Quote from: Bitcoinexp on March 19, 2015, 01:36:35 PM

Quote from: ebliever on March 18, 2015, 03:23:34 PM

Quote from: GenieBTC on March 18, 2015, 02:47:34 PM

With the vast numbers of Bitcointalk forum members, is there anyone here who was one of the users of Mt Gox when they went down?

The Mt Gox incident remains to be the biggest 'scam' to date.

I read some stories about it, and I think it has become a popular story to tell for Bitcoiners all over the world.

Anyone here?

Mt. Gox's last official act (well, literally within the hour of news breaking that they'd gone down for good) was to email me a rejection for my account application. :-)

Other bullets I've dodged: after months of use, pulled out of Mintpal 100% shortly before they went under. Then pulled everything out of Allcrypt promptly when they announced impending closure, ahead of the reported theft of their BTC wallet a few days ago. Likewise, I was on Vircurex but not one of the users impacted by the thefts there a year ago.

That is some serious luck! May I ask if you are an early adopter and had a 'serious' amount deposited with those parties? I guess you're keeping an iron vice on your bitcoins now. IMHO there are too many scams/hacks out there.

No, not an early adopter. That's probably what saved me in the case of Mt. Gox. I got into bitcoin after thinking about the poor future and instability of fiat currencies around Christmas 2013. This led me to a little project of drawing up a list of characteristics that I thought "good money" should have, and I started grading the Dollar based on it.

I'd seen occasional brief mentions of something called "bitcoin" in regular news media, and that was ticking up with the huge rise in price in late 2013. So one day a little light bulb came on in my brain, "maybe this bitcoin thing is more along the lines of what I think good money should be like?" I started investigating, satisfied myself that while not perfect it was objectively superior in most measures to the Dollar... and within two weeks I was starting to mine altcoins, and by end of January was impatiently awaiting my altcoin mining rig.

I started signing up for exchanges in January, but fortunately (for me) by that point Gox was running into all kinds of trouble. As the leading exchange it was natural I'd want an account with them, but by early February 2014 there were so many red flags I can't imagine I'd ever have used them.

The other cases are just good fortune for me, combined with making decisions and acting promptly and decisively whenever I hear meaningful news of trouble related to bitcoin/altcoin services I use. Keep your eyes open.