June 21, 2011 at 14:35The guy who bought 259684 Bitcoin for $ 2613
- Transfer
As you know, on Sunday the MtGox exchange crashed in peer-to-peer cryptocurrency quotes Bitcoin. Within minutes, the price fell from $ 17 to $ 0.01 for 1 BTC. An analysis of the events showed that someone was actively merging “coins” (possibly stolen ). At the same time, there were those who were able to take advantage of the situation and buy currency at an extremely low price.
Yesterday, one of them himself appeared on the bitcoin.org forum with a detailedrepentance explanation. “My name is Kevin and I'm the guy who bought 259,684 BTC yesterday for less than $ 3,000. I really didn’t want to tell anyone, but I can’t do it anymore. This is how events happened on my part. ”
Kevin explains how the work of the MtGox currency exchange is organized (it differs little from the same wm.exchange.ru): the same queues of applications for buying and selling. If a large bid for a sale appears, then it turns into counter-orders for the entire queue, which is worth the purchase, starting from the highest price and further on the list until all bids are paid off.
“Like many of you, I watched yesterday how a gigantic bid for the sale of Bitcoin came about,” says Kevin. - MtGox executes applications not very quickly, so we all saw gradually eating up the purchase line. It started with a price of about $ 17.50, and in a few minutes all applications up to $ 10 were satisfied. At this point, I realized that this is not some kind of large seller, ready to put up with some losses from the sale at an understated rate. It was clearly someone trying to crash the market by selling a large packet of outstanding Bitcoin at the same time.
My MtGox account had about $ 3,000 from previous transactions. I looked at the market and realized that there were a lot of orders in the amount of $ 0.01 in line, which would probably eat up the entire amount in the seller’s application. I calculated and decided that if I put the application for $ 0.0101 ahead of this whole queue, I can buy a large amount of Bitcoins from this seller until his application is exhausted. The only problem was that MtGox worked more slowly than usual and everyone said that new applications for the exchange are no longer accepted. I tried several times, and by chance I still managed to place a purchase order for $ 0.0101.
For some time, the site completely stopped responding, because many tried to refresh the page in order to observe further events. When it worked again, I saw on my account:
06/19/11 17:51 Bought BTC 259684.77 for 0.0101
I just bought more than 250,000 BTC for $ 2613. At the market price, which was before the market collapse, it was about $ 5 million. When I was able to calm my breath, I tried to figure out what to do next. I was not sure of the reality of what was happening. Over the past few days, there have been many complaints about the MtGox security system. MtGox user lists, email addresses, and encrypted passwords were sold everywhere. If there was some kind of cracker, then he could penetrate my account and make another crazy deal.
I tried to withdraw BTC to my wallet, but stumbled into the maximum cash out limit on the exchange ($ 1000 at current market value). So the first time it was possible to remove only 643.27 BTC, that was the course at that time. I could repeat this again and again, but decided not to make suspicious gestures.
Then I was struck by the thought that there was only a tiny amount of purchase orders left for the market for only 100 BTC, so with so many coins I could once again bring down the market and lower it to $ 0.001, and then cash out the entire amount at a time. But I also decided not to do this, because I realized that the person who had brought down the market before me did this for the same reason, so I will look very ugly.
Then I sent a private message via IRC to MagicalTux (Mark Karpeles, founder of MtGox) explaining that I am the one who put up a giant purchase request, but not the one who sold bitcoins. ”
However, Mark after some time published a message on the exchange’s main page that someone’s account with a lot of BTC was hacked, after which this user brought down the market and bought BTC at a low price, so the limit of $ 1000 per day for withdrawal is active for this account and the hacker will not be able to withdraw more than $ 1000.
Of course, this message was false. “Everyone saw the market move and that there was only one gigantic bid for sale, and I was a buyer, but not a hacker. Others in the IRC chat discussed how much they could buy. Did Mark really think that I was a hacker? I asked him this question several times, but he never answered. But after all, I am already an identified user on the exchange, I sent Mark my identification card and documents indicating the place of residence.
The second mistake in his statement is the inability to withdraw more than $ 1000, because I have already withdrawn 643 BTC, which cost more than $ 10 thousand. The withdrawal limit obviously does not work correctly, which I already told him about, ”Kevin said. In fact, this limit provokes an attacker to bring down the market.
Apparently, the MtGox exchange announced such a vision of events in order to justify its intention to cancel the latest transactions. In fact, the buyer of BTC at an extremely low price was not a hacker at all, but ordinary ordinary users who would suffer from the cancellation of transactions.
