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You are running an antique accessory business. You have a van to carry all the valuable stuff you borrow from people to sell in their name. Your van starts to l

You are running an antique accessory business. You have a van to carry all the valuable stuff you borrow from people to sell in their name. Your van starts to leak oil. You figure out how to fix it yourself. Check engine light of the van is still blinking though, but you happened to put a post-it in your dashboard blocking it. By the way, you also never have it serviced. You keep driving for years while the situation in your engine gets worse and worse. Finally, you end up causing an accident. You didn't have anything to protect your cargo even from a bumpy ride, let alone a crash. You lost too many of your antiques because you were carrying them around with you everywhere. You also don't have resources or any insurance to cover the expenses. You think it may be a good idea to hide this fact from your customers because the antique business in your town is still new and you don't want them to lose trust for the whole sector. You first tell your customers they can't sell or take back their stuff. Then you take off your signboard. Then you sell your van. You eventually close down your shop as well. Meanwhile, you keep telling them there is something wrong with how the van is designed, so you may have lost some valuables here and there. You end up filing for bankruptcy. Would this be just negligence?

davedx 13y ago
Sounds like the definition of gross negligence to me.
fab13n 13y ago
Indeed. However, the whole point of crypto-currencies is decentralization: you give up both (some of) the constraints and (most of) the protection that goes with government-backed currencies. Choosing who you trust then becomes your own problem, your fully personal responsibility. So yes, MtGox is at least criminally negligent, and maybe simply criminal. But the (largely libertarian) crowds who chose to trust them are fully responsible for their own poor assessment of MtGox' trustworthiness. That's the flip-side of choosing deregulation.
aragot 13y ago
Sounds like customers should have judged by themselves it wasnt a safe van to put your valuable antiques in.
- enscr 13y ago
  Hindsight is 20/20
  - aragot 13y ago
    Foresight too, e.g. I didn't do it. Because hosting BitCoins in an online wallet looks like a scam from a hundred miles. In a foreign country. On a website. Hosting my emails in Gmail doesn't look safe either, to be honest, but at least it's not plain money and Google still needs to keep their reputation. For now.
- wpietri 13y ago
  In addition to this being the usual hindsight horseshit, it also displays startling ignorance of how markets work. If every time I want to buy a pack of gum I have to investigate every entity in the production and distribution chain, then I will never buy gum because the transaction cost is well above the value. This is why businesses, who have substantial lobbying power, are generally ok with government regulation and often impose substantial self-regulation. For example, take food. Restaurants here in San Francisco are all obliged to display their latest health department score. Almost everybody loves the system. Consumers love it because it tells them how safe their food is. Well-run restaurants love it because they can prove that their place is well run. Badly-run restaurants probably hate it, but that's fine; they're not good marketplace participants in the first place. So your notion that you should go and check the oil level on every vehicle that ever contains any of your stuff is ridiculous. It's a handy way for you to feel smug blaming people who are suffering, not a reasonable suggestion for marketplace design.
  - aragot 13y ago
    I'm not talking about checking every screw of the truck. I'm saying that an unmaintained truck with lots of valuables in it is suspicious, and you should tust it for what it is. I'll get negative poins again just because people don't like to be told what they should have known: Bitcoins smell like a Ponzi scheme and, until they have proven themselves opposite, you should remain very wary of the money you put in. Do you invest in penny stocks? Nope. Why? Because they smell bad, even if their promoters make it look like they've quadrupled their value in just 4 months! An online safe with millions of valuables? Shouldn't you wait for the proof it's good? Or do you assume it's a good safe as is? Is it really wise to assume something is safe? Oh I see negative HN points will rain on me. Not wise from me to put people in front of their responsibilities. I'm sorry for people who lost money. Some of them will have a hard life. Losing money is never a good experience, I myself lost a quarter of my savings when the Australian dollar dropped. But do I blame the Australian gov? The EU gov? The regulators? Nope. It's my job to know when the AUD drops. Even if i can't inspect all parts of the economy. As a revenge, give me negative points.

davedx 13y ago

Sounds like the definition of gross negligence to me.

fab13n 13y ago

Indeed. However, the whole point of crypto-currencies is decentralization: you give up both (some of) the constraints and (most of) the protection that goes with government-backed currencies. Choosing who you trust then becomes your own problem, your fully personal responsibility. So yes, MtGox is at least criminally negligent, and maybe simply criminal. But the (largely libertarian) crowds who chose to trust them are fully responsible for their own poor assessment of MtGox' trustworthiness. That's the flip-side of choosing deregulation.

aragot 13y ago

Sounds like customers should have judged by themselves it wasnt a safe van to put your valuable antiques in.

enscr 13y ago
Hindsight is 20/20
- aragot 13y ago
  Foresight too, e.g. I didn't do it. Because hosting BitCoins in an online wallet looks like a scam from a hundred miles. In a foreign country. On a website. Hosting my emails in Gmail doesn't look safe either, to be honest, but at least it's not plain money and Google still needs to keep their reputation. For now.
wpietri 13y ago
In addition to this being the usual hindsight horseshit, it also displays startling ignorance of how markets work. If every time I want to buy a pack of gum I have to investigate every entity in the production and distribution chain, then I will never buy gum because the transaction cost is well above the value. This is why businesses, who have substantial lobbying power, are generally ok with government regulation and often impose substantial self-regulation. For example, take food. Restaurants here in San Francisco are all obliged to display their latest health department score. Almost everybody loves the system. Consumers love it because it tells them how safe their food is. Well-run restaurants love it because they can prove that their place is well run. Badly-run restaurants probably hate it, but that's fine; they're not good marketplace participants in the first place. So your notion that you should go and check the oil level on every vehicle that ever contains any of your stuff is ridiculous. It's a handy way for you to feel smug blaming people who are suffering, not a reasonable suggestion for marketplace design.
- aragot 13y ago
  I'm not talking about checking every screw of the truck. I'm saying that an unmaintained truck with lots of valuables in it is suspicious, and you should tust it for what it is. I'll get negative poins again just because people don't like to be told what they should have known: Bitcoins smell like a Ponzi scheme and, until they have proven themselves opposite, you should remain very wary of the money you put in. Do you invest in penny stocks? Nope. Why? Because they smell bad, even if their promoters make it look like they've quadrupled their value in just 4 months! An online safe with millions of valuables? Shouldn't you wait for the proof it's good? Or do you assume it's a good safe as is? Is it really wise to assume something is safe? Oh I see negative HN points will rain on me. Not wise from me to put people in front of their responsibilities. I'm sorry for people who lost money. Some of them will have a hard life. Losing money is never a good experience, I myself lost a quarter of my savings when the Australian dollar dropped. But do I blame the Australian gov? The EU gov? The regulators? Nope. It's my job to know when the AUD drops. Even if i can't inspect all parts of the economy. As a revenge, give me negative points.