Le résumé de la situation
On its current balance sheet the company lists its assets as consisting of 2,000 bitcoins (plus $32 mn. in fiat), and offsetting liabilities of 750,000 bitcoins (and another $55 mn of fiat claims against it). There is a clearly a big hole to fill. More troubling is that Mt. Gox notes that this theft of its bitcoins took place over a five-year period. Furthermore the company now confirms that the loss is due to the “transaction malleability” issue with the bitcoin protocol (which I discussed here as a reason Mt. Gox held only fractional reserves).
In other words, over a five-year period the bitcoin bank went from a (presumably) 100% reserve ratio to holding less than 3% reserves… and no one noticed!
Here is the critical fault with fractional-reserve banking that rarely gets discussed. When someone deposits a good it is not because he does not want to use it. Nor does that good represent some idle resource until it is asked for. People who support fractional-reserve banking of both the centralized and “free” varieties are both of the opinion that deposits are idle cash and no one is harmed when a bank puts them to good use.....