6 ms·

I remember people getting angry whenever anyone pointed out that they were trusting a whole lot of their money to the Magic The Gathering Online Exchange.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
yogo 13y ago
Ah, now I get it. It's magic: now you see it, now you don't
Lerc 13y ago
And even now, that is not a valid criticism. There are many successful businesses who have started in fields only tangentially related to their final form. There will undoubtedly be many postmortems on what happened, but card trading will have very little impact on what happened.
- moultano 13y ago
  It's not a criticism, it's a signal.
- efuquen 13y ago
  I think the point is that a card game has nothing to do with a currency exchange and the same sort of skills you would need for one don't translate into another. We're talking about software we want to deal with a lot of people's money, the impact of a trading card game platform making a big mistake vs a currency exchange is much much different. I think the very real criticism is you might be willing to risk having a business that isn't necessarily super organized or secure deal with trading cards but not with your money. The talent and quality I would want to hold each to are on completely different levels, and seeing someone pivot so frivolously from one to the other should really give you pause. A pivot rarely involves completely changing the type of business you're dealing with in the first place, the product might be completely different or the customers you're going after might change, but it usually is on some level related to what you started out doing. Because theoretically you're drawing on some experience or insight into the general sector you start a business in, not choosing something that you think might be cool but are not qualified to run or manage and potentially loose people (investors and consumers) a ton of money.
  - danielweber 13y ago
    It would have been very very hard to suddenly realize you don't have 500,000 MtG cards. Even willful ignorance about inventory would have pointed out the problems pretty soon.
- sseveran 13y ago
  Sure it is. It was unlikely that they had real financial controls. I never would have trusted them with money, but thats just me. Everyone in finance knows if there is no custodian then well, you will not have your money for very long. The only real question is will people who withdrew money be subject to clawback...
- grey-area 13y ago
  Please read this (written by the owner): http://blog.magicaltux.net/2010/06/27/php-can-do-anything-what-about-some-ssh/ http://blog.magicaltux.net/2010/06/27/php-can-do-anything-wh...
  - Lerc 13y ago
    There doesn't seem to be any information about trading cards at that link. If you are making the claim that they lacked the technical foundations to generate a major currency exchange, then I daresay you are correct. That does not necessarily follow from formerly being a trading card business. Is it Magic the Gathering specifically that you object to? If they were in the Hanafuda card business would they have had a better chance in a more technical field.
    - grey-area 13y ago
      If you are making the claim that they lacked the technical foundations to generate a major currency exchange, then I daresay you are correct. Yes. Is it Magic the Gathering specifically that you object to? Clearly not. People are only pointing to the likely incompetence of someone who starts off writing a card exchange (unimportant) and switches to a currency exchange (important and hard), says 'PHP can do anything', and wants to rewrite Bitcoin clients, an SSH server, a DNS server, and mail servers in PHP and then use them in production. That is all. Content is probably still hosted at kalyhost.com accessible via this SSH server written in PHP, probably with multiple vulnerabilities he doesn't know about.
      - gwern 13y ago
        > People are only pointing to the likely incompetence of someone who starts off writing a card exchange (unimportant) and switches to a currency exchange (important and hard), says 'PHP can do anything', Mark Karpeles did not write Mtgox, Jed McCaleb (edonkey2000, Ripple) did. I've been emailing with McCaleb (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mt.Gox#Possible_citogenesis_concerning_whether_MtGox_ever_hosted_an_MtG_trading_site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mt.Gox#Possible_citogenes... ) and so far my best reconstruction of the early history of the mtgox.com domain name is as follows: > In late 2006, programmer Jed McCaleb (eDonkey2000, Overnet, Ripple), thought of building a website for users of the _Magic The Gathering Online_ service to let them trade cards like stocks. In January 2007, he purchased the domain name 'mtgox.com', short for "'Magic The Gathering Online' eXchange"; sometime around late 2007, the service went live for around 3 months before McCaleb moved on to other projects. He reused the domain name in 2009 to advertise his card game _The Far Wilds_. In July 2010, he read about Bitcoin on Slashdot, and decided that the nascent Bitcoin community needed an exchange for trading Bitcoin & regular currencies; a week later, after writing an exchange website, he launched it while reusing the mtgox.com domain name. [etc etc]
- saalweachter 13y ago
  I really, really think this is a Silicon Valley bias. You all have had pivot! pivot! pivot! Nokia used to make tires! drilled into your heads to the point that the very idea of questioning whether a team is up to a challenge has been driven out.
  - swalsh 13y ago
    "questioning whether a team is up to a challenge has been driven out." Of course, I assume you personally are up to ANY challenge, but its other people who need not try... they're the ones not talented enough.
    - saalweachter 13y ago
      By your logic, if I aspire to be a doctor, I should let all men practice medicine upon me. After all, if I am up to the challenge, they surely must be.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

yogo 13y ago

Ah, now I get it. It's magic: now you see it, now you don't

Lerc 13y ago

And even now, that is not a valid criticism. There are many successful businesses who have started in fields only tangentially related to their final form. There will undoubtedly be many postmortems on what happened, but card trading will have very little impact on what happened.

