| | | Hi Elroy....... the cryptocurrencies are amazing..... why is it that coinbase is making a market in so few of them, and Coinbase which is mentioned as a go to company to create your digital wallet and trade bitcoin,
is closely held and what makes them more secure than Mt. got which collapsed and hundreds of millions
was lost by bitcoin holders.
what's to keep your Bitcoins from vanishing into the volcano the way that the they did for thousands of clients of the world's biggest bitcoin exchange when it collapsed and went dark in 2015 and 850,000 bitcoins valued at 3,850,000,000 at today's prices went missing.
why is that not going to happen several times again? It already has........ but there is that much mindless speculative money out in the global community........ I take it as a very troubling sign......
China which had had huge issues with wealthy citizens who have been actively taking capital out of China by covert means for several years... Has a lot to do with the Bitcoin rise, I suspect.
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Former Chief of Collapsed Bitcoin Exchange Mt. Gox Stands Trial in Tokyo
Prosecutors say Mark Karpelès wrongfully spent $3 million of customers’ money for personal use; he denies all wrongdoing
By
Takashi Mochizuki
Updated July 12, 2017 8:50 a.m. ET
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TOKYO—More than three years after bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox collapsed, its former head went on trial this week as customers continued to wait for a clear answer on how exactly the company lost virtual currency valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Mark Karpelès, who was arrested in 2015 and released the following year pending trial, is charged with embezzlement and creation of unauthorized records at his company.
Prosecutors at the Tokyo District Court said Tuesday that Mr. Karpelès wrongfully spent ¥340 million ($3 million) of customers’ money for his personal use. They also said he altered the company’s books to inflate the amount of dollars and bitcoins held by customers.
Mr. Karpelès denied all wrongdoing at the hearing. “I have never manipulated the exchange’s data or used customer money for my own benefit,” he said. “I am innocent.”
He repeated his contention that the exchange’s collapse was caused by hackers, and he said he regretted that he was unable to prevent the losses suffered by customers. Mr. Karpelès said he was willing to cooperate with a trustee handling Mt. Gox’s bankruptcy and authorities in trying to locate the lost bitcoins.
The 32-year-old Frenchman, who currently works as an engineer in Japan, said the exchange had been profitable and the money he had spent on personal items came from his own funds, not customers’ accounts. He said the accounting moves cited by prosecutors had been part of the exchange platform’s normal operations.
The amount at the center of the case represents a fraction of the money involved when Mt. Gox, once the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, filed for bankruptcy in February 2014. At the time, Mr. Karpelès said 750,000 bitcoins held by customers as well as 100,000 of Mt. Gox’s own bitcoins had been stolen by hackers. Together, the lost virtual currency was then valued at some $500 million, although the exchange later said it had discovered 200,000 of the missing bitcoins.
The court-appointed trustee in charge of the exchange’s liquidation, Nobuaki Kobayashi, has been investigating the whereabouts of the lost currency, but he has yet to release any conclusions. A representative of Mr. Kobayashi said he wasn’t available to comment.
The exchange has a list of about 127,000 creditors. Many have said they don’t expect to get their money back and postings related to the exchange’s collapse on online bitcoin forums have died down.
“I moved on,” said Hiroki Minematsu, an owner of technology companies in Nagasaki who deposited 70 bitcoins at Mt. Gox. “It would be nice if they find out what had exactly happened to serve my curiosity, but I threw away my hope for my investment a long time ago.”
Mt. Gox, one of the first bitcoin trading platforms, was among several virtual-currency exchanges that collapsed against a backdrop of security or governance problems.
When Mt. Gox filed for bankruptcy, the price of bitcoin, which was then slightly under $600, sustained a brief hit as investors questioned whether the virtual currency could survive.
However, other exchanges have since sprung up and regulations have begun to define more clearly how bitcoin should be handled. Japanese rules that went into effect April 1established bitcoin as a legitimate payment method and required exchanges to segregate customer accounts and monitor potential criminal activity.
Growing interest from Japanese investors reassured by the new regulations—as well as users in China who jumped on the currency as a way to transfer money—has helped bitcoin surge to around $2,300.
Japanese trials tend to proceed in fits and starts, and experts said it would likely take at least a year for the Tokyo District Court to reach a verdict on the charges against Mr. Karpelès.
Write to Takashi Mochizuki at takashi.mochizuki@wsj.com
Appeared in the July 13, 2017, print edition as 'As Trial Starts, Bitcoin Investors Still Waiting.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/former-chief-of-collapsed-bitcoin-exchange-mt-gox-stands-trial-in-tokyo-1499862309
John |
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