Quote from: Stammer on February 26, 2014, 05:52:37 AM

After browsing the threads about Mt.Gox and the malleability issue here are a couple of questions.

Q1. Is there any way to ascertain that the Mt.Gox bankrupcy was indeed induced by transaction malleability?

I understand that the malleability issue is real. Indeed it has been real and known for more than two years. I still fail to understand how it could be realistically harnessed to heist hundreds of thousands of bitcoins.

i am not normally one to speak positively of regulation, but this is one of several reasons that money transmitters and MSBs require licenses in the US: too many unscrupulous people have started up such businesses, then there is a "theft" of funds and all the customers are missing money.

there are numerous ways a tx malleability exploit should have been stopped at mtgox. incompetence is a decent defense in the BTC markets when you consider how little most people know about BTC.

Quote

Q2. Are we sure that the whole thing wasn't orchestrated with the complicity of Mt.Gox management? Can we ever be sure?

Q3. Consider a Bitcoin maketplace model where major exchanges mysteriously go bankrupt and handwave their alleged losses to some technical issue, previously regarded as minor. Is such a model viable in the long tem?

if BTC 600K or more has been "stolen", which has not been reliably confirmed by any means, i would bet a large amount of money on it being an inside job. you don't just end up having your cold wallets emptied and not know something is up, even if you're as incompetent as MK.