“A call center has been established to respond to all inquiries”

https://www.mtgox.com/index.html

by Le_SDT • 12 years ago

67 33 12 years ago

perlgeek• 12 years ago

Why don't they answer the most-asked questions ("will I get my money/bitcoins back?" / "how much of my money/bitcoins will I get back, and when?") up-front on the homepage?

k-mcgrady• 12 years ago

They probably don't know the answer or can't legally tell you. I wouldn't be surprised if most answers the call center gives are "Sorry, we don't know/can't tell you".

perthguppy2• 12 years ago

If japan is anything like other countries, there will likely be a date set for a creditors meeting, and the call center will simply be instructing people to attend the creditors meeting to have their questions answered.

Mchl• 12 years ago

Possibly this (opening an infoline) is something required by Japanese law for every company filing for bankruptcy. Just guessing though.

otoburb• 12 years ago

Another one to anticipate in the FAQ: "will MtGox provide last known balances in fiat and BTC and account transaction histories?"

Presuming that .csv files and screenshots would constitute proof of claims in a court of law is unbelievable.

kartikkumar• 12 years ago

Most logical answer is because they don't know. By delaying statement, they're probably hoping to buy enough time so that they can actually answer those questions.

perthguppy2• 12 years ago

Anyone who has money (either fiat or btc) in mtgox is essentially now an unsecured creditor and mtgox seems to be in bankruptcy protection / proceedings. You wouldnt get answers out of any other company in bankruptcy or insolvency, everyone will just have to patient until the Investigators/Administrators have finished their audits and have a restructure plan in place.

gkoberger• 12 years ago

Also interesting is that Mark Karpeles signed it "Representative Director" rather than "CEO". Maybe that's a legal thing (since they're under bankruptcy protection), or maybe he stepped down?

jmgao• 12 years ago

It's the Japanese equivalent of CEO.

arsemouflon• 12 years ago

That's sooooo un-american of them!

shocks3• 12 years ago

Can anyone explain what is going on here[1]?

1: http://pastebin.com/rmtUxwbu

nly• 12 years ago

so basically a lot of people may end up with a lot of worthless stock instead of a poor cash return on what they're owed?

mschuster91• 12 years ago

The point is that after going through all the bankruptcy process, they most likely will have all their code audited and checked, as well as external entities for monitoring.

MtGox will be one of the best secured exchanges after it, that's for sure - I don't count on MtGox going down at all.

danielweber• 12 years ago

The typical way that chapter 11 bankruptcy works, in America at least, is to imagine a big wedding cake. The bottom layer in the shareholders, the next layer up is the bondholders. When the company goes bankrupt, you slice the bottom layer off the cake: the shareholders get 0, and all the bondholders become the new shareholders.

That's for chapter 11, when the business is trying to stay as an ongoing concern. Lots of businesses that are bankrupt on paper still have quite a bit going for them -- if they could escape their legacy debts, they have more money coming in than going out, and it's socially good to keep the company going. Many people keep their jobs and the creditors have the best chance of becoming as whole as possible.

Mt Gox is not going to reorganize. Like Arthur Andersen after they failed to properly audit Enron's books, whether it's their fault or not they have failed at their one primary mission and no one is going to trust them ever again in a business that makes trust paramount. They are gone, dust, over. It's hard to even imagine what pieces of their corpse would be useful to other businesses, besides gox.com which is a three-letter domain name.

IANAL, and I'm especially not a bankruptcy lawyer.

shocks3• 12 years ago

Very interesting, thank you!

CamperBob22• 12 years ago

Sadly, gox.com may be a nice three-letter domain name, but you'll have to depreciate it on the same schedule you'd use for a barrel of cesium 137. Nobody is going to want a piece of that action for a long time.

einhverfr• 12 years ago

Interesting that the call center has been established to respond to all inquiries, as long as you don't ask for information.

panacea• 12 years ago

Hello? Is it me you're looking for...

socillion• 12 years ago

Here are some links on Japanese bankruptcy processes taken from IRC discussion.

http://www.jurists.co.jp/en/topics/others_4007.html

http://japantax.org/?p=84

My understanding is that Mtgox is using Minji Saisei.

patio11• 12 years ago

That understanding is confirmed by, among other places, the subject of the page: [民事再生手続開始の申立てに関するお知らせ].

leoc• 12 years ago

Not a job I would relish having.

asogi• 12 years ago

Does anyone know why they're using Javascript to load such a simple page?

dangrossman• 12 years ago

3rd-party DDOS protection.

drakaal2• 12 years ago

Answers to questions they won't answer:

Will you get your Bitcoins back?

Most of the time when a company has "unfulfilled orders" as they enter bankruptcy what happens is that what ever is left is divvied up. A company rarely has Zero Assets. In the case of MT. Gox they likely have about $4M in assets that will be sold to cover those who are owed something. Depending on who you ask that could be a few billion to a few hundred million. So let's make the napkin math easy and say they owe $500 Million and they have $5M in assets, every bitcoin you had would be paid at a penny on the dollar.

Will anyone go to jail?

Most likely not. Mt. Gox claims they were wronged, not that they stole your money. If that is true, or a bug caused them to lose your money it would be the same as if a bank was robbed prior to FDIC insurance (if they were robbed) or if the bank just invested poorly. They didn't do anything criminal. They were just stupid. Prior to FDIC putting your money in a bank meant if the bank failed your money was gone. (FDIC insures you up to $100k in a bank, but does nothing for Cryptocurrency). If Mt. Gox was a Ponzi scheme that would change this answer, but I don't hear people saying that.

What should you do if you want to get your money back?

Make sure that you are named at the bankruptcy hearing. Yes, that may mean going to Japan. If you lost $100k or more it may be worth going. There will be tiers of payback, and those who were most injured will get the most back. Someone who lost $29 is likely going to get nothing, ever. But if you lost $1m you may be able to get 10% of that back. If you lost more than $100k you may want to sue Karpeles out side of bankruptcy. While the Bankruptcy protects him from being sued for losses, it doesn't fully protect against negligence. He has personal assets. You need to talk to a lawyer about this, as the rules are complex, and your losses would have to be near catastrophic, because this would be a punitive reward, not something based on debt.

Can you sue the VC's?

Only if you think you can prove that they knew Mt. Gox was doing something illegal, that the public didn't know. Bankrolling Silk Road wouldn't count for example.

sarah2079• 12 years ago

The FDIC limit is now $250k. It was originally raised as a temporary measure in fall 2008, but the higher limit has now been made permanent.

guybrushT• 12 years ago

Completely tangential - but does anyone know how to setup a call center this quickly? Is there a service that one can use?

pbreit• 12 years ago

The "virtual PBX" market is pretty crowded. Grasshopper is a good introductory service. There are some Skype/Gvoice-based options like Zaplee and PrettyMay. Moving up a bit you'd find RingCentral and Phonebooth which are a bit more capable.

toomuchtodo• 12 years ago

Also, there are turnkey call centers, fully staffed. You get a number that gets routed to certain agents, and they answer as your org, have your flowchart/website/whatever. You're typically charged a setup fee, monthly fee, and per minute, but you don't have to go hire your own people.

“A call center has been established to respond to all inquiries”

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