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Title: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: genjix on May 05, 2013, 07:04:10 PM I've gotten a lot of hate from people who've blamed me for Bitcoinica, convinced I'm to blame. Maybe now you'll all understand. Here's some basic facts.
Coinlab were the investors behind Bitcoinica. Tihan Seale and Peter Vessenes founded Coinlab together. Tihan bought Bitcoinica and Coinlab was involved from the beginning. Patrick Murck filed the legal papers on behalf of Bitcoinica investors. We were given fake shares in a fake company. The deal was to contract us to work on Bitcoinica. The site had been losing money for months and had huge security problems. A new company was formed to handle that agreement. After the first compromise, despite huge problems in the setup and design of the website, they wanted to put it back up as fast as possible. I was against this strongly which is why I released the code. After an employee used this as an excuse to steal more funds (the evidence is definitive), they were upset more over the loss of the 'Intellectual Property'. They scapegoated me. They wanted no liability and refused to help us complete the job for them. All the emails are public on this forum (I released them) as proof. Donald kept asking to speak to their superior but they refused. I never had access to money or any servers. I was a programmer working on the hedging algorithm. They are sneaky, and play dirty tactics. Tihan is a manipulative sociopath. We had run Intersango, the biggest UK exchange for 2 years without any problems doing 2 million GBP turnover annually. The site has been closed down (due to UK bank problems) paying everyone back and we experienced no security flaws during its history. I had no reason to deliberately cause Bitcoinica users any harm, and if you actually go and study the evidence on the forums, you'll see I acted in all of your best interests. When everyone ran off, a programmer was told he was now acting CEO of a defunct company that never was formed and had to make executive decisions despite having no technical control or access to anything. Do you know how fucking absurd this is? Then to be told by many different parties conflicting things to sign for their personal interest and get blamed for that. These are facts, and every point can be proven. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: calian on May 05, 2013, 07:23:55 PM I've watched Fun with Dick and Jane so I can envision the scenario you present. However I have to ask why you failed to communicate with the community for the past how many months (years?). I haven't followed things that closely since I fortunately didn't have anything in Bitcoinica when it crashed and burned. I'm not even sure who all the parties involved are (Bitcoinica consultancy - is this you/Intersango?), Zhou Tong, the purported hacker in China, Tihan, MTGOX, a liquidator, etc. However it seemed like the Intersango side of the equation was the only ones who were not communicating whatsoever throughout and the fact is that it doesn't seem like anyone has their money back yet.
Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: genjix on May 05, 2013, 07:27:31 PM I've watched Fun with Dick and Jane so I can envision the scenario you present. However I have to ask why you failed to communicate with the community for the past how many months (years?). I haven't followed things that closely since I fortunately didn't have anything in Bitcoinica when it crashed and burned. I'm not even sure who all the parties involved are (Bitcoinica consultancy - is this you/Intersango?), Zhou Tong, the purported hacker in China, Tihan, MTGOX, a liquidator, etc. However it seemed like the Intersango side of the equation was the only ones who were not communicating whatsoever throughout and the fact is that it doesn't seem like anyone has their money back yet. I was on these forums all day long everyday during the entire time while nobody else said anything except the odd post from Zhou and a couple from Tihan. The only thing I did have is ability to vet claims and ask people what's happening. Check my posting history: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1931;sa=showPosts;start=100 Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: paraipan on May 05, 2013, 07:34:39 PM So why didn't you defend your reputation back then?
This is quite odd. You come back almost at the same time as Zhou and with lame excuses on top. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: benjamindees on May 05, 2013, 07:35:38 PM Tihan Seales the deal, as always. I don't have the slightest bit of interest in Bitcoinica or Intersango, but anyone who is paying attention knows that there is massive fuckery afoot in the Bitcoin community. And there has been for a long time. Hello Thomas, You are a network Admin at CNY-Media in Hannibal New York. You should know what a log file looks like, and you should be able to prove this hack with little effort. Well that's certainly interesting. Did an employee of a New York based online reputation management firm just happen to scam a bunch of people out of their Bitcoins? Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: tvbcof on May 05, 2013, 07:44:47 PM Thx for your input on this. It will go, in filtered form, into my neurological data-bank. FWIW...Although I feel that you (~genjix) should stay away from the media for the health of my pocketbook, I kinda sense that you are an OK guy and an OK programmer. More importantly, that what you say about this and that is somewhat in earnest and may have some basis in reality. ~phantom on the other hand strikes me as an A1 dickhead. Just my opinion. I have harassed you guys for the fun of it over the years. Your epic fails deserve some attention after all :) Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: calian on May 05, 2013, 07:45:24 PM Did you communicate in this thread? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=109316.0
Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: TheKoziTwo on May 05, 2013, 08:01:02 PM Since you're back, what's your explanation for all this?
