I'm troubled by the persistent societal trend of people being afraid to reveal to others that they believe a malicious event was an inside job. I suspect many of us consider it possible that the heist was organized by Mark Karpeles himself and that the supposed transaction malleability crisis was completely fabricated.
He was making millions of dollars from trading fees and would have continued to do so for the foreseeable future. Why would he steal his own funds. It just defies any reasonable explanation.
AS you pointed out, it makes no sense, which gives him the perfect cover. He can empty the coffers and claim it was a hack because of a technical glitch. He takes it all, declares bankruptcy and he's gone with the wind.
Now, with a hefty stash, he can start another BTC exchange, and then rinse and repeat as necessary. It's about as close to a perfect crime as you can get.
Like not using any kind of VCS for the software which was the core of his business defies any reasonable explanation?
Maybe he just wanted a quick payday and get out of the business?
The guy doesn't seem to have a track record of making great decisions and he didn't seem to take the business very seriously. Not to mention we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars. Theft is a possibility worth looking into.
It's millions of dollars and freedom vs. 100s of millions that get confiscated when you're incarcerated though (and yes that's a false dichotomy - but it's a bug in logic, it's not my fault ..).
I'd have thought that being in control of these exchanges you could pretty much extract as much money as you'd ever need by front-running or other manipulations. The fluctuations in market value coupled with the acceptance of week or 2-week transaction periods means you can get a few percent of each transaction doesn't it.
You could ask that question of all sorts of criminals. E.g., Bernie Madoff seemed to be doing quite well. Almost anybody accused of a major financial crime had plenty of opportunity to make lots of legal money; otherwise they wouldn't be in a position to steal. But it happens all the time.
Is it a societal trend or is it simply that more people believe that the "inside job" theory is far less persuasive than the "outside job + incompetence" theory?
