1. DDoS mtgox and the other exchanges

2. BTC comes down in price, buy it

3. BTC goes back up in price, sell it

4. profit!!!

How do you do this if MtGox is down?

There are other exchanges. Here are a few:

https://btc-e.com/ https://www.bitstamp.net/ https://bitfloor.com/

Should I ask you bothered to link to a site that is under DDoS rather then simply doing a text blurb?...

Because HN's traffic is just a drop in the bucket.

But there's no point to linking to a website that's not responding.

Should have taken a screenshot and posted it to imgur.

They should Counterspell that DDoS.

Is this a reference to Magic: The Gathering?

Yes - the origin of the name "MtGox" is "Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange"[0].

[0]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=16982.0 (CTRL+F "Dude65535")

Counterspell UU Interrupt Counters target spell. Uncommon

Ah yes, the good old days when we got to argue over the fine points of the differences between an "Interrupt" and an "Instant" effect.

Interrupts resolution point which happened within the casting time of Instants or Sorceries. So you could cast an Interrupt "while" an Instant or Sorcery was still casting, but Instants (or Sorceries) had to wait for the current spell to finish casting.

This was of course all ditched when MtG switch to a last in, first out stack model with all instants.

And then added back in when they introduced "Split second" (kind of).

I wonder if it is being ddos'd in an effort to move/convert the 43K bitcoins that allegedly went missing from Instawallet? I'm trying to figure out if there is an advantage to be gained by having them offline for that or not.

Or they took the site down intentionally to make the laundering of the same coins more difficult. Who knows?

Somebody knows, I hope they post a link to that here at some point.

They got ddos'd last week too. I think they're mostly just a big shiny target.

For..extortion?

"Give us a lot of bitcoins or we'll take your site down"?

That's what happens to all the gambling sites

If it was intentional a more informative error should have been used. I'm sure the ops team at mtgox is quite experienced but these basic errors pages seem like a big oversight once you are running a fairly high trafficked site.

I've used MtGox a bit over the past weeks and there isn't much that gives me reassurance that they have a good technical team.

Frankly I find it terrifying that they are dealing with so much money daily. My one hope is that the recent rise in price will attract some better players to the ecosystem. Would love it if blockchain.info did as they are the only site that seems clueful, though I can understand why the regulatory burden would give someone pause.

Rather hit or miss for me. Sometimes you'll get through and other times you'll get a 502. I've noticed it since earlier this morning (~9AM EST).

It's almost as if what was first written as a Magic the Gathering Online Trading platform isn't a bulletproof banking website.

Transferred coins from Coinbase to MtGox a minute before it went down. Just my luck.

I was in the middle of trading :-(

It's back, but slow.

502 Bad Gateway

nginx/1.3.11

Oh no!!! I was expecting BTC 0.01 deposit from my pool mining!!!

:)