For me tbh, I could care less about people like Roger Ver who have a lot of money lost because they have lots more. Amir, I look forward to karma coming back to get you. Believe it or not, losing 24,000 BTC because of an idiot like you, HAS HAD A BIG BIG IMPACT ON MY LIFE! People with attitudes like yours give a bad reputation to our entire movement. Do the world a favor and quit your involvement with Bitcoin. Sincerely, Roger Ver Amir, I've refrained from getting involved at this point, but how dare you say something like this. For me tbh, I could care less about people like Roger Ver who have a lot of money lost because they have lots more. Do you know how much damn work Roger has done to get where he is today? Do you know how many sacrifices he has made for Bitcoin? Wait...you don't. Know why? BECAUSE YOU RELEASED THE GODDAMN SOURCE CODE OF BITCOINICA WHICH HAD THE MTGOX API IN IT WHICH LED TO THE THEFT OF ANOTHER 40K BTC AND WHO KNOWS HOW MANY USD. Your fault! No one elses! How dare you say "Oh, I need time off." Please, I've heard that bullshit before. Oh, and next time you trash and break a Segway in Vienna that Alex paid for because some fat girl offers you a hug...DONT RUN AWAY AND LEAVE THE SEGWAY IN THE STREET!!!!!! (true story for whoever wants to know. Roger, Erik and myself were there) -Charlie Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: genjix on May 05, 2013, 08:03:50 PM My explanation is to read my full post instead of taking snippets out of context.
Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: TheKoziTwo on May 05, 2013, 08:13:02 PM My explanation is to read my full post instead of taking snippets out of context. I have read your full post and it seems like you're full of shit. There is no explanation.And this is your reply to that quote, really? That fat girl is a person you know. Why would you insult her when she's an innocent bystander? I'm not saying I'm happy Roger Ver lost money, but simply that his life is not really impacted in a huge way compared to someone who barely has enough money to survive or eat because they lost it in Bitcoinica. I seem to recall in Vienna that you were talking about renting out an aeroplane. That's a level of extravagance that goes way way over my head. You probably live far more comfortably than the majority of people do including myself. Don't tell me that 25k out of 50k is more of a loss than $200 of $600. That's the difference between homeless and starving, vs surviving. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: MPOE-PR on May 05, 2013, 08:42:02 PM I've gotten a lot of hate from people who've blamed me for Bitcoinica, convinced I'm to blame. Maybe now you'll all understand. Here's some basic facts. Coinlab were the investors behind Bitcoinica. Tihan Seale and Peter Vessenes founded Coinlab together. Tihan bought Bitcoinica and Coinlab was involved from the beginning. Patrick Murck filed the legal papers on behalf of Bitcoinica investors. We were given fake shares in a fake company. The deal was to contract us to work on Bitcoinica. The site had been losing money for months and had huge security problems. A new company was formed to handle that agreement. After the first compromise, despite huge problems in the setup and design of the website, they wanted to put it back up as fast as possible. I was against this strongly which is why I released the code. After an employee used this as an excuse to steal more funds (the evidence is definitive), they were upset more over the loss of the 'Intellectual Property'. They scapegoated me. They wanted no liability and refused to help us complete the job for them. All the emails are public on this forum (I released them) as proof. Donald kept asking to speak to their superior but they refused. I never had access to money or any servers. I was a programmer working on the hedging algorithm. They are sneaky, and play dirty tactics. Tihan is a manipulative sociopath. We had run Intersango, the biggest UK exchange for 2 years without any problems doing 2 million GBP turnover annually. The site has been closed down (due to UK bank problems) paying everyone back and we experienced no security flaws during its history. I had no reason to deliberately cause Bitcoinica users any harm, and if you actually go and study the evidence on the forums, you'll see I acted in all of your best interests. When everyone ran off, a programmer was told he was now acting CEO of a defunct company that never was formed and had to make executive decisions despite having no technical control or access to anything. Do you know how fucking absurd this is? Then to be told by many different parties conflicting things to sign for their personal interest and get blamed for that. These are facts, and every point can be proven. This has to be saved for later. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: repentance on May 05, 2013, 09:37:48 PM So why didn't you defend your reputation back then? This is quite odd. You come back almost at the same time as Zhou and with lame excuses on top. To some extent, they tried. There was an NDA in place. They publicly asked for the NDA to be revoked after the Rackspace intrusion so they could disclose more information. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=58011;sa=showPosts Amir posted the email they received from Tihan after they said they were going to make a public statement which would have contradicted some of the information posted by Zhou. Regardless of whether you believe what Amir is saying or not, it's consistent with what he's been saying since whole Bitcoinica LP clusterfuck began. It's not hard to see why the Intersango team would feel like they were thrown to the wolves when Zhou seems to have been protected at every turn. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: Justin00 on May 05, 2013, 10:18:05 PM would the second 'hack' of occurred if the source code had not of been released ?
Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: ninjarobot on May 05, 2013, 10:45:08 PM I was against this strongly which is why I released the code. After an employee used this as an excuse to steal more funds (the evidence is definitive) Quote These are facts, and every point can be proven. This is probably true. However where is this 'definitive' evidence you speak of? Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: ab8989 on May 05, 2013, 10:51:56 PM an employee used this as an excuse to steal more funds (the evidence is definitive) So the theory that the hacks were really an inside job gets a confirmation. The word 'more' on this sentence is interesting as it most probably means that the same person performed also the earlier hack and now got more money on this second instance. I would like to ask what has happened to this person you indicate you know who he is and you know the evidence against him? Has he been convicted in a court of law? Or is he on his way to court appearance? Or has the police report been conveniently forgotten to be filed and this person you know who stole the funds is he enjoying his retirement in Bahamas? Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: repentance on May 05, 2013, 10:54:43 PM would the second 'hack' of occurred if the source code had not of been released ? If you mean the MtGox intrusion, it was the third "hack" that we know of - Linode, Rackspace, MtGox. The release of the source code provided for the creation of a narrative explaining the MtGox intrusion. Did the hacker already have the MtGox credentials prior to the release of the source code? If you believe that Zhou either perpetrated the intrusion himself or was complicit in the intrusion, then the answer is yes. Whether something else would have occurred to sink Bitcoinica had the MtGox intrusion not occurred is a matter for conjecture. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: phantomcircuit on May 05, 2013, 11:28:47 PM would the second 'hack' of occurred if the source code had not of been released ? The theft of frunds from the MtGox account was not the result of the source code being leaked. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: repentance on May 05, 2013, 11:37:22 PM Would either Patrick or Amir care to comment on the Rackspace intrusion?
Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: ninjarobot on May 06, 2013, 12:04:40 AM would the second 'hack' of occurred if the source code had not of been released ? The theft of frunds from the MtGox account was not the result of the source code being leaked. From what I understand it was. Bitcoinica Source leak > MtGox API key > Lastpass pwd > MtGox account credentials > MtGox theft (40K BTC/ 40K USD). If the leak did not cause the MtGox theft, then what did? Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: ab8989 on May 06, 2013, 12:14:58 AM If the leak did not cause the MtGox theft, then what did? Read the thread. It has now been confirmed by 2 people, genjix and phantomcircuit, that the thief already knew the passwords and everything before the source code was leaked and the thief just thought that the leak would provide him a smokescreen and plausible deniability as it could be claimed that the group of people that knew the passwords was much larger. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: TheKoziTwo on May 06, 2013, 12:21:53 AM It would be great to see some proof of that.
Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: repentance on May 06, 2013, 12:24:07 AM I'd like to thank both Patrick and Amir for coming out and confirming what many of us have long suspected. I know that's a difficult thing to do when there are ongoing legal issues related to Bitcoinica but I believe the users deserve to know the truth about what happened.
Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: muyuu on May 06, 2013, 12:30:40 AM I've gotten a lot of hate from people who've blamed me for Bitcoinica, convinced I'm to blame. Maybe now you'll all understand. Here's some basic facts. Englishman saying "gotten" ಠ_ಠ Coinlab were the investors behind Bitcoinica. Tihan Seale and Peter Vessenes founded Coinlab together. Tihan bought Bitcoinica and Coinlab was involved from the beginning. Patrick Murck filed the legal papers on behalf of Bitcoinica investors. We were given fake shares in a fake company. The deal was to contract us to work on Bitcoinica. The site had been losing money for months and had huge security problems. A new company was formed to handle that agreement. After the first compromise, despite huge problems in the setup and design of the website, they wanted to put it back up as fast as possible. I was against this strongly which is why I released the code. After an employee used this as an excuse to steal more funds (the evidence is definitive), they were upset more over the loss of the 'Intellectual Property'. You had no right to do that, it was a massive mistake. They scapegoated me. They wanted no liability and refused to help us complete the job for them. All the emails are public on this forum (I released them) as proof. Donald kept asking to speak to their superior but they refused. I never had access to money or any servers. I was a programmer working on the hedging algorithm. IIRC there were keys in the sources that actually led to the loss of funds. Something about Lastpass. You should remember better than me, I didn't even have any funds in Bitcoinica. They are sneaky, and play dirty tactics. Tihan is a manipulative sociopath. We had run Intersango, the biggest UK exchange for 2 years without any problems doing 2 million GBP turnover annually. The site has been closed down (due to UK bank problems) paying everyone back and we experienced no security flaws during its history. I had no reason to deliberately cause Bitcoinica users any harm, and if you actually go and study the evidence on the forums, you'll see I acted in all of your best interests. Except when you broadcasted thousands of email addresses. When everyone ran off, a programmer was told he was now acting CEO of a defunct company that never was formed and had to make executive decisions despite having no technical control or access to anything. Do you know how fucking absurd this is? Then to be told by many different parties conflicting things to sign for their personal interest and get blamed for that. These are facts, and every point can be proven. You may have some points, and you may be right about Seale/Vessenes but your credibility runs really low for a number of reasons. You "could care less" about giving Roger Ver's money back since he's rich anyway, you are a squatter and shoehorned politics in the conference, etc etc. But yeah, they do seem sneaky and you really seem to have been Zhoutonged in the Bitcoinica deal which you guys should never have taken (and it was quite obvious, you had a business to deal with back then). Where's Nefario, by the way? Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: Frozenlock on May 06, 2013, 12:48:58 AM As someone who's finding the whole MtGox/Coinlab contract suspiciously one sided,
