Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on March 01, 2014, 07:54:27 PM

Quote from: Stammer on March 01, 2014, 07:43:42 PM

Bitcoin is supposed to work without the need for a trusted third party. If that were true, we wouldn't be here discussing MK's evil deeds.

Bitcoin does work without the need for a trusted third party. That being said you can't by technology prohibit people from using a third party. Satoshi never outlined a system which would prohibit voluntary association. Sadly many people opts out of the trusted third party model by using MtGox. Not just using them as a temporary exchange service (and yes even in a model which has no trusted third party there is a level of trust needed between consumer and merchant/service provider), but using them as a long term storage of coins. In essence using them as a bank without insurance or oversight.

MtGox is dead. Bitcoin still functions. I made transactions all week long and none of them failed or were delayed because of MtGox. Bitcoin is a revolutionary technology and for many concepts like

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If you do not have the private key for "your" bitcoins, then you have no bitcoins.

until now have seemed like quaint phrases. Many people will never see the risk until after the catastrophic event. It has now happened. Hopefully people (collectively) will learn from this and use Bitcoin as Satoshi intended. Keep control of your own wealth and don't hand that responsibility over to an untrusted third party.

Perhaps I'm just inherently paranoid, but I have never kept coins online since my beginning with bitcoin. They are stored in my wallet, on my computer, a couple CD's, some flash drives, etc. I hold the keys, and my password is ridiculously random and highly encrypted.

I have used online wallets as a temporary measure, such as exchanging them for fiat or 1 day portability, but never more than 24 hours and never my whole wad. I use banks in the fiat world because I have little choice, but in Bitcoin, what's the point?

This seemed obvious to me even before I looked into Mtgox. What I saw there, two years ago, was a company that was either no good with money or deliberately fraudulent. People tend to forgive the former, but frankly I have less contempt for the fraudulent! Being stupid at your PRIMARY business is just inexcusable. In either case, they deserved to fail. Their customers did not deserve to be bankrupted along with them, though they should have exercised better diligence given Gox's history.

Edit. Former for latter. Oops.