Have fun trying to achieve anything in japan as a non-resident foreigner.
Not that he filed in Japan...
Friday's bankruptcy filing wasn't the only time the name "MtGox" was heard in a courtroom this week. Predictably, the cash-strapped Bitcoin exchange is now the subject of a class-action lawsuit in the US alleging negligence and fraud on the part of MtGox CEO Mark Karpeles and his staff. "Mt. Gox intentionally and knowingly …
That the coins slipped away unnoticed over the period the bug was in existence is not in doubt in my mind. That it was because of the bug or the result of external actions is. They'd have a hard time convincing me this wasn't a nice little inside job skimming off the top.
"How can a US court compel a (now-defunct) Japanese firm to do anything...?"
He's not necessarily expecting to get anything from MtGOX, he's hoping that a judgement in his favour will allow him to collect from some other party - maybe MtGOX auditors (if there were any), the banks who indirectly facilitated his cash being transferred to MtGOX before being converted to bitcoins, Japanese regulators, in fact anybody at all.
Hopefully the coursts will point out that anybody who puts money into an unregulated, overseas institution (in the hope of either hiding their money, or of earning huge speculative returns) should expect the risks to be matched to returns.
I have enjoyed a good laugh at the expense of fools like him. I hope those who lost money never see it again, and that way they may learn a valuable lesson about investment.
The problem is, that court cannot compel anyone to do anything. A court in Chicago has no jurisdiction over the defendants. If the defendants do not file a response to the complaint, then possibly the court can grant a default judgment. In order to use that default judgment elsewhere, that judgment will need to be brought to a local court where the defendant(s) are and than that court will need to hear a case about it. That is where the defendant could claim the original court lacked jurisdiction in the matter and depending on the amount of time that has lapsed, statue of limitations could have expired and thus no further legal proceedings can take place. Back to the default judgment; when filing a complaint, you must list why the court you are filing with has jurisdiction in this matter. Where the plaintiff is is mostly irrelevant, where the defendant is though is very important. So with the case just being filed, the defendant has 30-days to file a response and then the court process will commence. So the court could still dismiss the case as they have determined that they lack jurisdiction in this matter. The court has no way to compel anyone to do anything as the defendants are not in the jurisdiction of that court.
The plaintiff is also opening himself to a visit by the IRS. Did he ever claim anything he made off of bitcoins on his taxes? I bet not.
The proper question is what law was to apply to the contract that the parties entered in to and what jurisdiction was any legal action subject to? Many companies overseas will often enter into contracts under the law of a third party nation and seek to take legal action there. For example shipping companies and their clients will often sign up to contracts under English law and subject to the jurisdiction of the courts in London. Once the case is decided the winning party has a lever under which it can enforce the outcome in a local court since justice systems are often reluctant to ignore such decisions.
In this instant Mr Green needs to tell the his local court what his contract states. If there is no contract then the court will determine whether on the basis of the facts of the transaction it has jurisdiction to hear a claim. If there is a contract then Mr Green will be advised to follow the terms of the contract he signed.
You'd think with storing money on computers that you would be able to at least trace the money easily?
So each BitCoin should have a serial number and then when you store money it has that serial number recorded against your name. If stolen and someone tries to spend it then checks could be made to see who spent it.
Of course, since this currency is of use to crooks and pot heads all of these protections don't exist.
>accusing it of "intentional and systematic misuse and misappropriation of its users' property."
Surely intention is nearly impossible to prove in this case. Hopeless incompetency for sure. Negligence. Failing a duty of care. Failing to report such events to authorities (let's forget the question of which one for the moment). Lack of auditing. There would be all sorts of open and shut cases yet the plaintiff seems to be making it very hard on himself to score a victory.
IANAL etc...
Referring to them as "Mount Gox" is only giving them a shred of credibility. If they used the correct name of "Magic: the Gathering Online eXchange", then the viewer reaction changes very rapidly to uncontrollable laughter and ridicule.
"Even if the court rules in Greene's favor, however, he might have a hard time recovering his funds."
Well duh! The US court has no jurisdiction in Japan so should he lose his case he's lost and should he win he's won nothing. Other than a legal bill, that is. As usual the lawyers win.
It's not just him being an idiot though. The US courts accept and handle cases like this where they have no jurisdiction. If they started to turn them away it would be a start. What would be even better would be taking action against lawyers who encourage their clients to bring such pointless cases in the US courts.
Some posters above seem to be making a mistake in the "bitcoins are/aren't real" debate.
The thing about "real" currencies and "real" banks is that they are underwritten. Time was banks and currencies were underwritten with gold, but now it's governments that do the underwriting. Look at the banking collapse in Britain. The government bailed out the banks to protect the economy and the currency. Oh and by "the economy" I don't mean that horribly over simplified headline figure we constantly hear is growing faster or slower than expected. I mean the whole economic system in the country.
The thing about Bitcoin is that it's underwritten by nothing other than the companies who trade it.
There's no gold reserve underpinning Bitcoin and governments have no interest in underwriting it either. Why would they?
So we know Homer Simpson had trouble understanding that "money can be exchanged for goods and services", but the point is that there is a whole legal system underpinning that principal. There is no such system with Bitcoin. It only works because Bitcoin can be bought and sold for "real" money. Nobody has to accept Bitcoin in exchange for goods and/or services in the way they do the local currency. And that, of course, is where Bitcoin falls down.
While Bitcoin may not be a scam per se when it comes down to it Bitcoin is indistinguishable from one.