Quote from: JorgeStolfi on June 24, 2014, 01:37:00 PM

There are other symptoms that a scam is in progress, and we have seen them all in MtGOX, months before if finally closed. The guy starts avoiding customers, gives evasive reassurances that all is well, promises that full answers to their questions will be provided "soon", gives excuses that cannot be verified, throws the blame on others and presents himself as victim, gets angry at those who insist on asking... But by this stage the scam is usually done...

In Gox's case, I don't think Karpeles' intention was to simply steal everyone's money and let Gox go up in smoke in the public eye. I think his intention was to use his power to ramp and crash the Bitcoin market. He could profit massively from the ramps, and then cover his fractional reserve activities on the crashes....but somehow things got out from under his control.....he could have been attacked by hackers like has been suggested or maybe he just started to lose the ability to totally boss the market. Or maybe, just maybe, he was just a self-destructive weirdo who started out on course of dodgy fake volume market ramping behaviour to enrich himself, but with no feasible get-out plan?

However, I also remember Gox getting all manner of 'seals of approvals' or pseudo audits done when their integrity came under question. I never believed in any of it, but plenty did. Indeed, even during the Goxcoin period, there were people on this forum swearing blind that everything would come good in the end, etc etc.

Perhaps if things went a bit more to Karpeles plan, Gox would still be in operation today, and Karpeles and his chums, Markus and Willy, would be happily ramping and crashing Bitcoin around like crazy, getting even fatter on the proceeds of doing so and nobody would be none the wiser. Operating an unregulated exchange is a permanent cash cow for any unscrupulous individuals with the will, the knowhow, and the means to do so. Providing the insider foul play is kept within limits, and the exchange insiders don't get ambitions which are above their stations and more than they can handle, then an exchange that routinely cheats its customers can be kept running for decades or for however long the asset it is trading remains relevant and everyone can still get funds credited to their accounts returned to them at the end of the day....unless of course the tools which the exchange operators use to front run and/or generate fake volume gets into the 'wrong' hands. I am thinking specifically of the mysterious $100 flash crashes that occurred both on BTC-e and Bitfinex back in Feb 2014, where spot price crashed down to $100 on relatively very low volume, yet many many people who had buy-ins at tranches all the way down to $100 complained that their buy-ins were not triggered. Perhaps one way in which this could happen would be if some accounts had a higher/lower priority of access, or indeed were privy to a whole different level of access to the market action than others. In the 12Hr period that covered the $100 flash crash, BFX volume was around 24K BTC. High, but nothing spectacular considering the $600 price flash crash (Bitstamp registered 40K of volume on their corresponding panic sell off down to just $540 during the same 12Hr volume bar). It just doesn't make sense to me that this would be triggered by normal traders panicking or some whale thumbing in an extra 0 on an intended 800 BTC market sell (if it was, then the same whale made the same mistake on BTC-e as well). For me, this had to be some kind of attack, whereby the hackers got their hands on the programs that the exchange insiders use to front run, paint the tape, fake volume etc. Perhaps the fake volume responsible for crashing market is the reason why many real traders never got their limit orders filled although from what I read plenty leverage long traders did get wiped out or have their Stop Loss orders filled, which results in real trade volume occurring, which along with some real traders panic selling real volume into the flash crash, means that some real traders actually did get their limit orders filled?

A very very strange one that happened on two exchanges triggering panic sells on the other exchanges which only got down a mere fraction of BTC-e and BFX, which clearly had to be under some hackers control. I also seem to remember just a week or so before this crashes occurred, some forum poster called 'BitcoinSteve' coming on here and warning that the end of Bitcoin was nigh, but wanting BTC donations for access to his insider info.