patrickmcginnis59 10839 (5/13/2014)
I know next to nothing about the technical implementation or bitcoin or even how it work conceptually, but relational databases typically use unique key constraints to prevent events like "cashing out the same bitcoin twice". Each bitcoin should have a unique id, and a table inserted with one row when it is debited for cash.
You do at least know that there is no centralized database for bitcoins right? (Reading your comment, it seems this might not be the case, I keep reading folks who think that bitcoin has some sort of "bank" or federal reserve or something issuing them.)
Yes, I know at least that much about bitcoin, but the distributed nature of the architecture doesn't necessarily excuse the same coin from being cashed out twice. There is latency when it comes to distributed transactions, but did both cash out transactions occur within MtGox's own node?
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho