Quote from: JorgeStolfi on December 29, 2014, 05:01:34 AM

Quote from: macsga on December 28, 2014, 08:08:27 PM

Jorge, it's not sane nor logical to judge every bitcoiner as a ''suspect'' and thus rule them all out from the process. It's the very same to rule every financial investigator out because they're involved with money and they're suspects!

All people who could have been involved in the disappearance of those coins should be suspect. Since we onlookers have not the faintest idea of when and how the coins disappeared, our list of suspects should include everybody who could have the technical knowledge and means to do that; which means millions of people with knowledge or bitcoin and computers.

Hopefully the investigators have more information about the hack/theft, so they can narrow that list substantially. In financial crimes it is easy to exclude most financial experts from the list of suspects, for lack of means and opportunity; not so easy in computer crimes.

In general, investigators can and do obtain useful information from suspects without ceasing to consider them suspects.
I only wish that they do not lower their guard when they consider whether to use help from bitcoiners, especially from people like Powell who had some special connection to MtGox.

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The fact is that there's an ongoing investigation that will need every resource available to get the best results. If no bitcoin-related was ever involved, things would be in the dark for a much longer period. Take for instance someone who has no idea how bitcoin works, or how the infrastructure is implemented. How on earth could he be in the position to judge what (technically) happened?

There are many people out there with a deep understanding of the bitcoin protocol who are not "bitcoiners". There are many non-bitcoiner experts in networks, python programming, databases, etc., who together can figure out how the software worked and how it could have been attacked. There are computer forensics experts who have skills and tools for tracing network connections, deciphering logs, etc., that a bitcoiner will probbably not have. And so on. Also, since MtGOX used private software, its operation probably was very different than that of Kraken.

As long as we're pointing fingers, lets not forget the missing $26 million in bank deposits. There is considerable evidence of bank fraud in the Mt. Gox case according to Swiss investigative firm, CCI AG. See http://www.mtgoxinvestigation.com/. Since a firm like Kobayashi's, Nagashima Ohno & Tsunematsu (NO&T), often finds itself working on mergers and acquisitions as well as bankruptcies, they would have Japanese banks and large corporations as their major clients.

An investigation into their involvement of these banks, etc. could represent a conflict of interest blocking complete objectivity by the trustee. That could account for the great atmosphere of secrecy noted by Kolin Burges in his report on the second creditor's meeting http://www.mtgoxprotest.com/. Secrecy would need to be maintained in order to avoid damaging the reputation of NO&T's banking clients.

Any comprehensive investigation of hacking Mt. Gox should not overlook possible involvement by one or more bank employees.