On Sat, Mar 1, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote:
It does seem to be more idiotic than most Ponzi schemes. It has set a new > record for bank robbery, as I said. It combines the greater fool theory > with amateur, do-it-yourself banking and cybersecurity, and the most > tempting target for criminals ever devised: huge sums of money that no one > can trace. > I think the robbery conclusion is premature. Everyone is still scratching their heads, wondering what happened. This is because important information has been withheld by Mt. Gox and some hand-waving provided instead. Eventually what actually happened will come to light, and the question of tracing who was involved, what they did and how they did it will become tractable. The main foolishing thing that third parties did in this instance was to entrust Mt. Gox with so much money; those same people are now dependent upon Mt. Gox giving sufficient information on what happened to make sense of things. No doubt they were nearly all of them speculators in the midst of a speculation frenzy. It is still the wild west. I can only assume that checks and balances will be put in place to limit this kind of vulnerability in the future, if only to keep cryptocurrencies viable. This will all be independent of government regulation (I say this as someone who is a fan of smart government regulation); government attempts to regulate what are fundamentally decentralized currencies will face the same challenges they face trying to regulate the drug trade or the Internet. There are surely pressure points, but it's also a game of whack-a-mole. I am not an advocate for bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency. But I think it's a mistake to underestimate the impact of this new development or to extrapolate too far from a single data point. Eric
