The disappearance of 650,000 bitcoins still a mystery

When he bought MtGox in February 2011, Mark Karpelès was warned by the seller, Jed McCaleb, that 80,000 bitcoins were already missing. The main exchange would search for these missing "tokens" for years without ever finding them. Worse, the amount of missing bitcoins grew and reached the astronomical figure of 850,000 at the time of bankruptcy in 2014 , a figure reduced to 650,000.

Various reports, the "Willy Report" and the work of security specialist "WizSec", highlighted the strange activity of two very active traders on MtGox, two characters nicknamed "Willy" and "Markus". Research suggests that they have been at the center of price manipulation of new currencies. These two traders acquired 600,000 bitcoins between February and November 2013, approximately 650,000 of those bitcoins have stolen according to the exchange. They contributed to the soaring price of the bitcoin which rose from 150 to more than 1,000 dollars at the end of 2013.

According to sources, Markus bought nearly 336,000 bitcoins for $ 76 million in 33 sessions between February 14, 2013 and September 27. Suspiciously, this trader "did not pay any transaction fees, and some of his operations seem to have been duplicated. He has never paid anything to buy his bitcoins and those who sold his bitcoins have never received the money, " the researchers said.

The second ghost operator, called "Willy", used trading automaton. Unlike Markus, he used several accounts, 49 in total, which each bought $ 2.5 million worth of bitcoins, which were never sold. Unsurprisingly, these purchases began on the same day that Markus stopped his operations which was on September 27, 2013. Willy acquired 268,000 bitcoins for $112 million, regardless of price! He bought each time at the market price (no limit orders), so that the price of the bitcoin increased by nearly 20 dollars on the days he was present. When they intervened in the market, these two "individuals" each accounted for nearly 20% of the daily volume of MtGox, and 6 to 12% of the volumes of all the Bidcock exchanges. This allowed them to manipulate the bitcoin market. During their interventions, the bitcoin progressed in 80% of the cases, against 55% of the cases in the "normal" sessions, without manipulations. Willy's activity contributed to the new bubble of the bitcoin .

Is Markus and Willy the same person, Mark Karpelès? In any event, MtGox acknowledged that it sometimes intervened on the market for its own account and through an obligation exchange, namely the "Willy" automaton, but without giving any amounts for its interventions. These were intended to buy bitcoins on the market to fill the "hole", the bitcoins hidden in theory by hackers, and avoid closing MtGox. It wanted to transform its structural deficit of bitcoins into a cash deficit. By purchasing bitcoins from customers, through Willy, and at an ever-higher price, the Exchange has allowed individuals to make high profits "on paper", and retain their confidence in the stock market. As long as' They kept their liquidity at MtGox, which could act as a bitcoin bank, with customers' deposits serving to support the operations of other customers, even MtGox's. Only when the bitcoin began to plunge at the end of 2013 and early 2014, due in part to the withdrawal of Willy from the market, individuals wanted to withdraw their money. Too late.