The real fun part is when someone gets the email addresses of these Gox users and starts setting them up for some *real* fraud. Between the dollar auction concept and the possibility of slightly higher levels of entitlement of some users, this could be considered a *gold mine* for the next person with a cheap suit.

As for Sagan and DHW (his book) it is interesting to keep in mind that in the late 70's alien abduction and faith healing crap was all the rage. I think it was in the 80's when people, confronted by the evidence, started to say "screw it, I'm going to believe this no matter what" and an incredible generation of gullible opportunities came to be.

Sad. Really Sad. The fact that 26% of the population believes the sun goes around the earth is evidence that something is wrong. People trusting their money to a guy in a crap suit at Gox in Japan is another.

*sigh*

C

His suit does look cheap. Maddof looked much better.

Problem is the concept of the Sunk Cost fallacy, the Gambler's fallacy, and our nature to believe in a subjective reality. Having read Rand and such, I found the only thing of value was:

• "Reality Exists"
• "Contradictions, by their very nature, do not exist. If you are faced with a contradiction, check your premises, one of them is wrong."
  

Gox is a funny case. But oddly enough not unique. The question is what can we learn from it?

C

crash?...are withdrawls now entirely halted?

So all bitcoiners who will lose out on this game of musical chairs are to be faulted....after all they should have known that on

an exchange you can only get fractional bookentries not real bitcoins.....GTFO before the whales try to withdraw !

I suspect that's what http://www.mtgoxrecovery.com is doing. They're collecting email addresses of Gox users, and claiming to "assist" them in recovery. But they don't have a name, an address, or phone number. Their domain name is registered anonymously. They claim to have an attorney, but don't say who it is.

Do not give "mtgoxrecovery" any account or identity information.

every currency is and as such BTC is a Ponzi as well...

about the only thing that keeps pushing bitcoin prices up, is the cost of the hashpower to find each coin, and as more people keep adding more, it'll just keep going up.

there will be a point (again) where the price falls to the point where people are shutting their now-unprofitable miners, or the reward is so small, and transaction fees so small, that it isn't profitable to continue mining with the power we have now, and that will also shrink the network.

using bitcoin over the very long term as a store of wealth, would not be a good idea with that in mind.

bitcoin's worth would be for purchasing some for a transaction you will make soon, and the recipient cashing back out.

the 'whales' will be those that are willing to hold the unused coin until it is needed.

somebody, somewhere, has to hold quantities of them, after all.

=squeak=

here is a link to a phone call to the mt gox call center.

.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HJt-MpoTP4

and another interesting article

http://gawker.com/does-mt-goxs-ceo-have-a-secret-history-of-online-payme-1534752110

Good call. You could always fake the data though, just to be kept in the loop.