Mt. Gox to Open Call Center for Disappearing Bitcoin Questions

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,399
Mt. Gox will open its call center at 8 p.m. ET tonight to start explaining away how in the world $420 Million in Bitcoins were stolen right under their noses for years and not discovered until it was too late. That is not a job I would want to have at the moment. :eek: If you still don’t have a clue as to what Bitcoins are and how they work, check out the video.
 
99% of the calls...

Caller "Where are my Bitcoins?!?"
MtGox "Gone, is there anything else I can help you with today?"
Caller "Eat a bag of dicks" *dial tone*
 
Filter said:
im 100% sure it was an inside job.
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Likewise. At some point they looked at it and thought "really, isn't this just OUR money? I mean we're storing it, its ours isn't it? Let's cook up some bullshit story about 'hackers' mysteriously leeching it dry ....." ....

A.K.A. what every bank would do if there was no oversight- "Sorry bank robbers got everything, have a nice day"
 
I'll happily let the evil government overlords with their fancy fiat currencies do their thing in return for regulations that don't allow this stupid shit to happen with my money in banks & brokerage accounts. FDIC? Bah!
 
LanceDiamond said:
I'll happily let the evil government overlords with their fancy fiat currencies do their thing in return for regulations that don't allow this stupid shit to happen with my money in banks & brokerage accounts. FDIC? Bah!
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madoff
enron
bear stearns
aig
worldcom
lehman brothers
 
If someone stole all the "money" how do they have any money to fund a new call center?
 
Thuleman said:
Except that the government stepped in and bailed nearly everyone out. Who's bailing Mt. Gox out?

Stupid shit is stupid, and bitcoin is stupid shit.
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Funny...many around here have made a couple thousand real dollars playing around with this stupid shit you speak of. Calling it stupid isn't going change the fact that I can finance my car with the profits.
 
kirbyrj said:
Funny...many around here have made a couple thousand real dollars playing around with this stupid shit you speak of. Calling it stupid isn't going change the fact that I can finance my car with the profits.
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He didn't say stupid shit couldn't be profitable.
 
lol why on earth would someone set up something like this. Post it once on your website that's all you need. There is only one explanation right? Not a personalized explanation for each caller.
 
rudy said:
lol why on earth would someone set up something like this. Post it once on your website that's all you need. There is only one explanation right? Not a personalized explanation for each caller.
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Robo-switchboard-operator:

"Your call is important to us...please stay on the line and the next available representative will be with you shortly..."
 
lol or maybe the call center is actually just an automated message that says what happened lol.
 
"The following is a pre-recorded message. Your call will be recorded for training purposes, however."

"Your money is gone. Thank you, and have a nice day."
 
aardvark sandwich said:
madoff
enron
bear stearns
aig
worldcom
lehman brothers
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Listing corrupt businessman + banks isn't any sort of coment against what he was talking about though. Also many if not most of people involved you listed ended up getting busted + the depositors had some legal recourse to get some or all of their money back and/or were insured by the FDIC.

MTGOX + all the other coin exchanges are pretty much modern wildcat banks and so are inherently much more risky and unsafe and always will be.
 
kirbyrj said:
Funny...many around here have made a couple thousand real dollars playing around with this stupid shit you speak of.
No they didn't. Almost no one has made thousands of dollars off any coin. And you know that otherwise you would've listed all of them.

As with any other pyramid scheme in order for there to be a few winners there must be many many losers.
kirbyrj said:
Calling it stupid isn't going change the fact that I can finance my car with the profits.
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Even if your telling the truth here your success doesn't validate what is essentially a high risk gamble. People win the lotto every year too but that doesn't mean we all can.
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mesyn191 said:
kirbyrj said:
Funny...many around here have made a couple thousand real dollars playing around with this stupid shit you speak of.
No they didn't. Almost no one has made thousands of dollars off any coin. And you know that otherwise you would've listed all of them.

