A generous estimate would put accumulating 850,000 BTC in profits through exchange fees at 85,000,000 BTC in volume. That assumes a 1% fee on all trades, which is already unsustainable in the current exchange market. It also assumes 0 operating expenses, but hey we're being generous in this calculation.
To do 85,000,000 in BTC on MtGox would mean averaging over 230,000 BTC of daily trading volume for 365 days. For context, most Bitcoin exchanges these days are doing 20% of that on a record day. So if we're super duper generous in our calculations, we'd assume it would take Karpeles 5 years to accumulate the amount he stole in a legal way. This further assumes two equally incredibly unlikely things:
1. MtGox stays ahead of the competition
2. MtGox maintains a 1% trading fee
Remember that in April of 2013, which is when MtGox had its second huge trading engine crash, there was already significant demand amongst traders to move away from MtGox, which is precisely how MtGox started rapidly losing marketshare.
The TLDR is, Karpeles wouldn't have made nearly as much money by engaging in legal business. He would've found it much more tempting to close MtGox before having to deal with burdensome regulations coming out of America, a trend which started in 2013. And even if he had tried to deal with regulators, MtGox most likely wouldn't have been able to maintain its number 1 position for much longer.
So the fact of the matter is he was looking at spending the next 10-20 years pursuing a business he wasn't prepared to run, or he could've just taken the money and walked away, declaring bankruptcy.
> Simplest explanation is best: Karpeles was incompetent and distracted, didn't trust others, wrote horrible code nowhere near suitable for a bitcoin exchange and when he noticed a year later that he had been robbed attempted to cover it up.
I find it absolutely, positively _unbelievable_ that 850,000 BTC were stolen out of a hot wallet. If it had been due to terrible coding practices, he would've gone to that as his first alibi rather than claiming 850,000 BTC were lost due to"transaction malleability". If the code was the likely culprit, he could and would have proved it.
To do 85,000,000 in BTC on MtGox would mean averaging over 230,000 BTC of daily trading volume for 365 days. For context, most Bitcoin exchanges these days are doing 20% of that on a record day. So if we're super duper generous in our calculations, we'd assume it would take Karpeles 5 years to accumulate the amount he stole in a legal way. This further assumes two equally incredibly unlikely things:
1. MtGox stays ahead of the competition
2. MtGox maintains a 1% trading fee
Remember that in April of 2013, which is when MtGox had its second huge trading engine crash, there was already significant demand amongst traders to move away from MtGox, which is precisely how MtGox started rapidly losing marketshare.
The TLDR is, Karpeles wouldn't have made nearly as much money by engaging in legal business. He would've found it much more tempting to close MtGox before having to deal with burdensome regulations coming out of America, a trend which started in 2013. And even if he had tried to deal with regulators, MtGox most likely wouldn't have been able to maintain its number 1 position for much longer.
So the fact of the matter is he was looking at spending the next 10-20 years pursuing a business he wasn't prepared to run, or he could've just taken the money and walked away, declaring bankruptcy.
> Simplest explanation is best: Karpeles was incompetent and distracted, didn't trust others, wrote horrible code nowhere near suitable for a bitcoin exchange and when he noticed a year later that he had been robbed attempted to cover it up.
I find it absolutely, positively _unbelievable_ that 850,000 BTC were stolen out of a hot wallet. If it had been due to terrible coding practices, he would've gone to that as his first alibi rather than claiming 850,000 BTC were lost due to"transaction malleability". If the code was the likely culprit, he could and would have proved it.