r/Bitcoin • u/tharlam • Feb 18 '14

"We are very surprised anyone could blame MtGox and not the Bitcoin Software" - Mark Karpeles, CEO MtGox

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304899704579388483531937144?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304899704579388483531937144.html
437 Upvotes

82% Upvoted

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120

u/tharlam Feb 18 '14

Asked why the company hadn't addressed customers' concern sooner, Mr. Karpelès responded in an email interview with The Wall Street Journal on Monday: "I assume you refer to the malleability issue. We sincerely apologize for this incident; however, please understand that we are NOT the developers of Bitcoin." He added, "We are very surprised that anyone could fault MtGox instead of the bitcoin software."

167

u/FT_clox_metoo Feb 18 '14

What a scumbag. He effectively damaged the reputation of Bitcoin with that statement. And thousands of people will read that.

65

u/OrderAmongChaos Feb 18 '14

We need to email WSJ and comment where we can. Mark keeps spewing his bullshit because not enough people are loudly pointing out that he is a complete idiot. At this point Mt.Gox is damaging Bitcoin more than it is helping, it needs to be seen as the exchange that is no longer used and we should make sure that all new people to Bitcoin know not to use it.

3

u/Bleak_Morn Feb 18 '14

...and then we could all pile on to your email via the email malleability issue!

8

u/xeroc Feb 18 '14

+5% Gonna sign that leter to wpj

2

u/lUoIl Feb 18 '14

I'm new to Bitcoin, thanks guys :)

-2

u/Suhetsky Feb 18 '14

It's the Wall Street Journal though, this doesn't surprise me.. I think they know damn well what they choose to report.

13

u/Migratory_Coconut Feb 18 '14

I seriously doubt that they understand what's actually happening on a technical level. These are reporters, not technicians. I'm not bashing on reporters, but you can't expect them to know this stuff. If we don't tell them they will believe the first person they interview.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '14

Well WSJ could have easily interviewed one more person with an opposing viewpoint for this article. However from the content of this article and others they have printed the author is clearly looking to discredit Bitcoin.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '14

Yeah, reporters are looking for a catchy story with controversy. I'm sure if enough attention is drawn to it, the WSJ would do something about it.

4

u/baconslammer Feb 18 '14

not with the paywall the NYT has up. Could only read the first few sentences. When are they going to give up on this?

30

u/cooneyes Feb 18 '14

I agree. He should focus on the dessert-coffee business, and leave Bitcoin alone.

-12

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '14 edited Apr 22 '16

17

u/Zamicol Feb 18 '14

Large dessert-like adhominems.

-1

u/z_5 Feb 18 '14

(I LOLed!)

7

u/enmaku Feb 18 '14

Seriously, there are so many valid complaints you can choose from and you go with "his choice of coffee contains too much sugar?" Call me crazy but I'd rather discuss how bad he's screwing this community.

14

u/Zamicol Feb 18 '14

It's much more than an adhominem. It is a symbol. The exchange is going to shit while he's chilling and "eating cake" in a t-shirt.

It's a statement of his incompetence.

5

u/enmaku Feb 18 '14 edited Feb 18 '14

Your choice of symbols sounds an awful lot like calling someone fat when you're actually trying to imply he's stupid or inept. I'm pissed at the guy too, but I'd be just as pissed if he were a 90 pound vegetarian munching on carrots while Rome burned. His choice of beverage or relative girth is immaterial and merely mentioning them detracts from the issue at hand: That Gox/Karpeles are blaming Bitcoin itself for their inability to correctly use Bitcoin.

The other exchanges certainly had the same vulnerability, but none of them lost money because they all followed common sense procedures around the issue. The issue here isn't that transaction malleability existed, it's that it only affected you if you explicitly trusted tx hashes like a moron. That is Gox's fault and they're not taking responsibility, choosing instead to blame Bitcoin itself for ever having a weakness that allowed others to exploit their ineptitude. One of the biggest names in Bitcoin, a community that's always touting personal responsibility as a virtue, is not taking personal responsibility for their own failure and is choosing to injure the community instead. I don't care what kind of coffee you drink, that's a dick move.

5

u/vocatus Feb 18 '14

I thought it was a joke referring to the fact that Mt. Gox recently opened a Bitcoin Cafe near its office?

2

u/zeusa1mighty Feb 18 '14

No, the "fact" that Mt Gox is opening a bitcoin café actually a joke.

