Bitcoin Prices Rise $90 to Reach Post Mt. Gox Crisis High

Coin Desk ^ | 3 March 2014 | Pete Rizzo

[Errant]

The price of bitcoin is up more than 15% today on the CoinDesk Bitcoin Price Index (BPI), having reached a high of $677.58 before settling to $659.50 at press time.

The $659 figure was roughly $90 more than the opening price of $560, and marked the highest CoinDex BPI prices observed since mid-February, when troubled bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox was removed from the average amid escalating concern about its financial state.

Press time lows on both BTC-e and Bitstamp were the highest observed since 23rd February, when Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles abruptly resigned from his board of director position at the Bitcoin Foundation

Indeed, the rise in the price of bitcoin was significant at points today, with most price gains happening within a roughly three-hour flurry of buying activity peaking at 16:00 pm GMT.

Speculation was rampant as to the exact cause of the increases, with message boards suggesting that a single buyer had moved the market. Others attributed the rise to the general feeling of optimism from investors following the demise of troubled Japan-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox and the UK’s decision to ease bitcoin taxes.

Further, the price jump happened in spite of negative news stories such as the ongoing unrest in Ukraine and renowned investor Warren Buffet’s high-profile rebuff of bitcoin.

[Errant]

Other News:

•The Inside Story of Mt. Gox, Bitcoin’s $460 Million Disaster

•Britain preparing to end plans to tax Bitcoin trading - FT

•Iceland’s Auroracoin Passes Litecoin, Becomes Third Largest Altcoin by Market Cap

•Mt. Gox Bankruptcy Support Line Opens for Business

•Mt. Gox Lawsuit Targets Mark Karpeles’ Personal Wealth

[Errant]

Latest Price:
$672.34 [cba]
$647.50 [bte]

Click to be Added / Removed.

[VanDeKoik]

If anyone actually is stupid enough to fall for this, then please buy some Bitcoins.

Ponzi could not have dreamed up a better sucker magnet.

[SECURE AMERICA]

The amount of gullible people in the world is endless...

[sten]

well.. it’s at least 647 times stronger then those slips of paper in your pocket with the magic scribbles

[Errant]

The amount of gullible people in the world is endless...

Yep, but this is suppose to be a thread about Bitcoin.

[VanDeKoik]

Well played.

[mmichaels1970]

It’ll be dead in a week. /sarc

[corkoman]

I love how those who know little about BTC seem the shrillest. If there was ever a metric for the support of BTC its evaluation during the past month is the most relevant.

[Chode]

question: since i know virtually nothing about Bitcoin, do they not all have a unique ID#?

and if so, why can't Mt Gox(of TPTB) simply void the stolen Bitcoin ID#'s and issue new ID#'s to those that were stolen and make whole those that were stolen to the rightful owners?

[PoloSec]

I’ve noticed how when the stock market takes a big hit, Bitcoin gets stronger.

When Bitcoin takes a hit it recovers quickly.

[Vermont Lt]

I made $1400 today.

Not too many folks do that.

Still up a lot for the year.

It may be a scam, but if you are fast, it can be nice. I could lose them ALL tomorrow, I would still be WAY ahead of the game.

[TWhiteBear]

I think a lot of people are making a bundle.
But you have to be fast.
By their posts, a lot of people, whatever their motivation, have no clue about bitcoin.
There has been much more interest and involvement from the big guys than I had expected at this point of bitcoin development.
How do you do capital gains? or do you? No need to answer, but just asking.
TWB

[Vermont Lt]

I put them on sched d with any other stock trades. I guess they could nail me for doing it wrong, if I am, but I treated them as cap gains and paid the taxes.

I got audited a couple of years ago for my business. I don’t need to go through that again.

[Wayne07]

It isn’t 100% clear that the Bitcoins were stolen. They could have been lost, embezzled, or confiscated by a government. There still very few details on what is going on.

[Chode]

OK, but my question still stands... is that doable to make the ones that lost their Bitcoin whole again?

[mmichaels1970]

is that doable to make the ones that lost their Bitcoin whole again?

I don't know the specifics. But it is my understanding that the coins were withdrawn from their so-called "reserves" or "vault". They didn't specifically belong to anybody but Gox who was obligated to have them on hand for withdrawal requests from their users.

I'm guessing they aren't sure which coins were withdrawn legitimately and which weren't.

Efforts are probably being made to track down what happened, but the bankruptcy, to me, means that they aren't planning on making anybody whole.

I'm guessing that they've known about this problem for quite some time. People have been complaining for probably about a year that their withdrawals were taking months to complete. People mention withdrawing in July, hoping to receive their coins by Christmas. That tells me that Gox's reserves have been depleted or were depleting for a much longer time than we are lead to believe and that they were clearing withdrawals once they accumulated enough deposits from other customers.

[Chode]

so the key/ID of each Bitcoin changes as it changes hands?

[TsonicTsunami08]

They do have a unique number ( hash) but lets say I have one Bitcoin and I want to send 0.5 ( half) to you. That transaction will generate a new hash for you. Take a look at this website

https://www.bitaddress.org/bitaddress.org-v2.8.1-SHA1-a6e63f2712851710255a27fa0f22ef7833c2cd07.html

Move your mouse around until it counts down to zero. It will produce a wallet with a public (Bitcoin) address and a private key. The private key controls the Bitcoin. Whoever has it can spend the Bitcoin. Bitcoin does not care who owns it. You have the private key, you can spend it. Some person or person’s got access to the private keys at MT GOX. Weather someone who works there or a hacker it does not matter. You control the private key, the money is yours.

I use bitaddress.org with my hard drive removed and no internet access inside a linux environment. I run it in the RAM ( Random Access Memory) When I reboot the RAM it is wiped and there is nothing for hackers to steel. A lot of bright people are working on making this more secure and we will get there. Right now it takes a little work to make them secure.

[Chode]

thx...