[danielweber]

I know why you are annoyed, but many libertarians (of the non-anarchist variety) still believe in the court system to recover damages. If they use the courts to recover part of their losses from MtGox's assets there's nothing hypocritical there.

If they want a bailout, ie a cash injection, then I'm with you.

[wpietri]

Given all of the rhetoric around the distributed, untraceable, unregulated nature of BitCoin, I think an initial assumption of hypocrisy is still not a bad place to start.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

But you do realize that those arguments are for _bitcoin_ and not for _exchanges_? The decentralization of _bitcoin_ is supposedly an advantage precisely because _exchanges_ (like MtGox) and other central organizations like banks are prone to failure due to fraud and mismanagement.

So, they are essentially saying "We need bitcoin because we don't want to trust institutions like MtGox because they might fail" and you say "They are hypocritical because the failure that they are warning us about and that they suggest a solution to did indeed happen". You have a strange definition of hypocrisy.

[dragonwriter]

Yeah, its clearly not hypocrisy.

OTOH, it should be also clear that there is a problem with the pro-bitcoin argument here, as bitcoin hasn't yet solved the need for instititutions like exchanges. Which shouldn't be surprising, as the thing that bitcoin directly decentralizes (transaction validation and currency issuance) aren't the functions that exchanges serve.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

Well, yes and no.

Apart from allowing you to find someone to trade with, validating the actual trade/settling the trade is an important part of an exchange as well, and those at least in principle could be solved using bitcoin-based technology.

And also, bitcoin at least partially could "solve" the problem by just not requiring the use of an exchange anymore once it has sufficient adoption. After all, most people don't directly need an exchange in order to use their local currency either.

And finally, there are suggestions how an exchange could prove its BTC liquidity using the bitcoin system, which would also solve at least part of the abuse potential of a centralized institution.

But yeah, it's not fully solved (yet?) and I simplified things a bit, but I think nothing that has any impact on my argument.

[wpietri]

I'm not saying that anybody who had money in Bitcoin is a hypocrite. But anybody who had money in MtGox, lost it, and now wants help getting it back is hypocritical if they were also singing the praises of Bitcoin in those ways. And that presuming that people with money in MtGox were Bitcoin proponents is not a giant stretch.

[celticninja]

I would have to disagree.

>And that presuming that people with money in MtGox were Bitcoin proponents is not a giant stretch.

It is a giant stretch given that most people who knew a lot about bitcoin and the bitcoin economy, the proponents of bitcoin as it were, have had concerns over mtgox for quite some time. Actually I imagine many people who lost btc and/or fiat at mtgox were relative newcomers who were unaware of the ongoing problems and just saw mtgox as the largest exchange and most public facing one at that. So you are making a huge assumption on which you base your choice to condemn people for their choice.

There have been plenty of these sorts of comments all over the internet since mtgox collapsed,essentially saying:

"champion that it is not regulated, go running to the regulators when a problem arises"

the thing is that never has any one of these comments been followed up with an example or instance where the same person has espoused both beliefs/statements. This is generally because they dont exist and/or the commenter doesnt want to do any work to prove their point they just want to denigrate people they think they are smarter than. An exercise in self-pomposity essentially.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

Where is there hypocrisy in that? I just can't see any.

[wpietri]

The kind I'm seeing is celebrating uncontrollability and then suddenly wanting the benefits of control.

[zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC]

I think you completely don't understand their position. Noone is "celebrating uncontrollability" (well, someone probably is, but it's certainly not a majority). If anything, proponents of bitcoin celebrate independence - which you might frame es trading controllability by institutions for controllability by individuals.

Their argument is that the decentralized nature of bitcoin allows an individual to secure their bitcoin balance without having to rely on any particular institution, which means one can avoid the risks associated with corrupt or otherwise potentially not trustworthy institutions.

Now, this argument obviously does not apply to MtGox - MtGox obviously was/is a centralized company that also obviously has all the risks associated with such a centralized company, and also all the institutional controllability of a centralized company, it's registered in Tokyo, it falls under Japanese jurisdiction, the state could easily have frozen balances people held with them, be it in bitcoin or in USD or EUR or JPY or whatever, ... in short: It is pretty much a Japanese bank, which incidentally allowed trading and storing bitcoin with them. As such, why is it hypocrisy to expect it to be treated like a bank? You have all the risks of using a bank, why not the advantages of using a bank?

But also: Well, even if this was about some stealing someone else's bitcoins (well, it kindof is, as far as MtGox itself is concerned, at least if they are to be believed): Why would it be hypocritical to ask for help from others just because you tried to minimize the need for such help and this also caused the help that you need in the end to be a bit harder to provide? It might even still be an overall benefit to society.

I guess that you might disagree with some of the supposed benefits that proponents of bitcoin claim - but that does not make them hypocritical, just possibly wrong, and it would probably be more constructive to point out where you think their idea will fail in reality or where you disagree with their goals than to accuse them of being hypocritical.