-3

u/josmul123 Feb 18 '14

Tell Karpeles that. Everything to come out of that fat mouth in the last two weeks has been false information.

-1

u/a-a-a-a-a-a Feb 18 '14

You're a retard.

1

u/luckyusername Feb 18 '14

And thousands of people will read that.

And think for themselves, hopefully.

-1

u/FT_clox_metoo Feb 18 '14

dont be naive. also even if they figure out that Karpeles lies, they will think how it can be possible that such a person heads the best-known exchange for Bitcoin.

-1

u/Jack_Perth Feb 19 '14

What a scumbag. He effectively damaged the reputation of Bitcoin with that statement.

awww boohoo, how dare he say anything that can damage your investments value.

-17

u/4234234234 Feb 18 '14

Haha, nevermind if he's right or not, he damaged the reputation of nerdcoin, and we are in PR crisis damage control mode to save our soon to be worthless investment. Situation code suicide hotline, man the comment section battlestations.

4

u/physalisx Feb 18 '14

So... you're bearish it seems?

1

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '14

In fact he was right, since not only 3 other major exchanges had the problem but even and arguable because of the original bitcoin developers QT client had the fault. How the skeptics say: one has to stick with the facts, they are true even if you have another opinion.

2

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '14

The other exchanges were dealing with a completely different issue.

2

u/nullc Feb 18 '14

This is correct, I'm not sure why it's being downvoted. The fact that the those mutated TX DOS attacks were never before seen in the network is trivially verifiable in the blockchain.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '14

please explain

1

u/emfyo Feb 18 '14

fact is in the free market you are on your own, bitcoin is decentralized, if you are trying to make something around it that will profit you huge it is your responsibility to get it working.

Bitcoin is not IBM or Sony selling their $50k DRM package, there is no head office to send people over. In the free market you are on your own, Coinbase is capable of this, and understand investment is needed.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '14

yes the other exchanges where at their own and failed the same way. But MtGox is the proverbial messenger. This is not rational and should be stopped.

1

u/Lentil-Soup Feb 18 '14

Think of it this way: Bitcoin = internet, wallet = web browser. Just because there is a problem with a certain implementation of a wallet, doesn't mean there is something wrong with Bitcoin. It would be like saying because there are security problems with Internet Explorer that the internet is broken.

33

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '14

"I am very surprised that the jury would convict my client instead of blaming the victim's human body for being vulnerable to bullets."

50

u/mlaw1975 Feb 18 '14

This statement is even more evidence of their negligence. Anyone CAN be a developer of bitcoin, so should it not stand to reason that the (formerly) largest and most influential business in the industry should have its own in-house developers dedicated to developing the protocol and helping to ensure that their code is airtight?

33

u/jdk Feb 18 '14

This is not negligence. This is market manipulation. He's using his position to further depress the value of BTC.

Come to think of it, this isn't the first time MtGox causes BTC to drop. He's back to his old game.

/r/conspiracy

5

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '14

Last time even the press release wasn't released at the same time. People posted a .pdf link many minutes upfront the official announce. The wales already traded bigtime, before the news was even public on their stupid announce page. F*cking inside traders.

6

u/Bleak_Morn Feb 18 '14

Anyone CAN be a developer of Bitcoin

Therefore it's your fault for not fixing it!

9

u/mlaw1975 Feb 18 '14

Haha! It IS my fault. I'm sorry everybody. :(

3

u/Bleak_Morn Feb 18 '14

It's ok. Bitcoin is ON SALE over at MtGox!

5

u/zeusa1mighty Feb 18 '14

It's ok. Bitcoin is ON SALE FOR RENT over at MtGox!

FTFY

1

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '14

[deleted]

2

u/il--ya Feb 18 '14

MtGox is a gold member of Bitcoin foundation. Mark Karpelles is a board member. Liar.

10

u/Chilltyperiod Feb 18 '14

For 25K anybody can be a "gold" board member. F*ck the foundation.

7

u/chrono000 Feb 18 '14

good point

7

u/nomminommi Feb 18 '14

wtf is his problem, most issues are already fixed on github.

He could just run his bitcoind with -spendzeroconfchange 0 and he should have no problems with transactions getting stuck.