moultano 13y ago
It's not a criticism, it's a signal.
efuquen 13y ago
I think the point is that a card game has nothing to do with a currency exchange and the same sort of skills you would need for one don't translate into another. We're talking about software we want to deal with a lot of people's money, the impact of a trading card game platform making a big mistake vs a currency exchange is much much different. I think the very real criticism is you might be willing to risk having a business that isn't necessarily super organized or secure deal with trading cards but not with your money. The talent and quality I would want to hold each to are on completely different levels, and seeing someone pivot so frivolously from one to the other should really give you pause. A pivot rarely involves completely changing the type of business you're dealing with in the first place, the product might be completely different or the customers you're going after might change, but it usually is on some level related to what you started out doing. Because theoretically you're drawing on some experience or insight into the general sector you start a business in, not choosing something that you think might be cool but are not qualified to run or manage and potentially loose people (investors and consumers) a ton of money.
- danielweber 13y ago
  It would have been very very hard to suddenly realize you don't have 500,000 MtG cards. Even willful ignorance about inventory would have pointed out the problems pretty soon.
sseveran 13y ago
Sure it is. It was unlikely that they had real financial controls. I never would have trusted them with money, but thats just me. Everyone in finance knows if there is no custodian then well, you will not have your money for very long. The only real question is will people who withdrew money be subject to clawback...
grey-area 13y ago
Please read this (written by the owner): http://blog.magicaltux.net/2010/06/27/php-can-do-anything-what-about-some-ssh/ http://blog.magicaltux.net/2010/06/27/php-can-do-anything-wh...
- Lerc 13y ago
  There doesn't seem to be any information about trading cards at that link. If you are making the claim that they lacked the technical foundations to generate a major currency exchange, then I daresay you are correct. That does not necessarily follow from formerly being a trading card business. Is it Magic the Gathering specifically that you object to? If they were in the Hanafuda card business would they have had a better chance in a more technical field.
  - grey-area 13y ago
    If you are making the claim that they lacked the technical foundations to generate a major currency exchange, then I daresay you are correct. Yes. Is it Magic the Gathering specifically that you object to? Clearly not. People are only pointing to the likely incompetence of someone who starts off writing a card exchange (unimportant) and switches to a currency exchange (important and hard), says 'PHP can do anything', and wants to rewrite Bitcoin clients, an SSH server, a DNS server, and mail servers in PHP and then use them in production. That is all. Content is probably still hosted at kalyhost.com accessible via this SSH server written in PHP, probably with multiple vulnerabilities he doesn't know about.
    - gwern 13y ago
      > People are only pointing to the likely incompetence of someone who starts off writing a card exchange (unimportant) and switches to a currency exchange (important and hard), says 'PHP can do anything', Mark Karpeles did not write Mtgox, Jed McCaleb (edonkey2000, Ripple) did. I've been emailing with McCaleb (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mt.Gox#Possible_citogenesis_concerning_whether_MtGox_ever_hosted_an_MtG_trading_site https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mt.Gox#Possible_citogenes... ) and so far my best reconstruction of the early history of the mtgox.com domain name is as follows: > In late 2006, programmer Jed McCaleb (eDonkey2000, Overnet, Ripple), thought of building a website for users of the _Magic The Gathering Online_ service to let them trade cards like stocks. In January 2007, he purchased the domain name 'mtgox.com', short for "'Magic The Gathering Online' eXchange"; sometime around late 2007, the service went live for around 3 months before McCaleb moved on to other projects. He reused the domain name in 2009 to advertise his card game _The Far Wilds_. In July 2010, he read about Bitcoin on Slashdot, and decided that the nascent Bitcoin community needed an exchange for trading Bitcoin & regular currencies; a week later, after writing an exchange website, he launched it while reusing the mtgox.com domain name. [etc etc]
saalweachter 13y ago
I really, really think this is a Silicon Valley bias. You all have had pivot! pivot! pivot! Nokia used to make tires! drilled into your heads to the point that the very idea of questioning whether a team is up to a challenge has been driven out.
- swalsh 13y ago
  "questioning whether a team is up to a challenge has been driven out." Of course, I assume you personally are up to ANY challenge, but its other people who need not try... they're the ones not talented enough.
  - saalweachter 13y ago
    By your logic, if I aspire to be a doctor, I should let all men practice medicine upon me. After all, if I am up to the challenge, they surely must be.