678BTC invested in the site right now.  So, investment has fallen over 90%.  

Yet, mateo is still going nuts.  Is this a user who can't withdraw?  Why would they keep playing on a dying site with a max profit of just 3.3BTC?

I was hoping that DB would be the new JD.  Sad that it ends this way.

Indeed, that is true.  We can't have it both ways by seeking regulation and protection while using a commodity that sits outside of government.  There are still some exceptions, such as PirateAt40's theft and his argument that nothing of value was stolen because bitcoins are l0lz buckz.  That was shot down by a US court.

That gets down to the very crux of the matter: the only thing bitcoin has and the businesses that choose to use it is trust.  Once the trust is gone there is virtually no way to get it back again.  It blows my mind how stupid the alleged rogue developer at DB could be.  Here is a business that mathematically cannot lose money over the long term, yet code changes were made that would certainly eventually be found and ruin the whole party for the thief.  The code was active all of what, maybe 15 days?  The potential profit for the thief was much greater if they had just left the 1% house edge in place.

My concern is that after investing for over three weeks, and seeing the site profit more than triple during that time, my investment lost 4.5%.  For whatever reason the investment just didn't work for me even when the site was very profitable.

What I suspect happens is something like this:

1. Profit goes up
2. DB take commission.  Reduces personal profit.
3. Players then get lucky and profit dips, pushing personal investment profit negative

Rinse, repeat.  The other problem is investors really should keep plowing more money into the bankroll otherwise their investment gets diluted by other investors.

As you have detected and fixed this fraud perpetrated by someone you know, are you going to report that person to the police in your jurisdiction, or the jurisdiction where the alleged fraudster resides?  This may seem like a rhetorical question as I bet your site is unlicensed and therefore you would be complaining about fraud at an illegal business, but it does raise the question of what can be done about thieves that backdoor the site and seemingly can escape without any risk of penalty?

Interesting.  The bankroll has started to rise in the last half hour or so.  Investors must feel that within the last 14 hours the entire issue has been detected and fully resolved, and that there are no more surprises to be found.

There is goes, finally have one confirmation.

Are withdrawals from a negative profit investment account working?  Requested mine 45 minutes ago, 0 confirmations.  At least 2 blocks have been done during that time.

I was online when this issue started on DB.  Should have withdrawn my investment then and am starting to doubt the 'lucky' gambler story suddenly having a great winning streak just as this issue was blowing up.  

In the few hours that have passed, the site's operator has been busy giving refunds and trying to track down the cause of the problem.  Its been less than 12 hours, so I doubt a FULL audit of all the code used to operate the site has been done.  Everything should be checked.  Deposits, withdrawals, investment calculations, all the servers and PCs for backdoors.  Who knows what else the rogue developer has left.  If they were willing to cheat before they are sure to see no problem in stealing now.

I'm only a small investor on the site.  Wouldn't risk losing a lot of bitcoins through fraud, and my caution seems to have been rewarded.

I deposited just 0.975 total into the site when the overall profit was negative.  Now the profit is sitting on 161 and I have LESS bitcoins than when the site was reporting a loss.  How does that work?  DB has rolled back the profit to pay out cheated users, but did it roll back the commission to compensate cheated investors?

I'm withdrawing what's left before it goes to zero.

BFL hardware is valuable as a museum piece.  Future generations will gaze in wonder and think WTF were those old folks thinking chewing up gigawatts of power to create a currency 99.9% of the world never used.

You just know Kuwaitis would riot in the streets if power costs jumped to something completely outrageous like 2 or maybe even 3 cents per kilowatt hour.

Government subsidies for energy disconnect the population from the real cost of consumption while delivering chronic shortages in funding for infrastructure. 

One would logically think the run up within a year from $10 to almost $1200 was one hell of a bubble.  Trouble is it hasn't really burst.  Sitting around $450-$550 isn't really a burst level.  It would suggest speculators may be viewing the current price as somewhat of a floor, with anticipation of higher prices ahead (aka it can't possibly go any lower).  The biggest speculative bubble may yet be in front of us.  Cash in when it comes.

DB has two figures for investors: invested and profit.  Are profits automatically reinvested?  If so, there should be a total figure for the current amount invested by the user.  At the moment the two figures need to be added together to know how much is invested.

It's back! Life is good again 

Litecoin has become a pure commodity play.  A trading toy for daytraders to see how much profit they can extract from other other.  Its value is swinging so violently now that I can't see any merchant glancing in litecoin's direction and thinking 'hmm, I think I'll price goods in something that changes value by 20% almost daily'.

At least there are businesses that take bitcoin payments.  Litecoin only business are basically non existent.

I turned my miners back on recently.  I'm losing money on every bitcoin created, but it's nothing compared to the profits made in 2013.  The higher the hash rate the stronger the network.  Plus pumping it higher encourages miners not to sell in hopes of getting a better price tomorrow.

Litecoin is very viable as a pure commodity play, with traders trying to out do each other and extract profits.  Is it actually useful for commerce?  No, of course not.

Right now the comparison between same month 2014 and 2013 is favourable.  It will be interesting to see if people will still be posting comparisons between November 2014 and November 2013 as evidence for a higher price.

Buying and selling bitcoin has become harder here (Australia).  Previously I could buy and sell using local online exchanges just by submitting an order and my bank account details.  That was early 2014.  Now I need to submit my driver's license, or passport, and at least another form of ID.  Feh to that.  I don't trust the site to keep my precious details secure (hello MtGox!).

Bitcoin is still software in beta stage and a highly volatile, highly speculative investment.  I'm sorry to hear about your losses after buying in at over $800 and $600.  The losses are only realised when you convert to another currency, but nonetheless the losses are real right now in terms of your spending power.  You've lost value and it's natural you're feeling nervous.  Will the price rise?  Probably, seeing as difficulty keeps marching upwards and bitcoin block rewards will keep halving.  Chances are you'll have a lot of people cheering you on to hold your investment.