As with any other pyramid scheme in order for there to be a few winners there must be many many losers.
Even if your telling the truth here your success doesn't validate what is essentially a high risk gamble. People win the lotto every year too but that doesn't mean we all can.
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Have you been living under a rock? Many have been making money off of bitcoin for quite a while.
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MindBuster said:
Is it a 900 number ? :rolleyes:
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If this was years ago yes. However 900 is no longer a valid area code in the USA. Oct 2012 is when it was killed off. However for county code 1 Canada still uses it. So not only would you be calling a premium number, but an international one at that.
 
kirbyrj said:
Funny...many around here have made a couple thousand real dollars playing around with this stupid shit you speak of. Calling it stupid isn't going change the fact that I can finance my car with the profits.
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Just because some people made some money doesn't mean it's stupid. People make money with stupid shit all the time, usually because there's someone even more stupid than they are. Good for you if you were able to cash out, doesn't change the flawed nature of the "movement" that aims to replace actual currencies.
 
sabrewolf732 said:
Have you been living under a rock? Many have been making money off of bitcoin for quite a while.
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His basic point is sound. Bitcoin generates no wealth. You can mine all the bitcoins you want, but it's nothing without exchanging it for something more tangible. For anyone to make a profit in bitcoin, it's only coming from a buy in from someone else. Could be a speculator or a retailer looking to sell merchandise and flip the coins, regardless the value only comes from another participant, not from the algorithm.

What's better, it really destroys wealth, because all the power to mine is gone. All bitcoin achieves is the conversion of real wealth (power) into a means to transfer other wealth (money and merchandise).
 
Aluisious said:
His basic point is sound. Bitcoin generates no wealth. You can mine all the bitcoins you want, but it's nothing without exchanging it for something more tangible. For anyone to make a profit in bitcoin, it's only coming from a buy in from someone else. Could be a speculator or a retailer looking to sell merchandise and flip the coins, regardless the value only comes from another participant, not from the algorithm.

What's better, it really destroys wealth, because all the power to mine is gone. All bitcoin achieves is the conversion of real wealth (power) into a means to transfer other wealth (money and merchandise).
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You make a ton of assumptions here. For something to be beneficial to society it either needs to produce something or reduce the consumption of something. You are assuming that bitcoin consumes but you do this based on what data? So there are all these people inputting electricity into bitcoin and you may assume that is a ton of electricity that is simply wasted. But how much electricity, man power and time is put into the production, regulation, and movement of physical based currencies all around the globe? Bitcoin does several things that make it an efficiency gain. It allows you to transfer currency anywhere in the world nearly instantly and verify it is real. It does it at a smaller premium than any of the existing systems such as money transfer, paypal etc.... It also is decentralized. There are a bunch of very real advantages to bitcoin so the assumption that it is not meaningful or harmful is premature. And part of the value does in fact come from the algorithm, and the other participants are needed for ANY currency to have value so that argument is also not based good data.
 
Just to be a little more clear, a bitcoin miner essentially replaces many of the functions that were once carried out by central banks, and consumer / corporate banks and money handling institutions like western union and paypal. If you consider them to be wasting electricity you would also have to consider the federal and paypal to be wasting resources.
 
Okay, they have enough money to set up a switchboard? Uhm.
STOP THESE STUPID FUCKERS FROM SPENDING WHAT MONEY THEY HAVE LEFT!
 
rudy said:
You make a ton of assumptions here. For something to be beneficial to society it either needs to produce something or reduce the consumption of something. You are assuming that bitcoin consumes but you do this based on what data? So there are all these people inputting electricity into bitcoin and you may assume that is a ton of electricity that is simply wasted. But how much electricity, man power and time is put into the production, regulation, and movement of physical based currencies all around the globe? Bitcoin does several things that make it an efficiency gain. It allows you to transfer currency anywhere in the world nearly instantly and verify it is real. It does it at a smaller premium than any of the existing systems such as money transfer, paypal etc.... It also is decentralized. There are a bunch of very real advantages to bitcoin so the assumption that it is not meaningful or harmful is premature. And part of the value does in fact come from the algorithm, and the other participants are needed for ANY currency to have value so that argument is also not based good data.
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Please, go shill your crapware elsewhere.
 
