Quote from: Puppet on February 17, 2014, 08:14:53 AM

Quote from: Ibian on February 16, 2014, 10:34:23 PM

If there is indeed such a problem.

Considering bitstamp temporarily halted withdrawals for the very same reason, Im not sure why you would doubt that.

Where I sit, there are roughly two possibilities; One, Gox is saying the truth, are dealing with a technical problem that is confirmed to exist and once they fixed it, BTC withdrawals will resume and anyone who sold their coins for less than 50% of market price is going to feel silly, especially after you realized you converted your bitcoins into gox dollars that are infinitely harder to actually withdraw.

Two; somehow Gox, a company that by my guestimate reeks in between 500 and 1000 BTC in trading fees per day, and has been doing so for more than 4 years, became insolvent. Problem is that I really cant imagine how. EVen if some hacker exploited the malleability bug to empty Gox' hot wallet, that wallet would not have contained more than a tiny fraction of the bitcoins (or corresponding dollars) Gox has accumulated over the years. Do the math; ~0.5% trading fees, x2 for each side of the trade. Even on a black day as today, that is 1% of 60000 BTC or 600 BTC in fees. x365 = ~220000 BTC per year.

BUt lets assume those windfall profits have been paid out as dividends to shareholders and Gox keeps next to nothing in reserve, and due to some hack, they are now insolvent. What is more likely, that its shareholders will let it go bust, or that they will inject the needed cash/coins to keep their 200K BTC per year cash cow in business?

As for it being a scam; I will not vouch for Karpeles, but even if he is stupid, evil and untrustworthy it makes no sense to scam when you can legally make this kind of money, especially not when you are already in crosshairs of just about every major financial regulator in the world. It does not compute.

That just leaves incompetence then. Lots of scenarios there. Anyway, I think all options have been more or less explored by now so I'm just gonna sit back and watch the fireworks.