Cancellation of recent transactions is contrary to the rules of the MtGox exchange, has not been registered anywhere and has never been discussed, so Kevin strongly opposes this. He has already sent notarized copies of his documents to the exchange and hopes that the situation will be resolved honestly and he will nevertheless get the opportunity to cash out his bitcoins.
Yesterday, one of them himself appeared on the bitcoin.org forum with a detailed
Kevin explains how the work of the MtGox currency exchange is organized (it differs little from the same wm.exchange.ru): the same queues of applications for buying and selling. If a large bid for a sale appears, then it turns into counter-orders for the entire queue, which is worth the purchase, starting from the highest price and further on the list until all bids are paid off.
“Like many of you, I watched yesterday how a gigantic bid for the sale of Bitcoin came about,” says Kevin. - MtGox executes applications not very quickly, so we all saw gradually eating up the purchase line. It started with a price of about $ 17.50, and in a few minutes all applications up to $ 10 were satisfied. At this point, I realized that this is not some kind of large seller, ready to put up with some losses from the sale at an understated rate. It was clearly someone trying to crash the market by selling a large packet of outstanding Bitcoin at the same time.
My MtGox account had about $ 3,000 from previous transactions. I looked at the market and realized that there were a lot of orders in the amount of $ 0.01 in line, which would probably eat up the entire amount in the seller’s application. I calculated and decided that if I put the application for $ 0.0101 ahead of this whole queue, I can buy a large amount of Bitcoins from this seller until his application is exhausted. The only problem was that MtGox worked more slowly than usual and everyone said that new applications for the exchange are no longer accepted. I tried several times, and by chance I still managed to place a purchase order for $ 0.0101.
For some time, the site completely stopped responding, because many tried to refresh the page in order to observe further events. When it worked again, I saw on my account:
06/19/11 17:51 Bought BTC 259684.77 for 0.0101
I just bought more than 250,000 BTC for $ 2613. At the market price, which was before the market collapse, it was about $ 5 million. When I was able to calm my breath, I tried to figure out what to do next. I was not sure of the reality of what was happening. Over the past few days, there have been many complaints about the MtGox security system. MtGox user lists, email addresses, and encrypted passwords were sold everywhere. If there was some kind of cracker, then he could penetrate my account and make another crazy deal.
I tried to withdraw BTC to my wallet, but stumbled into the maximum cash out limit on the exchange ($ 1000 at current market value). So the first time it was possible to remove only 643.27 BTC, that was the course at that time. I could repeat this again and again, but decided not to make suspicious gestures.
Then I was struck by the thought that there was only a tiny amount of purchase orders left for the market for only 100 BTC, so with so many coins I could once again bring down the market and lower it to $ 0.001, and then cash out the entire amount at a time. But I also decided not to do this, because I realized that the person who had brought down the market before me did this for the same reason, so I will look very ugly.
Then I sent a private message via IRC to MagicalTux (Mark Karpeles, founder of MtGox) explaining that I am the one who put up a giant purchase request, but not the one who sold bitcoins. ”
However, Mark after some time published a message on the exchange’s main page that someone’s account with a lot of BTC was hacked, after which this user brought down the market and bought BTC at a low price, so the limit of $ 1000 per day for withdrawal is active for this account and the hacker will not be able to withdraw more than $ 1000.
Of course, this message was false. “Everyone saw the market move and that there was only one gigantic bid for sale, and I was a buyer, but not a hacker. Others in the IRC chat discussed how much they could buy. Did Mark really think that I was a hacker? I asked him this question several times, but he never answered. But after all, I am already an identified user on the exchange, I sent Mark my identification card and documents indicating the place of residence.
The second mistake in his statement is the inability to withdraw more than $ 1000, because I have already withdrawn 643 BTC, which cost more than $ 10 thousand. The withdrawal limit obviously does not work correctly, which I already told him about, ”Kevin said. In fact, this limit provokes an attacker to bring down the market.
Apparently, the MtGox exchange announced such a vision of events in order to justify its intention to cancel the latest transactions. In fact, the buyer of BTC at an extremely low price was not a hacker at all, but ordinary ordinary users who would suffer from the cancellation of transactions.
Cancellation of recent transactions is contrary to the rules of the MtGox exchange, has not been registered anywhere and has never been discussed, so Kevin strongly opposes this. He has already sent notarized copies of his documents to the exchange and hopes that the situation will be resolved honestly and he will nevertheless get the opportunity to cash out his bitcoins.