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by TheSkeptic 5466 days ago
Everybody should give the people behind Mt. Gox a break. These guys make real banks look good - no small feat!
3 comments

Something here is still real fishy:

March, 2011 – MtGox.com (Mt. Gox), now the world’s leading Bitcoin exchange, was purchased by Tibanne Co. Ltd. As part of the purchase agreement, for a period of time, Tibanne Co. Ltd was required to pay the previous owner a percentage of commissions. In order to audit and verify this percentage, the previous owner retained an admin level user account. This account was compromised. So far we have not been able to determine how this account’s credentials were obtained.March, 2011 – MtGox.com (Mt. Gox), now the world’s leading Bitcoin exchange, was purchased by Tibanne Co. Ltd. As part of the purchase agreement, for a period of time, Tibanne Co. Ltd was required to pay the previous owner a percentage of commissions. In order to audit and verify this percentage, the previous owner retained an admin level user account. This account was compromised. So far we have not been able to determine how this account’s credentials were obtained.

A quick search of Google for Tibanne Co Ltd leads to Tibanne.com:

DOMAIN: TIBANNE.COM

RSP: KalyHost

URL: http://www.kalyhost.com/

created-date: 2009-10-02 05:43:17

updated-date: 2011-05-25 15:15:09

registration-expiration-date: 2012-10-02 05:43:17

owner-organization:

owner-name: Mark Karpeles

Does this mean Mark sold Mt. Gox to himself and in the process created a superuser account so he could manipulate the exchange to his benefit? Sounds like he could be taking a page out of the Ultimate Bet / Absolute Poker playbook.

Probably would be willing to take him at his word if the explanation of the flash crash didn't change every few hours. And/or if he and others didn't mobb the guy who put in the low bid during the crash.

Not to himself. MtGox was originally created by a guy named Jed, who sold it to Tibanne.
> These guys make real banks look good

I suppose arbitrarily allowing someone to devalue an entire currency because of lax security procedures is technically better than evicting people out of their home.

> These guys make real banks look good - no small feat!

How, exactly? I don't remember many instances of banks having security issues that dropped the value of the US dollar to 1/1750th of its value, even briefly.

Yes, that's why real banks look good compared to Mt. Gox, as claimed!