Ask HN: I have bitcoins in MtGox – So what now?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7290181

by Hoozt • 12 years ago

4 3 12 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

This might be a stupid question, but I'll ask anyway. So for all of us who have bitcoins still at MtGox, what happens if, let's say, MtGox just disappears tomorrow? I mean, are we protected by law at all, or are we just a bunch of digital idiots now? Too bad?

bigiain• 12 years ago

There's a term for financial institutions where you have a well defined legal remedy/recourse if they abscond with your deposited money – they're called "banks".

MtGox is _not_ a bank.

patio11• 12 years ago

Both.

You've got claims which can be resolved by any court of competent jursidiction. You will find that enforcing judgments interationally is extraordinarily expensive. If the corporate officers of Mt. Gox leave the country with their assets, then your judgment will be worth approximately the paper it is printed on.

If you're asking whether the Japanese government is going to backstop your deposit, short version: "No."

From the perspective of Mt. Gox creditors, the actor you most care about right now is probably an anonymous midlevel peon in the bowels of the risk department at Mizuho. The action you should pray he takes is freezing substantially all of their account value above that required for day-to-day operations, pending instructions from competent authority as to what to do to with those assets.

brudgers• 12 years ago

Idiots? No.

Bitcoins were an investment. For a time, the investment offered an opportunity for handsome returns. Now, not so much. Like any investment it carried risk and the potential rewards reflected that risk. A potential erosion of Mt. Gox was part of the risk and the offered rates of return reflected that risk.

My gut says if you can describe your bits sufficiently to distinguish them from other bits you stand a chance of recovering them. Any optimism over the prospect should be tempered by the fact that Mt. Gox's collapse appears to be due to their inability to distinguish one person's bits from another's. If true, then there are no accurate records which link individuals with specific units of currency. That of course is the premise of the whole enterprise.

Ask HN: I have bitcoins in MtGox – So what now?

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