There's a lot of butthurt people in this room most likely because they passed up on the opportunity to make money.
 
mesyn191 said:
Listing corrupt businessman + banks isn't any sort of coment against what he was talking about though. Also many if not most of people involved you listed ended up getting busted + the depositors had some legal recourse to get some or all of their money back and/or were insured by the FDIC.

MTGOX + all the other coin exchanges are pretty much modern wildcat banks and so are inherently much more risky and unsafe and always will be.
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Corrupt is corrupt. FDIC did not prevent corruption from happening and many people lost their life savings. Its not a magic bullet.

To be clear, I'm not advocating not using banks, just that they aren't all peaches and ice cream.
 
If the BTC-ledger is public isn't there a chance to trace the "lost" bitcoins ? Sometimes they must surface and cashed out ?

Second: I also still not get where the value comes from. I tend to agree to the pyramid scheme thinking. Yes, some people make money but only because others pump in. If for whatever reason this pump stops the bubble will be gone. And stories like Mt Gox are not helping.
It's not like traditional economics where one produce milk, cheese, eggs, cars, computer etc and trade them. it remind me too much on the .com bubble, totally overvaluated companies become penny stocks and are gone. Or I'm just too old.
 
sabrewolf732 said:
Have you been living under a rock? Many have been making money off of bitcoin for quite a while.
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Give a good hard number of the "winners" and the amount they've made speculating on the various coins. Don't just handwave or guess. Only a handful of people have actually been known to have made money in the range of the numbers that constantly get thrown around (ie. hundreds of thousands of dollars).

aardvark sandwich said:
Corrupt is corrupt.
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There are degrees of corruption and some systems seem to encourage corruption more than others. The whole wildcat banking system has been tried before numerous throughout history, not just pre Civil War era US, and it has failed over and over embroiled in corruption and bank failures each time.

aardvark sandwich said:
FDIC did not prevent corruption from happening and many people lost their life savings. Its not a magic bullet.
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It doesn't have to be and no one has said it was perfect or even hinted at that. It is however infinitely better to have a system with some sort of equivalent to the FDIC than it is without one. Also the FDIC has little to nothing to do with preventing corruption, it is after all just a form of govt. banking insurance that guarantees deposits up to $250K.

rudy said:
You are assuming that bitcoin consumes but you do this based on what data?
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The question you aren't asking is what is produces. Most of the examples of advantages for the various *coins you give already apply to modern electronic banking and have for decades. Bank to bank wire transfers are cheap as heck and fast too BTW. Some of the others (decentralized banking) are dubious at best and aren't really clearly beneficial at all.

MooCow said:
There's a lot of butthurt people in this room most likely because they passed up on the opportunity to make money.
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I made plenty of money in precious metals several years ago but I was under no illusion that I was investing or an investor. I was doing educated gambling, speculating to put it nicely, and it turned out well but I'd never advocate for others to do it nor call anyone who viewed as too risky "butthurt".

All the *coins are far more inherently risky plays that what I was doing and deserve ridicule since they are glorified pyramid schemes that have been played out many times before in history. Wildcat banking is nothing new.
 
The only people that have really made money on Bitcoin or any of the alternatives are the creators and a few very early adopters. Sure some miners walked away with a few hundred or maybe even a few thousand dollars because they got in early and a few early speculators made some money as well.

The US Banking Industry has all ready been through all of the problems that Bitcoin is likely to encounter (employee theft, bank runs, money laundering, etc.) and the US Government has done a good job of protecting individual's money via regulation and the FDIC. Speaking strictly of US Cash holdings and not investments, it is nearly impossible for a US Cash Deposit to just up an disappear.

Its only a matter of time before the early speculators realize there isn't going to be another price leap and they start to sell. This almost certainly will lead to bank runs and failures of all the major exchanges.
 
You're looking at bitcoin the wrong way. Instead of looking at it as a bank/cash, look at it as a stock. You buy at a certain price, the price can go up or down based on public interest, news, benefit to society, etc. The stock could also be worth nothing if the company goes bankrupt, and the FDIC doesn't insure the value. Just like a stock, you can make a lot more money than just on interest alone. Half the countries of the world view it as a commodity and not a currency anyway.
 
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