it's with great interest that I'm watching this thread. ;D Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: btcx on May 06, 2013, 12:58:06 AM If all this is someone else's fault, why haven't the defendants in the lawsuit attempted to redirect blame in that forum? What you guys say on the forums and on IRC contradict your behavior in the legal matter. The plaintiffs and Bitcoinica customers all just want their money back, and they want the right guys to pay for it. Why drag on the case when you could help the plaintiffs fry the bigger fish that set you up?
Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: repentance on May 06, 2013, 01:04:29 AM If all this is someone else's fault, why haven't the defendants in the lawsuit attempted to redirect blame in that forum? What you guys say on the forums and on IRC contradict your behavior in the legal matter. The plaintiffs and Bitcoinica customers all just want their money back, and they want the right guys to pay for it. Why drag on the case when you could help the plaintiffs fry the bigger fish that set you up? I've been following the documents being lodged with the California court Jesse. Just recently the court upheld the part of Patrick's demurrer regarding negligence on the part of the defendants and the plaintiffs had to file an amended claim. I could equally ask the plaintiffs whether they have ever pushed for criminal investigation of the thefts from Bitcoinica. I'm also curious about why Zhou was going to be a party to the proposed confidential settlement agreement when he was supposedly merely an employee of Bitcoinica at the time and not one of its principals. The BTC which were never recovered following the MtGox intrusion are now worth more than enough to settle the claims of the plaintiffs in the Cartmell et al lawsuit. Both AurumXchange and MtGox confirmed a link between Zhou's accounts and the MtGox intrusion. I would think that the plaintiffs themselves would be very interested in further investigating that link and adding Zhou to your complaint. Zhou has even stated that he'll be in the US in July, which would be a golden opportunity to have your lawyers take a deposition from him if you believe he's an innocent party in this. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: Seth Otterstad on May 06, 2013, 03:02:55 AM Thanks for finally coming on here to lay the smackdown. It makes me so irritated that your lawyers said you couldn't say anything until now.
Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: benjamindees on May 06, 2013, 03:25:29 AM I never had access to money or any servers. I was a programmer working on the hedging algorithm. But you did have access to Bitcoins. Since the MtGox API key was in the source code you released. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: repentance on May 06, 2013, 03:32:55 AM Thanks for finally coming on here to lay the smackdown. It makes me so irritated that your lawyers said you couldn't say anything until now. It's rather unfortunate that the legal advice given to the various parties involved in the Bitcoinica clusterfuck has ultimately worked against the interests of Bitcoinica users, even though it's not surprising. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: repentance on May 06, 2013, 03:43:54 AM Let's go after Gox and force them to give us what is ours! Our money should not be used as leverage in their personal game. How do you propose doing that Goat? The liquidator gained control of the funds in the Bitcoinica bank account but it didn't contain a whole lot of money relative to what is owed so spending it on legal costs to try to force MtGox to disgorge funds might not be a popular option amongst creditors. Is there a creditor willing to underwrite the cost of such legal action (NZ has salvage laws which mean that creditors who help recover funds for the benefit of all creditors can recover those costs). Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: repentance on May 06, 2013, 04:00:03 AM Let's focus some of our energy on getting the coins back. My suggestion was a serious one. Creditors who underwrite the cost of recovering funds for the benefit of all creditors can have their own claims treated preferentially as well as recovering their costs. It's something to consider. Quote (e)to any creditor who protects, preserves the value of, or recovers assets of the company for the benefit of the company's creditors by the payment of money or the giving of an indemnity,— (i)the amount received by the liquidator by the realisation of those assets, up to the value of that creditor's unsecured debt; and (ii)the amount of the costs incurred by that creditor in protecting, preserving the value of, or recovering those assets. http://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1993/0105/latest/DLM323545.html Perhaps you could try persuading Cartmell et al to focus their legal efforts on trying to get MtGox to disgorge funds. The liquidator has only listed Wendon and Ator as creditors and everyone else as investors so you would need to clarify with the liquidator whether that provision would still apply. Tihan stated previously that Wendon would not assert its right to be treated as a secured creditor, but it's still listed as a creditor and Wendon could potentially be treated preferentially if it paid the costs of recovering funds from the "Chinese relic collector". Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: dancingnancy on May 06, 2013, 04:12:20 AM I'm on board to pitch in around $300-$500 to get this going. I just want my coins back. I don't care if I have to spend more money to get them back. I want Mt. Gox's name tarnished, as well. If it hasn't been already. Can we directly go after Mt. Gox somehow?
Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: repentance on May 06, 2013, 04:25:28 AM Can we directly go after Mt. Gox somehow? You'd probably complicate the legal situation even more by doing so. It was Bitcoinica's account and the liquidator has an established right to receive the funds for distribution to creditors. If MtGox isn't recognising that right, it's even less likely to recognise the claims of individual creditors as people were only able to establish what they were owed by matching up their own records with Bitcoinica's records. MtGox doesn't have access to Bitcoinica's records so they would have no legitimate way of verifying individual claims. I would expect the next liquidator's report to address the issue of MtGox co-operation and any legal advice the liquidator has received about the viability of legal action against them. MtGox has much bigger concerns to worry about at the moment so they may not view obstructing the liquidator as a priority right now. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: repentance on May 06, 2013, 04:33:20 AM I would strongly advise Patrick and Amir to inform the liquidator of any evidence they have regarding the originator of the theft/s.
I have no doubt that the actions of all parties were driven by advice they received from their lawyers but that really hasn't helped Bitcoinica users at all. Quite frankly, I don't give a shit if further investigations into the circumstances surrounding the MtGox intrusion might fuck up Zhou's immigration prospects. It's probably worth reminding people that although we don't know the balance of the Bitcoinica account on MtGox prior to the intrusion, we know that 20,000 BTC and $100,000 were returned to the account. The value of that account is significant given the rise in the price of BTC since the intrusion. Even if those are the only funds in the account, the account is now worth over 2 million dollars. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: gmaxwell on May 06, 2013, 08:02:59 AM With the exception of genjix's motivations for posting the code— which I don't recall hearing comments on before— I believe the factual statements provided in GenJix's posts are consistent with the claims I've heard and impressions I've received all along from the involved parties that I'd talked to. Basically not a word of hist post is news to me (except the code posting stuff as mentioned). As someone who wasn't involved I can't personally vouch for the truth of any of it but I do believe this has been the Bitcoin consultancy folks position all along. And I have not seen evidence which contradicts their positions, and as things unraveled new evidence (e.g. about the identity of the mtgox theift) appeared to their prior positions.
Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: genjix on May 06, 2013, 10:13:51 AM BTW, I understand what some of you are going through. My father is nearly 70, and just lost all his money to property investments that never got built. The person responsible took lots of money from many people and ran away. He has nothing left anymore and cannot pay his mortgage on his home. He worked hard his whole life, and now is bust at an age where he cannot work. Now he wants to run off to a small remaining plot of land he has in Iran in some village and live out the rest of his days. He never had a boss and installed a hard work ethic in me and honest morals. We hadn't been speaking for many years before this because he never understood what I was about (why I preferred to write opensource for free instead of make money and get a degree).
Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: melvster on May 06, 2013, 10:57:54 AM I've gotten a lot of hate from people who've blamed me for Bitcoinica, convinced I'm to blame. Maybe now you'll all understand. Here's some basic facts. Coinlab were the investors behind Bitcoinica. Tihan Seale and Peter Vessenes founded Coinlab together. Tihan bought Bitcoinica and Coinlab was involved from the beginning. Patrick Murck filed the legal papers on behalf of Bitcoinica investors. We were given fake shares in a fake company. The deal was to contract us to work on Bitcoinica. The site had been losing money for months and had huge security problems. A new company was formed to handle that agreement. After the first compromise, despite huge problems in the setup and design of the website, they wanted to put it back up as fast as possible. I was against this strongly which is why I released the code. After an employee used this as an excuse to steal more funds (the evidence is definitive), they were upset more over the loss of the 'Intellectual Property'. They scapegoated me. They wanted no liability and refused to help us complete the job for them. All the emails are public on this forum (I released them) as proof. Donald kept asking to speak to their superior but they refused. I never had access to money or any servers. I was a programmer working on the hedging algorithm. They are sneaky, and play dirty tactics. Tihan is a manipulative sociopath. We had run Intersango, the biggest UK exchange for 2 years without any problems doing 2 million GBP turnover annually. The site has been closed down (due to UK bank problems) paying everyone back and we experienced no security flaws during its history. I had no reason to deliberately cause Bitcoinica users any harm, and if you actually go and study the evidence on the forums, you'll see I acted in all of your best interests. When everyone ran off, a programmer was told he was now acting CEO of a defunct company that never was formed and had to make executive decisions despite having no technical control or access to anything. Do you know how fucking absurd this is? Then to be told by many different parties conflicting things to sign for their personal interest and get blamed for that. These are facts, and every point can be proven. Thanks for clearing up confusion. I've lost respect for coinlab over this, and even paul graham who invested in them. Are/were the issues with intersango still unsurmountable? Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: w1R903 on May 06, 2013, 01:01:04 PM I've lost respect for coinlab over this, and even paul graham who invested in them. I think you're confusing Coinlab with Coinbase (don't worry, I've done the same thing). Paul Graham/ycombinator invested in Coinbase, which has nothing to do with any of this as far as I know. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: dust on May 06, 2013, 01:58:57 PM Yes we can go after Gox but it will not be easy to win. You will have to be willing to burn a lot more than $10k given the negative effect this action would have on the market price.However it will make the issue public and force them to the table while they get bad press. I'm willing to burn $10,000 for this. Thanks for clearing up confusion. Paul Graham (YCombinator) invested in Coinbase, not Coinlab. It doesn't help that nearly every bitcoin business has either "bit" or "coin" in its name.I've lost respect for coinlab over this, and even paul graham who invested in them. Are/were the issues with intersango still unsurmountable? Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: sd on May 06, 2013, 02:03:36 PM So the take home message is that Zhou is a thief and everyone else is extremely untrustworthy.
Also the legal, and practical, protections in the conventional finance world turn out to be necessary to protect people from thieves. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: sd on May 06, 2013, 03:18:34 PM ... the legal, and practical, protections in the conventional finance world turn out to be necessary to protect people from thieves. Except that those things don't actually protect people from theives. They do occasionally get some small restitution for the victims (after months or years), but mostly they just make lawyers rich.You are only thinking of the extreme cases. If I buy something with a credit card and it isn't delivered or it isn't fit for purpose I can get the cash refunded without lawyers. If I get ripped off for a small amount I can go to a small claims court without a lawyer and stand a good chance of getting my cash back. In bigger cases normally the threat of a law suit keeps everyone involved honest. There are cases like Enron and Madoff but these are exceptions in the real world and the rule in the BitCoin world. I'm not saying the BitCoin world is doomed, just that people are going to have to learn to be very careful who they trust as there is a far lower penalty for dishonestly where wrongdoing can't be punished. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: Seth Otterstad on May 06, 2013, 04:02:51 PM Tihan Seale and Peter Vessenes are listed as speakers for the Bitcoin Conference! WTF is this! These people are going to get booed out of the room.
http://www.bitcoin2013.com/bitcoin-2013-panelists.html Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: Phinnaeus Gage on May 06, 2013, 04:13:37 PM Tihan Seale and Peter Vessenes are listed as speakers for the Bitcoin Conference! WTF is this! These people are going to get booed out of the room. http://www.bitcoin2013.com/bitcoin-2013-panelists.html Are they speaking before or after Boussac, or is there a special panel discussion for all three? Quote zhou matthew and mark i could see however. Goat, if you had written Matthew, Mark and Zhou, I would have asked what Bible translation you were using. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: kakobrekla on May 06, 2013, 04:25:22 PM Tihan Seale and Peter Vessenes are listed as speakers for the Bitcoin Conference! WTF is this! These people are going to get booed out of the room. Wet dream only. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: dancingnancy on May 06, 2013, 05:19:21 PM Can't Tihan help push this along somehow and speak to both the liquidator and Magicaltux?
Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: dancingnancy on May 06, 2013, 08:10:58 PM Can't Tihan help push this along somehow and speak to both the liquidator and Magicaltux? Is he not already suing Gox in for unrelated issue? Is he? I can't keep up with this shit anymore. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: repentance on May 07, 2013, 12:13:56 AM Can't Tihan help push this along somehow and speak to both the liquidator and Magicaltux? Tihan represented Wendon, the limited partner of Bitcoinica LP. Limited partners can only participate in "safe harbour" management activities without exposing themselves to legal liability. Tihan seems to have been extremely careful to avoid doing anything which would potentially expose Wendon to liability. The liquidator's last report suggests that he's had contact with the limited partner. It's not in Wendon's interests to involve itself in the liquidation beyond co-operating with the liquidator. This has been one of the problems throughout this whole clusterfuck - Wendon has always wanted others to take the actions which bring with them legal liability. Given that Tihan is an investor in CoinLab and CoinLab has initiated litigation against MtGox, I'd expect Tihan to let the lawyers handle any communication with MtGox at this point in time. The partners in Bitcoinica LP and Bitcoinica Consultancy (also in liquidation now) don't really have a role to play in the liquidation beyond assisting the liquidator. They no longer have any authority in respect of Bitcoinica. This is all just the nature of getting into bed with venture capital. "Angel" investors play hardball when things go sour. Ironically, I'm somewhat more intrigued by the Rackspace hack than I am by the Bitcoinica intrusion (hell, I even have questions about the Linode hack and whether other services were targeted solely to deflect attention). The database was ever so conveniently destroyed during the Rackspace hack and I'll always wonder what secrets it might have revealed. I understand Tihan's position from a purely business perspective. I still believe that his trust in Zhou was a fatal error of judgement. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: MPOE-PR on May 07, 2013, 11:48:00 AM If the leak did not cause the MtGox theft, then what did? Read the thread. It has now been confirmed by 2 people, genjix and phantomcircuit, that the thief already knew the passwords and everything before the source code was leaked and the thief just thought that the leak would provide him a smokescreen and plausible deniability as it could be claimed that the group of people that knew the passwords was much larger. If we momentarily disregard the fact that both these people are proven idiots (phantomcircuit aka Patrick Strateman is the guy who sent all his customers an email containing the emails of all his customers, this is how far the "never had a security breach" claim goes) and proven liars, yeah that thing may even count for something. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: muyuu on May 08, 2013, 09:34:12 AM Goat, if you had written Matthew, Mark and Zhou, I would have asked what Bible translation you were using. Matthew, Mark, Luke and Zhou ;D Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: defxor on May 08, 2013, 05:17:31 PM Ironically, I'm somewhat more intrigued by the Rackspace hack than I am by the Bitcoinica intrusion (hell, I even have questions about the Linode hack and whether other services were targeted solely to deflect attention). The database was ever so conveniently destroyed during the Rackspace hack and I'll always wonder what secrets it might have revealed. I understand Tihan's position from a purely business perspective. I still believe that his trust in Zhou was a fatal error of judgement. I made the following post way back then. I'm confident in my analysis - all hacks make sense viewed from the perspective of the person Zhou. While I unfortunately didn't link all the statements I refer to I believe the info exists in that thread, or at least linked from it. Bitcoinica simply never made any money - and that exaggerated boasting from a proud teenager spiralled out of control and was the direct cause of the later "hacks". https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=95795.msg1065233#msg1065233 This tells a lot about your attitude. I hope it is a hindsight and you didn't assume Bitcoinica to be a scammer's product when it was launched. tl;dr: The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I'm quite sure you launched Bitcoinica with the intention for it to provide value to the community. As initially suggested by Patrick/Intersango and others, your claims about trade volume were very suspicious. It's likely you simply exaggerated them, not unusual when being proud of what you've created. Whether the Linode theft (where other accounts as well were swiped) just provided an excuse for some profit on the side or not I don't know, but I'm quite sure the only real money to have come out of running Bitcoinica were from user deposits. I have no personal opinion of whether it operated as a pure bucket shop or not, but others have documented the lack of visible MtGox movement even when Bitcoinica should've been hedging. When, based on how you presented the success of Bitcoinica in public, you were approached with investment offers I believe you were simply unable to admit that it wasn't as successful as you claimed. I believe you went along way too far with whatever happened, and that the Rackspace "hack" was the simplest way out when Tihan started questioning the books. Additionally, it provided yet more profit which you might've needed to be able to keep up appearances with your friends and family. After the very visible and complete failure by the Intersango people to handle the resulting mess I believe you made yet another profitable "hack" on the service. It wasn't as well planned nor executed as the previous, maybe it was simply opportunistic after having realized the release of the source code provided the excuse needed. I've posted links to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudologia_fantastica and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance since I do believe they apply. I think you're currently unable to admit to yourself and people close to you where things went wrong, and you're still hoping to be able to exit this unscathed. (I consider the above to be the simplest explanation possible that still fits all the known facts. I'm wary about the exact involvement by Amir, Patrick and Donald though - and since Tihan and Zhou supposedly have met in person it would be interesting to know exactly whom else have actually met either of them.*) But then, the only reason I really care is that if people's only takeaway from having joined the Bitcoin community is that they get constantly scammed this will never fly. I thus believe Bitcoin fraud needs to be handled by the proper legal authorities. We're way past Mybitcoin's "as long as I give 49% back you guys won't hurt me, right?" - which btw looks suspiciously close to what you're currently trying to do as well. *) Edit: Tihan's identity is verified by an upstanding member of the community, and thus Zhou's should be as well. However, this doesn't change the fact that the Intersango crowd are utterly and completely incompetent. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: Transisto on May 09, 2013, 06:43:36 AM Also to note that Tihan has never covered the 1st and 2nd hack as we'd been told.
Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: muyuu on May 09, 2013, 08:08:44 AM Isn't it slightly infuriating that all these companies use either "bit" or "coin" in their names?
Not only does it smear the brand, it also confuses the shit out of people. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: repentance on May 09, 2013, 09:13:52 AM Also to note that Tihan has never covered the 1st and 2nd hack as we'd been told. One thing I'm curious about is a company called Ator, of which Tihan is a director, being named as a creditor in the liquidator's report. I wondered at the time it was mentioned that "Tihan was providing funds to cover the losses" whether those funds were going to be provided as a secured loan (which is what I would have done under the circumstances) and I'm very curious about whether Ator was the vehicle for providing those funds. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: guruvan on May 11, 2013, 05:10:10 AM First off I suppose I'm amused to see anyone still looking after these coins. I stopped hearing from the liquidators a while ago.
On the one hand we have "experts like genjix and phantomcircuit (oh...my fave lately is the "customer can't login to their exchange account because the expert admins let the disks get full". On the other hand - Tihan & company appear to be the scum of the earth, and should be sued into financial oblivion if possible. (before they do it to everyone else) Oh...and Zhou Mr. "I'm diversifying my currency portfolio so I'd like to get $10K amounts in goxusd ASAFP - will pay .25% bonus - and nop I'm not stealing your money" (that's 3 hands for those of you counting) The truth be known, most of you a sneaky bastards. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: MPOE-PR on May 11, 2013, 12:06:33 PM Isn't it slightly infuriating that all these companies use either "bit" or "coin" in their names? Not only does it smear the brand, it also confuses the shit out of people. And therein lies your answer: because it confuses the fuck out of people. First off I suppose I'm amused to see anyone still looking after these coins. I stopped hearing from the liquidators a while ago. On the one hand we have "experts like genjix and phantomcircuit (oh...my fave lately is the "customer can't login to their exchange account because the expert admins let the disks get full". On the other hand - Tihan & company appear to be the scum of the earth, and should be sued into financial oblivion if possible. (before they do it to everyone else) Oh...and Zhou Mr. "I'm diversifying my currency portfolio so I'd like to get $10K amounts in goxusd ASAFP - will pay .25% bonus - and nop I'm not stealing your money" (that's 3 hands for those of you counting) The truth be known, most of you a sneaky bastards. Congrats, you've covered about a hundredth to a tenth of all the ways all those involved on all sides lied, stole, defrauded etc. "Business" and "businessmen". Says so right on their business card. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: melvster on June 04, 2013, 05:21:50 AM Tihan Seale and Peter Vessenes are listed as speakers for the Bitcoin Conference! WTF is this! These people are going to get booed out of the room. http://www.bitcoin2013.com/bitcoin-2013-panelists.html Didnt happen, did it? Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: Seth Otterstad on June 07, 2013, 04:30:57 AM Tihan Seale and Peter Vessenes are listed as speakers for the Bitcoin Conference! WTF is this! These people are going to get booed out of the room. http://www.bitcoin2013.com/bitcoin-2013-panelists.html Didnt happen, did it? I don't know who this MPOE guy is, but he appears to have a MASSIVE bias against the intersango trio for some reason that is not obvious. Every time I've seen anyone mention intersango over the last year or so, MPOE makes sure to pop in and mention that they leaked 5000 email addresses and that genjix acts like an "idiot". Nevermind that intersango was the longest running exchange to never get hacked. Nevermind that genjix was out there doing interviews, starting exchanges, and promoting bitcoin before anyone else was doing much for the community. Nevermind that those guys appeared to never have any big profit motive and bankrupted themselves to help bitcoin in its infancy. Patrick does come off like a dickhead on the forums, but if people were coming after me for no good reason (that I am aware of), I would be demanding a little "******* respect" and acting like a dickhead too. In fact, I think I will leave a little note of appreciation here: Dear Donald, Patrick, and Amir, I would like to thank you guys for running intersango for so long and doing a huge service to the community at great expense to yourselves. My ability to use bitcoin was massively improved by this when I was living in London. You guys would always reply to support tickets extremely fast while mtgox (at least back then) had complete crap for customer service. That sucks you got screwed over so hard by Tihan and Zhou, and I'm really glad to see genjix still making contributions to the development of bitcoin. Please keep up the good work. Title: Re: Coinlab are sneaky bastards, investors behind Bitcoinica Post by: btcsql on November 21, 2014, 09:30:50 AM Whatever happened to this? Did this all get swept under the rug? What's the status of any current legal proceedings?
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