Quote from: ghdp on September 04, 2014, 05:18:28 PM

Quote from: DrApricot on September 04, 2014, 04:42:35 PM

Perhaps most people "agree" on the amount of 800K bitcoins, because its what they've been told to believe. The only real sources for this information are a leaked database and the bankruptcy filing which blames the problem on a "bug in the bitcoin system." This latter claim has more or less been proven false.

It's far easier for me to believe the smaller amount of bitcoins. 200K BTC are still worth in the neighborhood of $100 million. Any much larger sum of coins would seem ridiculous for a three year old company such as Mt. Gox.

Of course I am merely speculating, which is exactly my point, even the amount of bitcoins Mt. Gox held is still very much in doubt. There needs to be full disclosure of this kind of information before talking about dividing up "the spoils".

Kobayashi knows 2 things with full certainty :
- the amount of bitcoins in the wallets he controls
- the amount of fiat in the banks
He also probably knows where all the missing fiat went because he can ask the banks. We know where it went too but not the details (how much has been seized by the US gov/how much has been spent on coffee and blue balls).

There is actually no evidence at all that Mt. Gox cash or bitcoins were ever seized by the USG, nor even any means for them to do so. Were some government involved in a seizure, then it would have to be the Japanese one, although it could have been done at the request of another government such as the U.S.

However, if all of the coins are actually still intact, and the claim of 850,000 BTC once held by Mt. Gox deemed bogus, then it's possible its cash deposits were merely frozen up by its banks. A bank officer can do that simply by typing in one or two commands. This act alone would be sufficient to drive Mt. Gox into bankruptcy, as it could never pay its bills or employees.

Were frozen bank funds the actual cause of the bankruptcy and not missing coins, then there should be an investigation into the banks' motivations for any such freeze, especially when taken in light of the seemingly coordinated PR campaign about how bitcoin "needs" to be regulated, and the spate of DDoS and transaction malleability attacks on Mt. Gox and other exchanges which took place at the same time in late February.

It should be noted that CCI, a Swiss investigative firm, has already documented a pattern of manipulation by Mt. Gox's European banks which are linked to its Japanese ones. See: http://www.mtgoxinvestigation.com/