Mt. Gox Deletes All Tweets – Ponzi Scheme Anyone?

by Morgan on February 24, 2014

Yesterday amidst the announcement that Mt. Gox would resign from the Bitcoin Foundation Board, Mt. Gox managed to delete all of the tweets on their Twitter account. As you can see below, it’s a blank slate:

It is pretty clear at this point that Mt. Gox was operating as a ponzi scheme and while people thought they were storing their Bitcoin at one of the go-to Bitcoin exchanges, they were actually lining the pockets of the founders. There is a monster thread going on Reddit about Mt. Gox and while we’re all just speculating it looks like there are going to be a lot of very unhappy Bitcoin owners (or people who thought they owned Bitcoin).

While I am glad I didn’t have any Bitcoins at Mt. Gox I know plenty of people who did and feel terrible for them. At the end of the day the silver lining here is that this will most-likely lead to greater Bitcoin exchange regulations but that doesn’t help people who literally lost their investments overnight.

More to come, the unraveling of Mt. Gox has just begun…

{ 11 comments… add one }

Aron - HA.com February 24, 2014, 1:07 pm

Glad mine weren’t at Mt. Gox either.
This whole story has been so shady from day one, that we all knew something big was brewing.
Sadly, this is slamming the price of Bitcoins right now.
My app shows $542 right now. Yikes.

But, I feel MUCH worse for those with their money invested at Mt. Gox. It’s HORRIBLE to know they just took the money and ran. WOW.

Aron

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Jesse February 24, 2014, 1:15 pm

All these “hacks/thefts/breaches” like Silk Road etc are suspicious…. the whole thing could come crumbling down if this continues.. Of course that could have been the plan all along, we may never know.

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Nora.com February 24, 2014, 1:15 pm

Sadly mtgox scams were What drove up btc prices to start . Nothing about it getting slammed . Just taking the scam out

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Mitch February 24, 2014, 1:17 pm

Yeah! Ponzi Scheme. NY Post headline last week on Bitcoin, “Welcome to 21st Century Ponzi Scheme Bitcoin” http://nypost.com/2014/02/15/welcome-to-21st-century-ponzi-scheme-bitcoin

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Bill Kara February 24, 2014, 1:22 pm

A blank twitter account = ponzi scheme?

In any event, I’ll be very surprised if they go under. It would take total and complete incompetence to go under… (which I’m not putting past them)

However with the amount of arbitrage MtGox insiders have access to they can repopulate their accounts at a very fast rate while restricting withdraws.

You have to think they controlled the withdraws on their exchange which was selling BC over 10%-20% higher for a very, very long time.

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Morgan February 24, 2014, 2:13 pm

@Jesse – good point and very true…we really don’t know how much collusion there was here, but chances are there are a lot more people involved than we know given how much money we’re talking about. Always sad to see someone lose their hard-earned money.

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Samit February 24, 2014, 3:46 pm

How many BTC were Mt. Gox holding?

Get out now, while you still have the chance.

Virtual currency isn’t worth the bitspace it’s printed on, without safeguards.

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The Real Deal February 24, 2014, 7:10 pm

@morgan

You say it’s sad to see someone lose their hard earned money yet many of your readers are about to get absolutely clobbered with gtld’s, an even bigger sucker’s game that has already failed numerous times before.

Don’t act surprised when they all crash and burn. Seems obvious to me. I give them one year.

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Nick February 24, 2014, 8:03 pm

I wouldnt trust that coin stuff as far as I could throw it. None of it.

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Acro February 24, 2014, 10:46 pm

1 BTC = 433 USD

Also, MtGox.com is blank.

Looks like they are about to declare bankruptcy.

When I played Monopoly it was just paper money.

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Louise February 25, 2014, 6:28 am

This is shocking. Mt Gox, I read, was the authority on bitcoin.

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