Updated: New Details of Mt.Gox Case Revealed by Amateur Detectives
If we reject to use the term “speculation” in the case of Mt.Gox, then the details scraped up by hackers and hobby detectives definitely can be called so. The officially approved facts state that Mt.Gox collapsed leaving not serviced customers with lost funds. The assumptions, estimations and hypotheses provide more information that any official spokesperson.
On the 28th of February the society was shaken with the idea of a plain loss of private keys by Mark Karpeles, the CEO and owner of the service. If the presumption proves to be true, then many BTC are floating in the online environment without any opportunity of access.
Further work of hackers and IT specialists allowed determining numerous crucial mistakes that might have led to eavesdropping and unauthorized access. The person behind the nickname Nilzor listed all faults and went on to wonder about the qualification of the developers.
The recently obtained results might become witness of an insider trade that influenced the market and was the last straw bringing Mt.Gox on the slippery path of doom.
HTCFOX and yan_bk Analysis
The hacker behind the identity HTCFOX has completed an excessive analysis that is populated by his friend yan_bk on Reddit. Further conclusions are based on the leaked database of Mt.Gox costumers and their private information.
Tibanne, the Mt.Gox parent company has registered another company in Hong Kong on the 19th May of 2011. The registration number is 1603550. At the same time a new user under the name TIBANNE_LIMITED_HK appears. The signing up was completed by the newly created company that actually has not performed any other activities.
Being noticed on the 27th August of the same year the rather new user has very high privileges and trades without fees. Till the termination of work of the exchanger the ID has traded around 2.8 million BTC and 350 million USD. First trading attempts were determined and are summed up in a document accessible on the web.
Starting with March of 2013 the nickname was simplified till THK. Exactly from the moment Bitcoin experienced a rise in prices the user started to sell the coins for all possible fiat currencies, earning a very impressive sum.
The analysis of the chain brings the observers closer to the possibility of insider trade and losses of funds both in virtual and fiat currencies.
Witchspace Analysis
Just 16 hours ago the user under the name Witchspace has populated a graphical analysis of the amount of trade on Mt.Gox made from different countries. The presence of Tibanne_Limited_HK or THK was also determined by him or her. The interactive map with very comfortable navigation shows similar data.
In addition the presented visualization proves that the amount of unique users is much lower than expected or stated by the service. The initial number equals to 89518, acquired from the trade logs of the period from November of 2012 till December 2013. The amount of users registered might be close to the celebrated million, but the existing activity is humble in comparison with official statistics.
Speaking in particular about the work of Witchspace, it is necessary to mention that it would be reasonable to continue the work and possible determine users similar to THK.
Update: Ugly Cramps of Mt.Gox
The meticulous work of amateur detectives, but professional hackers seems to bring its fruits very fast and fatal for the Mt.Gox. Any attempt of the service to get out of the grave meets a handful of sand prohibiting getting up.
The cryptocurrency investigations performed by both Witchspace and HTCFOX seem to pioneer the field bringing impressive results. The data retrieved and visualized by Witchspace does not only approve the conclusions of his colleague on the presence of suspicious internal manipulations, but also allow to notice other peculiar trends.
The 2 800 000 Bitcoin traded by TIBANNE_LIMITED_HK founded by the parent company of Mt.Gox are sophisticated proof of internal speculations harming common users unaware of the process. At the same time the map with analyzed statistics points out that Russia and Canada mostly sold BTC.
Switching to absolute data is clear that only a humble part of registered users was fully engaged in the trading manipulations. With less than 800K users, only about 80K had the real activity.
Cointelegraph refrains from drawing conclusions and is going to follow the private investigations leading to the deeper understanding of the Mt.Gox situation.