I'm OK to keep holding the coins for now.  I've published the address they're at, a couple of times now, so you can see they're still there.  I can provide a signature proving that I have control of the private key if anyone would find that useful.

The exchange never asked for contact details other than an OpenID string and scans of ID documents, and so I have no way of contacting all the exchange users.  Andre probably has emails from lots of users, but I was only forwarded the ones that he needed my technical assistance with.  A few users have contacted me privately after seeing my email address in the 'news' section of the site, but there are many users I have no contact details for at all.

That leaves me in an awkward position.

I have the remaining Bitcoin assets of the exchange, but neither the authority nor the necessary information to distribute them to their rightful owners.

I received a private message:


I don't know if that 1500 AUD is just the extra that's owed to one customer, or whether that's the total, but if true, then that will reduce the 25.5% even further.  Also, it may be that the 1500 AUD withdrawal was left in a 'pending' state, in which case it will have been included in the amount I wrote here earlier, since I cancelled all pending withdrawals in my backup copy of the database, causing the pending withdrawals to be added back to the account balances.

Andre: do you have a complete list of the exchange's liabilities?  I was assuming that the outstanding customer account balances was everything, but apparently that's not true.

And please address my other recent questions to you in this thread.

So have several of these things in separate cages, and only power one at a time.  Then you only lose at most one of them to the power surge.

You make it sound as if we just decided to both win.

With a couple of hours to go, we were very close in score without another contender in sight, and so decided to stop competing, but to share the prize money by stopped when we were both the same amount ahead.

I think that makes it sound a little better - and a little more accurate!  

The whole post is probably worth quoting:


Were details of the investigation ever made public?

Please note that the numbers I posted are based on my most recent backup, and the statement entries that Andre pasted in this thread.  It may be that he honoured AUD withdrawals which I don't know about, in which case the outstanding dollar balance will be less than I posted.

I have requested the information I need several times now, but so far it hasn't been forthcoming.

I thought not.  My question was kind of rhetorical.


Nope.  But the account name is "WBX".  Looks like a work in progress:




That makes sense.  I was certainly going to wait for his agreement to my proposed terms here.  I don't know what effective difference it would make to have it on a piece of paper with a signature on it, when I've no idea what Andre's signature looks like.  I don't even know if the person running WBX was really called Andre, or whether that's just the name of the director of a company he decided to use the name of.  This forum is probably the most secure way I have of communicating with him, since at least here he has to log in to post.  Perhaps having it on paper makes a legal difference.

Andre, please can you read my proposal re. returning the exchange assets and either agree or propose changes?  I'd still like a copy of the 'Users' page from WBX, and for the WBX site to be taken down or cleared out to prevent further balance trading on it.

I just noticed another change to the WBX site:



So it's possible to get verified to withdraw without providing ID so long as I send you $249?  Is this a loophole in the KYC(utby) regulations?

Who has control of the site now?  Could it be that they are planning to relaunch?

I don't see why else anyone would be changing the site now that it has been closed down.

It would really be a good idea to shut the site down fully before I start paying your customers back.  Because at the moment it is still possible for them to exchange balances with each other without me being able to see that they are doing it.  Or at least take a final copy of the 'users' page and then wipe the database so they don't have balances to trade, if that's not possible.  And it really would seem to be best to wait for the current mess to be cleared up before starting out on a new one, don't you think?

Using the numbers that Andre recently provided, on top of my most recent backup shows that WBX should currently be holding
1,769.0417 BTC and 25,779.49 AUD.  If we assume a price of $5 AUD/BTC then that's a total of 1,769.0417 + 5,155.898 = 6,924.9397 BTC.

I have 1768 BTC (here: http://blockchain.info/address/1DodGYjF5LFoKg186jANZV9U8znXjagSzS) and according to Andre that is the sum total of the exchange's assets.  The other 1 BTC plus change was left in the 'hot' wallet and is presumably still on the server.  Ah - I have a backup of the server wallet.  I'll check what's in it.

[...]

It contained 0.9876932 BTC, which I have just sent to the above address.  The shortfall will be the result of the exchange paying Bitcoin transaction fees.

So I have access to 1768.9876932 BTC out of 6924.9397 BTC.  That's 25.545%.

That number will change based on what AUD/BTC rate is used, but it looks like users will end up getting around 26% of what they are owed.

I have included the commission collected by the site in the assets of the exchange.  I don't know what should happen to that.  Options:

* Andre gets 100% of the commission, and the users get what's left after commission
* Andre gets none of the commission - it goes towards reimbursing the users
* Andre gets 26%, just like everyone else
* something else

I've not yet received a copy of the user balances page from Andre which would confirm the above.

Disclosure: I have no funds tied up at WBX, and so have no financial interest in how this is done.

Comments?

I'm not saying that anything he has said is true.  Just that "I used to have lawyers" isn't incompatible with "I don't have lawyers now".

I think he's saying that he was at one point retaining lawyers, that the lawyers told him to keep quiet, and that he can no longer afford the lawyers.  There's no inconsistency there.

That's a great start.  Thanks.  It looks like only one user sold their balance of around $500.

I expect you also have access to https://www.worldbitcoinexchange.com/?page=users

Can you visit that page then hit control-S to save it to a file and email me the result please?  That will list balances for users and give the totals for BTC and AUD owed.  Then I can cross-check with my most recent backup.

Thanks.

Chris.

That's a good idea.

Andre, do you have any comment regarding this?  I read above that you no longer have lawyers, so I guess it's entirely up to you how you want me to refund the BTC to your customers.

I think your suggestion of using the outdated database backup is unworkable, since that would result in sending the wrong amounts out.

That's very unlikely.  The Bitcoin Consultancy made the Intersango (version 1) code open source, and WBX used that source code.  Other than that, the Bitcoin Consultancy is in no way related to WBX as far as I know.

Andre, I can still see my statement on your site.  This is proof that the database hasn't been deleted.  All the other users will also be able to log in and see their statements.  If the database was empty we'd not be seeing statement entries.

Please, get me a database backup and stop this nonsense.

I have a backup from before you locked me out.

I don't have any recent backups, since I no longer have access to the database server.

User balances have changed since my last backup.

Who currently has control of the site?  If you put me in touch with them, I can tell them how to get me the information I need to pay people back.

I have those files.  They're out of date now.  People have since sold their balances debt to other users.

Who currently has control of the site?

So will you be able to provide a database dump so I can pay your users back a part of what they are owed?

Andre, when you want me to pay out the remaining bitcoins, please take down the site to prevent further trading of balances between users who have apparently been trading their WBX balances between themselves using "vouchers", then send me a final database dump so I know how much to pay everyone.

Since you revoked my admin account I've been unable to see user balances, so currently have no idea how much each person is owed.

I'll set up a claim site so users can log in with their OpenID and specify a bitcoin address for me to refund the coins to.

Thanks.