Mt. Gox May Have Used Customer Funds for Operating Costs, Luxuries
In an exclusive report published Saturday on Reuters, the question as to how Mt. Gox handled customer money before their catastrophic downfall in February 2014. Interviews with current and former employees of the company indicated that by 2012 (before the tremendous growth of bitcoin to over $1,000 per unit in late 2013), they became worried that the company might be spending customer funds to cover operational costs which were rising with bitcoin's increased popularity. The report also indicates that Mt. Gox spent customer money on renting office space in the same tower that houses Google....
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I haven't written about Celery in a while (July, in fact, a story you can read here), but something they are doing is really awesome and I wish more services operating in the digital currency sector would replicate it. They're calling it the 'transparency page', and for a good reason. They're revealing how much in customer funds are available, total quantities, and a ton more. Pretty neat, don't you think? Here's the sort of statistics you can expect to see: Total customer funds. Total customer bitcoins. Total customer dogecoins. Total customer litecoins. Average order time. Average....
Since bitcoin's epic increase in value over the past two years, there's been quite a few individuals who've fallen into a lot of money. Sadly, me not included. Take, for example, the Norwegian man who made a $26 investment by purchasing 5,000 bitcoins in 2009. He received the shock of a lifetime last year when he discovered his investment was worth $850,000. He's not alone. Others around the world have become millionaires, even billionaires in such a short span of time. And while they have the option of cashing out into fiat, some have elected to keep their wealth in bitcoin. And while....
Hedge funds are offering to purchase claims from creditors who lost their Bitcoins when Mt. Gox went bankrupt in 2014. As the Financial Times reports, four hedge funds have said they are willing to purchase customer claims for 15 percent of the total amount in Japanese yen. Mt. Gox customers who lost coins face regaining no more than 25 percent of their investments. However, their claim costs were calculated when Bitcoin was trading at around $430, meaning that even a partial refund could now be lucrative. “The peculiarities of the situation — in which creditors may not be paid out for at....
New York-based bitcoin exchange Coinsetter has instituted a new $65-per-month account fee, a move it says is aimed at offsetting its compliance costs. In an email addressed to users and circulated on social media, Coinsetter told users that it was instituting the fee in a bid to "compensate for the increasing costs of holding bitcoin accounts in a US-based setting". The new fee is scheduled to go into effect on 1st December. When reached for comment, the exchange confirmed the new fee and that proceeds would be used to defray compliance costs. "The cost of maintaining smaller accounts is....
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