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posted by janrinok on Monday March 03 2014, @04:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the tell-me-it-aint-so dept.

unitron writes:

"Via Twitter, Cmdr Taco passes this along

'A crazy theory, MtGox had its btc seized by us govt during Silk Road investigation, but gag order prevents disclosure'

The actual article, by Chris Pacia (who links to and credits PuffyHerb on Reddit for most of the thinking behind it), is here:

http://chrispacia.wordpress.com/2014/02/28/this-is -what-most-likely-happened-to-mtgox/"

[Ed's Note: The paragraph above is pretty much how it was received. I leave it up to the readers to draw their own conclusions on the plausibility or otherwise of this report and the linked article. It is, by its very nature, speculative but worthy of further discussion nonetheless.]

 
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  • (Score: 1) by Non Sequor on Tuesday March 04 2014, @11:04AM

    by Non Sequor (1005) on Tuesday March 04 2014, @11:04AM (#10552) Journal

    See this post:
    http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=410&cid=103 80 [soylentnews.org]

    Long story short, the entity that's missing from your picture of things is a market maker: someone who has enough dollars, bitcoins, and patience to take both ends of any incoming trade request. The market maker absorbs the risk of price moves between the time a buyer is found for a seller or vice versa, but there are methods to hedge these risks (although those methods may be hamstrung for a developing market like bitcoin).

    It's sounded to me like MtGox never had deep enough pockets themselves or from other sources to provide their exchange with an adequate market maker. Trying to make an exchange work without one would be a futile exercise, as would trying to play at being a market maker without the resources and risk controls needed to make it work.

    --
    Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.