> The thing that sucks is, it was impossible to tell any of this was going on. It was impossible to know the details of this exact bug - but it was possible to

> The thing that sucks is, it was impossible to tell any of this was going on. It was impossible to know the details of this exact bug - but it was possible to know that something was wrong at MtGox before the takedown. Of the two-dozen or so people I know who held Bitcoin at the time only one lost funds on MtGox - the rest had long left Gox or were never comfortable using it. The main administrative issues were withdrawal delays[0], MtGox not being able to prove their reserves satisfactorily[1] and having accounts seized[2]. ID verification was slow, and support was almost non-existent. If you read the forums in the ~12-18 months before MtGox went down there was a lot of conversation about what was wrong at MtGox. The tech issues were horrible code[3] (read the description of that repo and tell me if you would trust it with bitcoin), previous hacks[4], many more hack claims and the internal trading bot being traced by outside researchers. I don't blame anybody for not seeing these issues - there was a lot of FUD at the time and many who saw attacks on MtGox as attacks on Bitcoin. Nobody really wrote a good and concise "this is why you shouldn't use MtGox" post anywhere. Hearing after it was taken down that someone knew it was bad is useless and only self-serving. I don't think it is possible for a third party to hold your bitcoins for you in a secure way that is also convenient. You can pick any bitcoin company or exchange and claim its insecure and you'll eventually be right for many users. One of the only ways to avoid the problems and store your bitcoins safely but also still be able to use them is with a hardware wallet. There has been a lot of improvement since MtGox with "vault" products, better multisig implementations, better auth, and offline signing etc. but still some way to go. [0] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179586.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=179586.0 [1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=209362.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=209362.0 [2] https://techcrunch.com/2013/08/23/feds-seize-another-2-1-million-from-mt-gox-adding-up-to-5-million/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/08/23/feds-seize-another-2-1-mil... [3] https://github.com/MagicalTux/btclib https://github.com/MagicalTux/btclib [4] http://www.dailytech.com/Inside+the+MegaHack+of+Bitcoin+the+Full+Story/article21942.htm http://www.dailytech.com/Inside+the+MegaHack+of+Bitcoin+the+...