In the months following the collapse of Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, the bitcoin community is still struggling to understand what brought the oldest and once-largest exchange to its knees.
How did it lose so much money? Where did it go?
They’re answers we’re very much looking for, but a new report published at The Willy Report raises even more questions, particularly surround the exchange and its relationship to the price of bitcoin.
The report spotlights two trading bots that were spotted by community members last year, given the names “Willy” and “Markus”.
Both bots would purchase somewhere between 10 – 20 bitcoins every 5 to 10 minutes non-stop for a least one month. In total, the report indicates that somewhere in the neighborhood of 570,000 bitcoins were purchased, valued at hundreds of millions of dollars.
These actions took place in November, when the bitcoin price soared past $1,200 — leading the report’s writer to draw a connection between Markus and Willy to Mt. Gox.
But how do trading bots point that finger at Mt. Gox and not, perhaps, a rich investor looking to get into the bitcoin space? Further, why would Mt. Gox inflate the price artificially?
The Markus bot never had to pay any fees on his trades, curiously enough, and continued trading right through the numerous amount of times Mt. Gox experienced downtime. And as pointed out by our friends at CryptoCoins News, both trading bots had no country code attached to their accounts.
But there’s real flavor in this next tidbit of information:
In a released version of trading logs, the user identification belonging to Markus was changed to ‘634’. Going back to a leaked user account list from 2011, user ID 634 was attached to the handle “MagicalTux” — which is of course the alias the belongs to Gox CEO Mark Karpeles.
Assuming the information provided can be traced back to Mt. Gox, what we could be looking at here is the company’s last-ditch effort to save themselves upon realizing their reserves had been depleted.
The report’s author closes:
“Barring similar shenanigans at other exchanges (looking at you China) I think this means we may be at a ‘fair’ valuation now, and that this knowledge will not hurt the price all that much. That said, despite everyone’s expectations, it seems unlikely that there will be another huge ‘bubble’, seeing as they were never ‘real’ in the first place.”
We implore you to read the The Willy Report article here.
What do you think? Damning evidence or pure speculation?
Gsz 
Google it 
jeffanthony 
Marcus 
Jeremy Richards 
TrixTrax 
Yes
Everything will crash eventually. Infinite time and the fact that everything change will sooner or later make it happen. It might take a million years but…
Bitcoin is merely the prototype of the blockchain technology – think of it as Internet back in the day when colored backgroud and hyperlinked text was plenty. Check out Darkcoin, Etherium, or Coinprism.
We have the likes of Roger Ver going out and appearing on TV trying to convince people that they should use Bitcoin, it’s a way to escape the banks he says, it’s soo much better he says….
and then this. I mean really??
Real people have lost real money and BTC tied up in mtgox, and now we find out that the exchange rate itself was a pure manipulation.
How is this better than the banks? How is this a fair system? It is ridiculous.
What is ridiculous? The facts you don´t know?
I see that you commented on an article posted on the internet. That leads me to believe you have internet access.
Have you ever researched the answer to your questions yourself, on the internet?
You should, then you would understand how this is better than banks and why “ridiculous” only applies to banks.
In fact, I’ll give you a head start, because, in traded financial instruments, on every market in the world, there is massive manipulation, its the norm not the exception.
Educate yourself on the current system and it’s flaws, unfairness and rigged state first, then educate yourself as to what a decentralized math based cyrptocurrency protocol offers as an alternative/replacement.
Homework:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-02-06/rbs-busted-libor-manipulation-its-just-amazing-how-libor-fixing-can-make-you-much-mo
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/libor-manipulation-leads-questions-regarding-gold-manipulation
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-16/precious-metals-manipulation-worse-libor-german-regulator-says
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-09-25/kick-backs-we-can-discuss-lunch-libor-manipulation-full-frontal
http://www.zerohedge.com/taxonomy/term/192
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/barclays-found-engage-massive-libor-manipulation-gets-wrist-slapped-coopted-regulators
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-15/mapping-lieborgate-presenting-octopus-libor-rigging-scandal
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-11-06/move-over-fx-and-libor-wholesale-market-manipulation-and-banging-close-comes-crude-a
Now, once you have done your homework and you are less ignorant, come back here and talk to me about “fairness” and what is “ridiculous”.
The question is… who pumped prices on other exchanges??
seriously, people need to stop making ignorant comments.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/arbitrage.asp
Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
And for extra credit, http://www.investopedia.com/articles/trading/04/111004.asp
The point is that Gox had not a majority of volume (it had less than 30%), so the rise on other exchanges cannot be based on rise only on Gox