How would you seize Bitcoinica's assets, at least the BTC, without giving whoever controls the private keys the opportunity to transfer the funds to safety?
Really easy. Choose a registered professional. Hold him legally responsible. Win. That's assuming the registered professional you choose holds the private keys, and is the only one with the keys. |
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No. A judicial overseer would first secure all assets. That might mean immediately converting all BTC to $ and putting it into a safe bank. Since the appointed overseer can be held responsible for some losses accrued during his reign, you can bet he will play it safe.
He can (and should) rather put them into cold storage. These are deposits of Bitcoinica's customers, noone should have an authority to sell them. Only if he understands bitcoin, which is unlikely. He has to prevent further losses foremost. He has the authority to sell off and close customers positions if that's in their best interest long term, and it is better than getting more assets stolen. I assume much of the details here depend a lot on the jurisdiction this will end in. How would you seize Bitcoinica's assets, at least the BTC, without giving whoever controls the private keys the opportunity to transfer the funds to safety? |
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So basically, currently Bitcoinica seems orphaned. For things to go forward, whoever is in control of Bitcoinica LP needs to start acting. However, no party is willing to admit they are in control, probably because that would put them in a very nasty position, legally, and therefore nothing can happen.
Bitcoinica holds assets of course, but the liabilities are greater by far. Someone is responsible, legally, for dealing with this whole mess, but none of the candidates necessarily want to find out who that someone is, so they're not likely to spend too much time looking into it. An external probe may be the only way to get things moving again.
That said... I'm not keen on the idea of litigation around this issue. That cat may be out of the bag already, but I rather wish it weren't so. This may become the first serious legal look into the Bitcoin economy, with all its curiosities, and the case has in one way or another entangled not just Bitcoinica, but the Intersango operators and Mt. Gox as well. This could get really ugly.
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marlath explains: The bid wall dropped and the dump started at exactly 2:06:18 EST. He posted that 'good night' message at 2:06:28 EST. ( http://pastebin.com/PthgrzDS) He had a full ten seconds to paste that message. This is how this pirate has conned everyone into thinking he is anything but BS. He has a websocket client that isn't lagged like the popular html5 ones are, and simply waits for the action on that to start and then announces that he caused it. Everyone using some browser based feed doesn't see the drop until after he saw it and announced it hoping people wouldn't notice that his announcement comes long after the actual move he claims credit for. This is possible. It's difficult to tell exactly what preceded what from comparing the charts to the IRC log. (assuming the log times are correct, anyway). Where could one find reliable data on the market events, including orderbook movements? |
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On the other hand if I'm running a ponzi, I sure as heck would take advantage of volatility in the market and claim it's me moving it to perpetuate some myth about how it just might be possible for me to pay those outrageously high interest to my investors in order to lure even more people into my scheme. This on the other hand makes perfect sense.
I didn't think this thread was about whether or not he's running a ponzi. I'm not saying it isn't. I'm just saying he did seem to have a big part in last night's swings. |
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Here's a graph of the action with some of the pirateat40 comments from the IRC log correlated approximately.
The timestamps from pastebin are UTC +1 btw. Not sure if you accounted for that. Elux: That's what I figured as the ticker numbers matched up with the graph with that assumption. Meant to mention that but forgot. |
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It would appear that a lot of misinformation has circulated since the date of my last post. Considering the many inconsistencies, I will assume astute readers here have already discounted the versions of facts presented by the Consultancy.
The Consultancy members accepted that responsibility on April 24 as operators and General Partners of Bitcoinica LP. There is ample written documentation to confirm this.
The statements of Genjix and Tihan seem to conflict here. So we still don't know who the GP is and customers continue to suffer due to corporate infighting. Or maybe it is just me that is clueless? Which Consultancy is Tihan referring to, Bitcoin Consultancy or Bitcoinica Consultancy? Should that be obvious from reading his post? Edit: Also, who is the "we" Genjix is referring to in his OP? |
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This was hilarious. Good to see parody done well.
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Bitcoinica - whoever that is, functionally - now needs to get whatever payments possible out ASAP. If people don't start seeing their money soon, someone is going to go to the police or a lawyer with this. That may very well happen whatever Bitcoinica do, but time is running out for them. I hate to even contemplate the kind of liability everyone involved in running the service might now be exposed to, or how big a mess any real investigation would become.