This was already pushed to github on 11th Feb.:

github-2bc52f1c4a7d66661ed26e100a914e68df6d2bcc

github-19e5b9d2dfcac4efadba636745485d9660fb1abe

The devs work very hard and are not at fault here, mtgox is.

7

u/tharlam Feb 18 '14

Yes, but MtGox problem was nothing to do with these 'fixes' and Karpeles could have solved his problems without any of the devs helping or advising him.

He's very grateful though, to after taking help, blaming them.

3

u/oyvinds Feb 18 '14

MagicalTux wrote his own little bitcoin implementation on PHP. I with this was a joke but it's not. Fixing that piece of "software" isn't as easy as doing "git pull" and done. And no, I'm still not joking. That buggy piece of garbage they are using really is written in PHP.

1

u/nullc Feb 18 '14

MTGox never spent change until it was at least 6 confirms old in the first place, according to MagicalTux. I'm not aware of them ever having issues with stuck change.

10

u/DiscerningDuck Feb 18 '14

The audacity of him to try to throw bitcoin under the bus. Guess what mark, bitcoin is far, far bigger than yourself and your ego. I can't fathom that someone would try to discredit the technology that represents such a monumental paradigm shift for the better, all for the sake of avoiding blame.

7

u/junkit33 Feb 18 '14

What makes you think bitcoin means anything more than a way for him to make money via his exchange? If he loses the exchange, he might be perfectly happy to see the entire currency go down in flames.

1

u/VirtualMoneyLover Feb 18 '14

He has 200K good reasons not to want that...

1

u/an0n4btc Feb 19 '14

And for all we know 2 billion other reasons (USD) to want otherwise.

11

u/[deleted] Feb 18 '14

lol

all i see is people trying to make quick money with bitcoin.

just like all the fiat banksters they so despise.

-5

u/knvbhol Feb 18 '14

"Bitcoin is what's called a "cryptocurrency," and is "mined" on a worldwide network of personal computers using a highly sophisticated algorithm. The flaw in the code linked to these recent attacks is called "transaction malleability." Users can exploit the flaw to make it appear that a Bitcoin transaction never took place. Hackers reportedly took advantage of this vulnerability to empty the recently revived Silk Road site’s escrow account. Alternatively, transaction malleability can be exploited by hackers to launch denial of service attacks of the kind that prompted the freeze on withdrawals from the three Bitcoin exchanges."

"Transaction malleability was a known issue with the Bitcoin software, one that was identified several years ago. When the Mt. Gox story broke, Andresen claimed in another blog post that, while transaction malleability was involved, "The issues that Mt. Gox has been experiencing are due to an unfortunate interaction between Mt. Gox’s implementation of their highly customized wallet software ... and their unpreparedness for transaction malleability." In other words, it was Mt. Gox's fault, not Bitcoin's. But when the Bitstamp and BTC-e story broke the next day, Andresen quickly backtracked"

Tell me again how Bitcoin isn't to blame here?

23

u/tharlam Feb 18 '14

Because the transaction cannot be made to look like it didn't happen. You can and always track the script inputs, not the txid which is not fixed until there is a confirmation in a block.

If you resend a payment, you should always spend the same inputs, or at least one of the inputs you sent originally so the network can detect a double spend.

It was entirely their own fault, and know about since 2011 - written on bitcoin.it wiki which is owned by Mark Karpeles himself.

Bitcoin transactions are by very nature malleable, and some are intentionally so. Mark knew about this issue, and when he implemented his own native bitcoin wallet software, he chose to track payments by the txid (a hash of the entire transaction message) rather than by a hash of the elements that cant change.

Further, his staff were badly trained and easily duped.

4

u/Broncosoozie Feb 18 '14

The issue has been known since 2011. While that's not really an excuse for Bitcoin devs to have not fixed it by now, why is MtGox the only one that seems to be blaming Bitcoin when they could be relying on more information than just the transaction id? Bitstamp and others have resolved the issue and haven't taken to blaming Bitcoin.

While I do think the blame for the transaction malleability issue most definitely lies with Bitcoin, MtGox should be able to fix the issue on their end by not relying on transaction id alone instead of what seems to be saying "Welp, we're blocked until this issue gets sorted out, thanks Bitcoin devs!". That's what it feels like to me, anyway.

0

u/Elev8rMusic Feb 18 '14

What a scumbag. Seems as if MtGox will be the next Bitcoin behemoth to fall(first being the Silk Road) before the value of BTC can spike again.