wow, volume finally had a reason to come in

price has tanked $10, goxlag at 1.5 minutes

blood red in the streets!

Yes, if you realize gains (ie sell for a profit) you are liable for capital gains taxes.

yeah they can't find it out, but still some rick, even though very very very little, I heard that they have right to ban any account and seize all founds for themselves without need to explain anything to anyone.

A lot of dollars on MtGox will be converted to BTC and then withdrawn; hence the price will be well supported despite this impairment in liquidity.

This doesn't affect wires to/from the US.

Dwolla shutting down sucks in the short term for adoption but I see it as one more example why bitcoin is superior to USD. The government can block you from using your USD in the name of "homeland security" at the drop of a hat.

The glass piggy bank is a pretty good explanation. What's important to note is that addresses don't contain a balance per se, rather they have incoming transactions associated with them. If address A creates a transaction sending 1 BTC to address B, once that transactions is included in the blockchain then whoever has the private key to B can create a transaction sending 1 BTC to one or more addresses. Bitcoin nodes will only accept transactions into the blockchain if the incoming transaction used exists in the blockchain and the outgoing transaction is properly signed with the corresponding private key.

The unspent incoming transactions belonging to a certain address are in the blockchain, so there's no need to store them. To "own" them all you need is the private key belonging to their public addresses.

I still don't get it lol. if I save my key on the flash disk and pul it out of my pc, how does transaction goes when my wallet key is not on the pc? or there's copy of it somewhere?

So wtf, has DHS or Maryland released any info on this?

Why are they going after Gox?

[edit]

It seems nothing has been confirmed other than the existence of a seizure order for the funds in Gox's Dwolla account.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2...change-mt-gox/

You posted some really basic questions which would be all answered if you put 5-10mins of research on bitcoin.it or just google...

So, can we expect a massive plunge in price?

Should I sell and buy back in?

There's a copy everywhere. Everyone who has the client installed has a copy of every transaction in the history of bitcoin. That's sort of the point. All your wallet has that's unique is the private key which lets you control that address (wallet)

As someone who played internet poker pre UIGEA it's funny watching the people on bitcointalk complain about the US government like this is something new.

I'm surprised the price hasn't dropped more. Homeland Security going after Mtgox seems somewhat ominous at first glance.

Going after the US-based company owned by Mt.Gox. The company is actually incorporated in Delaware. I'd be surprised if this didn't blow over within a week.

At this point, no users should be out any money. Mt.Gox will almost certainly eat any losses even if the Dwolla account funds are permanently seized.

Going after Japanese-held funds for the DHS/DOJ would be a bombshell. It's a strange spot for Mt.Gox traders who can buy and withdraw BTC right now if they think USD will be tied up. But the price falling from the current reaction can reduce perceived value of BTC as well.

Mt.Gox post-

Statement Regarding Dwolla:

Like many who have contacted us, MtGox has read on the Internet that the United States Department of Homeland Security had a court order and/or warrant issued from the United States District Court in Maryland which it served upon the Dwolla mobile payment service with respect to accounts used for trading with MtGox. We take this information seriously. However, as of this time we have not been provided with a copy of the court order and/or warrant, and do not know its scope and/or the reasons for its issuance. MtGox is investigating and will provide further reports when additional information becomes known.

I think the price will continue to drop over the coming weeks.

Got a range in mind? You think it'll drop from people pulling USD from Mt. Gox?

I don't really know. I sold all my coin a week or so ago from prices ranging from $135 to $108. If you look at the other crashes the price did trend down for a month or so afterwards and my "advanced analysis" mostly comes from that. If a couple more pieces of bad news hit I think we could see $70. I will start to scale back in at $80ish assuming it goes that low.

Well we'll see. I think the market has matured since then and will prove more resilient. Although, much of the use does not depend much on actual exchange value.

This is the same Maryland outfit that went after Quicktender/UseMyWallet and others around the same time as BF. Those guys are ridiculous.

They got scooped by SDNY on BF indictments for the big boys (stars/FTP/ub). Unlike the SDNY* they don't care about the users/players involved, instead they just want to make headlines and cause headaches.

*i was told SDNY cares but...lol

Some of the analysis and logic backing it in this thread is terrible. People should be buying BTC if they have funds on gox so they can then transfer it to another exchange rather than having their USD potentially frozen.

This is good news for BTC in the long run and a good opportunity to pick up some at a discounted price since people are panic selling. It was unhealthy for mt gox to have such a high percentage of the overall trade volume and if you are in the US you really shouldn't have been using it to begin with.

If you are interested in reducing your BTC risk PM me.

Is it the one that held that presser where they held up the giant check?

Yes...lol. I blogged about them a ton and wrote some stuff on S:P about them. They also set up this big sting operation to get QT and then the secret service out of Ft Myers ended up seizing a bunch of the QT transfers in transit (again, semi scooped). There is no communication or organizing efforts between all of these offices and departments.

I can just picture a bunch of those guys in a meeting in MD office trying to figure out who they can go after next and I guess they thought with their payment processing "expertise" they could foil a dangerous plot!

The crazy thing is that transactions are so much more complex than even the simple explanation. The simplest explanation I have is each transaction takes inputs. To be able to spend money, you must be able to solve a problem. In the vast majority of cases, this problem is solved by using a decoder ring that only you control in your wallet. No one else in the world can solve it, but everyone can verify that you did solve it correctly.

When you spend the coins, you are basically changing the problem. You solve the problems that you can solve, and add a new problem to it. Usually this problem is something that you know only one person can solve.

But these simple transactions are only the tip of the iceberg. You can make a transaction that requires such a simple answer, ANYONE could spend it. Someone did this once, where the answer was a known value, but you just had to look and see that transaction was out there.

The easiest way to look at a wallet is more of a claim receipt than an actual wallet.