Would something like this work for you? https://youtu.be/7hOnqGc6IvE?

Blowing more smoke! Yet, it's a good time now to question the legitimacy of this whole proceeding, and ask what better approach could have been taken? Why were the proposals from Sunlot, BitOcean, etc for restarting MtGox summarily dismissed by trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi in favour of liquidation? Is everyone completely satisfied with the way the investigation of this matter has been handled by Kraken, the Tokyo authorities, etc.? Where are the results, and do privacy concerns still out-weigh the need to release the addresses so that the disappeared bitcoins can be traced? It's been two and a half years now, but what will we be saying when it has been five?

What do you think the source of funds could be for this replacement (recovery) buying? Could it have come from exchanging the bitcoins purchased by Willy and Markus bots during the November, 2013 price spike for fiat? If so, that implies someone all this time must have been sitting on a rather large pile of fiat from those proceeds. I have seen in another forum speculation that these funds have been frozen by the Chinese government. This is really beginning to sound like the plotline for a Mr. Robot episode.

It's not totally out of character for Steve either. See https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/xn46y/steve_wozniak_uses_a_fake_id_and_pads_of_2_bought/

There's more to the story than that. Carlos said that he was approached by someone about three years ago who claimed  that he was SN. He never said it actually was him. It should be noted that this auction was ended early and his Twitter account was deleted--either voluntarily or involuntarily--cause unknown.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/11/27/japan-s-mega-banks-have-mega-yakuza-trouble.html Mizuho Bank--I may have heard of them before.

Common sense dictates that the person or group named Satoshi Nakamoto would never trust someone else with the means of moving his (their) stash, so does that not lead to a conclusion Mark Karpeles must be Satoshi, since he would of course trust himself?

Even Craig Wright or Dave Kleiman seem a lot more believable to me than Mark for a Satoshi role. The amount is virtually the same: 648,000 BTC declared missing from MtGox  vs. 650,000 BTC withdrawn from the Seychelles trust by Craig.

As mentioned in the LRB article http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n13/andrew-ohagan/the-satoshi-affair, Craig was planning to use these funds to pay for his "research and development stuff." It seems natural that an exchange like MtGox would be chosen to trade them all for fiat. Craig claims to have lost a "large wallet" when the exchange went down.

While it seems counter-intuitive since we were first told MtGox had a ginormous number of users, yet by May 25 of this year only 24,750 creditors had ever bothered to files claims: 9,863 of these were bitcoin-only claims, and 7,952 bitcoin claimants were subsequently approved by the trustee, yielding an average of 25.4 BTC per claimant.

The worldwide number of users, at least those of whom could pass muster with the trustee, is a far smaller one than early media accounts of the collapse led everyone to believe--amounting to merely a few thousand people instead of tens or hundreds of thousands.  Given this much smaller world of actual depositors who had funded accounts of any significance and verifiability, then is it too big of a stretch to believe that the missing 648,000 BTC may have belonged to a very small and select group or perhaps even to only one person?

There is a rumour going around https://forum.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-discussion/mark-karpeles-former-mtgox-ceo-out-of-jail-t9322.html#p26459 that the Tokyo police tried to get Mark to sign a confession that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. Why would they ever think he is Satoshi unless they also believed the missing 650,000 BTC from MtGox were from Satoshi's early mining efforts and actually belong to him? Given this scenario, was it Mark (aka "Satoshi") who got hacked and not so much MtGox users? For the record, I don't think Mark could have been Satoshi. Nevertheless, the missing 650K BTC could have been Satoshi's.

If he's as guilty as most people surmise and has an IQ above room temperature, which he does, then he'll simply take his 10% and run. Plastic surgery could compliment his new more svelte appearance so that he'll be able to enjoy his winnings in unchallenged obscurity. Purple or chartreuse highlights could help disguise Tibanne.

So if that's the case, then the heavy-handed stuff obviously didn't work with Mark. Cut him a deal to reopen MtGox so everyone can get on with their business. He's smart enough to realize he can't steal everyone's coins and still get off completely scot-free. Let him keep 10% and have a get-out-of-jail-free card in exchange for giving up the rest of the stash. 10% should be plenty to keep Mark in frappuccinos and Tibanne in kitty treats for the rest of their lives.

Blaming the disappearance of the MTGOX coins on an unknown hacker, or surmising that the private keys to the cold storage wallets have been lost or corrupted, or that some government has confiscated the coins without telling anyone about it stretches all credulity.

850,000 BTC supposed to be there
(minus)
202,000 BTC found in old format wallet
------------
648,000 BTC still missing

Using today's price in USD of approximately $625, the total value missing amounts to

648,000 * $625 equals    $405 million disappeard

Someone needs to provide a very good and believable explanation where these "missing funds" have gone.

After all of the investigation is said and done, and all this time that has past, it is unbelievable that those on the inside of this investigation don't already know exactly where the missing coins are; that is, if they ever existed in the first place. In case they never existed, then 202K is all that there ever were. That amount still yields 202,163 BTC (on hand) divided by 7,952 (approved claimants) which equals an average of 25.4 BTC per claimant that can be returned!

If some large bag holder has all the missing coins, and the trustee knows who it is, then maybe it would make sense to send whomsoever this person or entity may be an invoice, call this an account receivable or "asset", and simply open Mt. Gox back up. Sure it would be operating on a fractional reserve, but it would actually be more secure than most banks today since it would have a (202K / 850K) * 100 reserve ratio or 23.75% whereas most fiat banks like Citibank, Mizuho and Deutsche all operate on 10% or less reserve.

