[sputknick]

I see it as different. Mt Gox was a legitimate business, with honest employees who were poor at implementing security. Someone saw an opportunity and stole. That exists even with regulation. My issue is with the rise of people who's intent from the beginning is to decieve. Similar to the scam coins that will never deliver a working product.

[lozenge]

Mt Gox was insolvent long before it officially was. Mark tried to trade using money that didn't exist in order to bring it into the black, but he never managed. Look up wizsec's analysis.

[burger_moon]

Here's a summary that patio11 wrote on wizsec's analysis.

https://gist.github.com/patio11/598ec35c6c1675c97d93383f41b3...

[pfisch]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=100514.0

Look at all these btc ponzi schemes from 2012

Also I thought Mt Gox had a bot buying tons of btc on their own exchange pumping the price.

[sputknick]

Oh wow, I didn't know the scamming went back that far. On the other hand... With Ponzi schemes, isn't it obvious from the start what they are? Maybe I give humanity too much credit.

[mercer]

I think the what a lot of people don't realize about ponzi schemes or pyramid schemes, or scams in general, is they don't rely purely or necessarily on fooling the 'victim'. Very often greed is enough of a motivator.

I've experienced at least one really big country-spanning pyramid scheme where lots of people participated, completely aware that it was a pyramid scheme. They just figured they'd be able to 'get out' before the thing would collapse. Obviously that often didn't work out...

[lmm]

Often they're started by people who have... not exactly honest intentions, but more people who believe their own hype than outright fraudsters. See the opening paragraphs of https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-12-17/martin-sh...

[Cthulhu_]

Not always; I can imagine with MtGox they slowly became one, after becoming insolvent and figuring out they could pay their customers by getting more money in.