcement needs."
Manchin asked whether U.S. was "behind the curve" among countries issuing warnings on or regulating Bitcoin:
"The Fed doesn't have authority with respect to Bitcoin," she responded. "But certainly it would be appropriate for Congress to ask questions about what the right legal structure would be for digital currencies...My understanding is Bitcoin doesn't touch banks."
"It's not so easy to regulate Bitcoin because there's no central issuer or network operator. This is a decentralized, global [entity]."
"We're looking at this," she concluded.
source
How in the hell people can call what is a classical ponzi a currency?
Nobody learn anything? Anonymity in big money transactions? Come one. It was shouting : Medellin, come to us.
How in the hell people can call what is a classical ponzi a currency? Nobody learn anything? Anonymity in big money transactions? Come one. It was shouting : Medellin, come to us.
It is in the nature of men : "I am smarter than the others". That is why it is so easy to scam them
Mt. Gox loses customers’ bitcoins, files for bankruptcy
At market prices charted by the CoinDesk bitcoin index, that would represent a loss of $473 million.
The company’s lawyer also said at a news conference at the Tokyo District Court that Mt. Gox had outstanding debt of about 6.5 billion yen ($63.6 million) with assets worth ¥3.84 billion.
The exchange has been under fire from investors since it stopped bitcoin withdrawals in early February, citing a technical issue that potentially made fraudulent withdrawals possible.
On Tuesday, Mt. Gox, which at one point handled more than 80% of trades in the virtual currency, stopped all transactions, dealing the severest blow to the bitcoin industry yet and raising concerns about a lack of protection for users. Several Mt. Gox investors say they have little hope of recovering their funds, with some individual investors saying they had bitcoins valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars in Mt. Gox.
Customers from as far away as the U.K. and Australia have come to air their complaints outside the company’s Tokyo offices this month.
Mt. Gox has made two announcements on its otherwise empty website this week. On Tuesday, it said it had decided to close all transactions for the time being “to protect the site and our users.” On Wednesday, Mr. Karpeles said on the site that he was still in Japan and “working very hard” to find a solution to “our recent issues.”
Meanwhile, several people close to Mt. Gox say other factors than technical issues contributed the company’s difficulty in meeting customers’ withdrawal requests. They also blamed banks taking time to transfer money and some cited government requests.
The only known regulatory action involving Mt. Gox has come from U.S. authorities. Mt. Gox registered as a money-services business in the U.S. in June last year after authorities said it wasn’t properly registered in the country.
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