In other words, why make such a huge fuss about liquidating MTGOX. Nobody gives a second thought to liquidating the TBTF banks. We just keep using them and hoping for the best.

Those are the questions, are they not? Was this ever a heist, as Mark once claimed, or was Mt. Gox acting more like a bank operating on a fractional reserve? If it was the latter, then who "borrowed" those coins--unless, of course, you are willing to say "nobody"? If so, then it had to have been a Ponzi scheme from the beginning.

Since WizSec's last report was published, the theory Mt. Gox's bitcoins were lost over a period of years beginning as early has 2011 has gained some traction. If so, it suggests your insider must have been active over a long period of time. From what I understand, there were only ever 30 people including contractors working there. If the insider was not Mark, then s/he should be easy to indentify. Who was this sneak?

Mark already maintained in his "Silk Road timeline" that the two alleged rogue agents were part of a conspiracy--or, so he says:

He was merely restating the obvious though, as the DoJ criminal complaint against Force and Bridges--unsealed last March--also revealed that the two had colluded together.

Though it may be a bit of a stretch to say that Mark was in any way ever directly involved with them. He seems to imply that he was not in his SR timeline piece. Why do you think an unknown intern may have been part of any scheme? That's news to me.

Both the theories that Mt. Gox had been operating on a so called "fractional reserve" for some time [not genuinely possible since it never loaned bitcoins back out as a fractional reserve bank might do], or that it had suffered a major loss through hacking have been cast into serious doubt by the recent justification used by the Tokyo police in arresting Mark Karpeles:

The Tokyo police leak in January implied 99% of coins were lost through insider fraud, so you're probably not so far from wrong. The ongoing debate seems to revolve around whether the bitcoins were lost during the late 2011 to 2012 time frame or more recently. Those who favour the former hypothesis believe Mt. Gox only ever held a fraction of the bitcoins deposited there after that early period. They  succeeded in covering up their losses which originally had occurred either through theft or fraud.

Until the addresses of the Mt. Gox bitcoins are released by bankruptcy trustee, Nobuaki Kobayashi, so they can be traced on the blockchain then there can be little hope of knowing for certain exactly what happened. However, there is also a lot of cash missing in bank deposits. It appears that much of Mt. Gox's remaining cash when it collapsed was set aside to pay legal expenses of the bankruptcy proceeding.

around 650K BTC?

If you are right, and indicting the rouge agents represents some kind of limited hang out masking a deeper government operation, then how do explain the missing $27 million cash in bank deposits in addition to the bitcoins gone missing, as well as the bank shenanigans during the final days of Mt. Gox reported by mtgoxinvestigation.com? It seems overly simplistic to merely believe the USG pulled off this heist, although obviously rogue agents could have been involved at some level. Also,  what do you make of the Tokyo police leak in January that an insider was involved?

I am merely posting this for a seller who is willing to accept payment in bitcoins. I am not a party to the transaction, but am willing to assist both buyer and seller. (Seller is a friend).

Buyer owns a No. California trucking company and has decent credit. Seller also owns another trucking company in the same general part of the country.

Here is a link to the completed ebay auction for the truck that I also posted on behalf of the seller.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/-/161632245570?roken=cUgayN&soutkn=AZnsPW

I make no warranty or claims on behalf of either buyer or seller, but can put you in touch with the principals in the transaction. All terms are negotiable.

Please pm me if interested.

Thanks for reading!

As its time period overlaps--late 2011 through early 2013--between the apparent theft of bitcoins observed by WizSec and the operation of Tibanne Limited HK, is there any link between the suspicious behaviour that they noticed and Tibanne? For example, could those transactions found by WizSec in the blockchain, identified as with Mt. Gox addresses, which failed to match any of the ones logged in the leaked database, merely be collateral ones made by some Tibanne special user that were never logged.

Tibanne Limited HK operated two special users--possibly as selling bots--who were entered in the leaked Mt. Gox database as "TIBANNE_LIMITED_HK" and "THK" (Different names at different times). These two users never purchased ANY bitcoins, and yet between August 2011 to the end of November 2013 sold almost 3 million bitcoins--between 6% and 30% of the daily trading volume (AVG=6.29%). Never a single trading fee was paid.

The activities of these two Tibanne special users are discussed in greater detail here:
http://7u83.cauwersin.com/2014-03-15-activities-of-these-tibanne-users-found-in-leaked-mt-gox-database

As to the reason why these users sold bitcoin, but never bought any, various ones have been speculated:

• Selling off the proceeds from Silk Road
• Tibanne operated a mining pool
• Purchased on other exchanges
• A bug in the Mt. Gox logging software
• GoxCoins created out of thin air

Since Tibanne, parent company of Mt. Gox, had at least two special users who could sell bitcoins, but never had to purchase any, some of whose transactions may have gone unlogged, and never had to pay trading fees, then this company should first be excluded as a possible cause of those anomalous unlogged transactions identified by WizSec before reaching any conclusion about theft being involved or not.

Also, it should be recalled that in January, a leak attributed to a joint Japanese and American government investigation into the disappearance of the bitcoins pointed to fraud as the most likely reason the coins went missing. See: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/japanese-police-suspect-99-of-mt-gox-bitcoins-missing-due-to-fraud-not-transaction-malleability-hack/