Friday, March 14, 2014

Few clues found in collapse of Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange

Despite online sleuthing and crowdsourcing, it is unlikely that those who suffered losses when bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox was hacked will be able to trace the path of their investments, comments TRUST researcher Emin Gun Sirer of Cornell University.

The problem, Gun Sirer and others say, is two-fold: users of such forums are not always methodical or disciplined in their research on one hand, and on the other, bitcoin's combination of transparency and complexity invites the unwary to draw false conclusions. The collapse of the world's biggest bitcoin exchange highlights the need for enhanced infrastructure in developing digital currency.