What the legal repercussions imply, IMO, is that they may decide they'd be best served in trying to settle accounts with the biggest customers at the expense of the smaller ones, and hoping they manage to appease everyone with enough incentive to give them real legal trouble. This would be unfortunate as it would mean some people getting completely shafted, but if the funds for a full refund aren't there, they're not there.
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I remained hopeful I'd see the BTC I had on Bitcoinica once more. Now, not so much.
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Last year, few realized that bitcoins could be stolen in hacks. That freaked a lot of people out. This year, everyone knows that they can be stolen and hacked, and that they can also be protected. Someone gets hacked, and the market correctly says ho-hum, since it understands that the risk of hacking can be mitigated with cold wallets, and correctly realizes that any successful theft probably had much to do with mismanaging wallets.
I find it hard to credit few understood the risks of hacking. Looking back, I distinctly remember thinking we'll see significant losses to theft due to poor security, and the mt. gox debacle was the first big confirmation of that hunch. I'm not that smart, so anyone seriously interested in Bitcoin must have anticipated hacking. I think it's more that we didn't know what, exactly, we should defend against, and that most people aren't that savvy at computer security. Even if you know you should guard against burglars, it doesn't do much good if you don't understand they can break a window instead of coming through the front door... You're right, though, that hacks are probably priced in now. They will keep happening, but the market's been innoculated against it. On the other hand, the gox order book has been very peculiar lately, what with the walls on both buy and sell sides boxing the price into a rather narrow range. Whether it's one player or a few... Gox knows. |
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If you believed a player was artificially holding the price down with a big askwall, it would make sense to call his bluff and buy out the wall. But only if you could buy the whole thing! If so expect those coins to reappear. At this point I wonder if sellers are holding back just to see how high it will go.
It wasn't just an askwall, but a buywall as well. One that is still there, actually. Question is, are the same people behind the buywall as were behind the askwall? |
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Gasoline prices will continue to fall. The trucking industry, which accounts for 1/3 of all US oil consumption, can be converted to run on natural gas, and Obama has signed legislation to support this. Natural gas can also be converted into oil very profitably at the current price ratio with GTL technology, and Shell and SASOL competing to build these facilities in the US. Additionally, the price of solar panels has dropped by 75% in the last three years. Solar is now competitive with daytime electricity rates, and it will continue to get cheaper. But putting solar panels on roofs is just the tip of the iceberg. By mid-century, most of our power will come from space. Space-based solar panels are much more efficient as the sunlight is 5.5 times stronger in space, and the panels always operate at 100% with no night. The power will get beamed to earth in the form of microwaves. Private enterprise will lower the cost of space launch enough to undercut other methods of power generation. Much to the environmentalist's delight, oil is on its way out.
I recently read "Private Empire" ( http://www.amazon.co.uk/Private-Empire-ExxonMobil-American-Power/dp/1846146593/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341579850&sr=8-1 ), which despite the name turned out to be a rather level-headed read. Among other interesting tidbits, it outlines Exxon's recent studies into the future of energy, namely, whether they should be looking at alternative energy sources seriously or not. Their conclusion was that everything that could threaten the status quo of fossil fuels as the main source of energy (overwhelmingly by the way, check out some stats for global energy production...) requires several near-miraculous discoveries in the near term. Now, Exxon isn't exactly unbiased, but still, solar is so small now that even assuming yearly growth rates in the double digits, the industry will be hard pressed to gain more than a few percent of total global energy production within the next few decades, as energy consumption is projected to grow as well... As for gas prices currently, the news outlets here say it's simply because of the global economic fubar. Consumption is down. |
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Hazek, you have a good point, even if you decided to obscure it for some reason:
Anyone investing in a business that can't, with the information available, be distinguished from a ponzi is playing a losing game. Eventually, anyone that trusting or greedy will get taken for a ride.
Therefore, the question for any investor is not whether or not pirateat40's service can be proven legit or fraudulent. It's whether the information available indicates it's prudent to invest in the sc
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So now everyone has their panties in a bunch over withdrawals - what about open positions, especially if the market moves significantly before bitcoinica reopens? I fear that's when the real fun starts...
Fingers crossed for a quick resolution to this affair.
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Wired is a pretty heavy hitter, it's no surprise Google's algorithms rank them high on the relevancy scale.
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Now I'm long again, 17.5 BTC @ $5.1232
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Well, that was a long short position!
Finally liquidated today, for a stunning profit of $0.86, or 0.959% and a swap of -$0.26... No position currently.
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