Same here, when I try to open my claim I now get: Error 102 (net::ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED): The server refused the connection.
Let me guess: The customer claims database has been wiped and there were no backups? |
|
|
|
So, if I'm all caught up on everything, the community is currently trying to decide which scenario is more likely?
1. The guy who has all of the tools, knowledge and access required to steal the bitcoins did it.
2. Actually, it was a non-english speaking Chinese man who makes a livelyhood of credit card fraud that had a "business" conversation with him online several years ago, in which he revealed that he was a millionaire, but also not very technically inclined. The subject of bitcoin came up in their discussions, and the Chinese millionaire not having heard of it, took this information to one of his more technical associates, who figured it all out for him, commited the crimes, and gave him all the money (he's very loyal). Afterward, he explained every step of what he did to the Chinese millionaire, in case his associate from long ago who's email account he used for the crime would call him up asking about it, he would be able to provide all of the details if pressured with the threat of "people on the internet are looking into this". As someone who makes millions in the credit card fraud industry, this is something that he is genuinely unprepared for.
Am I missing something?
The tooth fairy just told me that #2 is the correct answer. |
|
|
|
But, I'm really having my doubts that even Zhou Tong is real. 17? I'm having a hard time with this story now. Seems unlikely there's anyone real to prosecute.
We are venturing into conspiracy theories here, but in organized crime it is very common to control minors and use them to commit crimes because they are harder to prosecute and are often released quickly so they can be reused for the next crime while the controller stays out of sight. A good example would be the way Roma gypsy gangs operate in countries such as Spain and Italy. The BBC has a good article on it here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8226580.stmSo there is always the possibility that soon after creating Bitcoinica Zhou became a controlled sock puppet for a larger Chinese organized crime group. Not that I believe this to be the case though. But in the absence of facts it is fun to speculate :) |
|
|
|
The hacker seems to be a Chinese because he used Chinese punctuations in his English messages in the Aurumxchange ticket.
Yeah, I like how the 'hacker' is so inconsistent in his use of punctuation. For example, in the aurumXchange ticket he is unable to figure out how to use English punctuation: YES。ZHOU TONG STOLEN THE MONEY！
HE GAVE ME THE MT CODES AND I USED YOUR EXCHANGE TO CHANGE TO LR。NOW I WANT TO WITHDRAW THEM！
MY MONEY IS CLEAN，PLEASE GIVE ME NOW！ But in the earlier hotmail message to Zhou he had apparently no such issues: From: Bitcoinica Sucks < bitcoinicasucks@hotmail.com> To: verify@bitcoinica.comDate: Friday, 13 July 2012 3:39:55 AM Subject: Bitcoinica is done THANK YOU FOR YOU SOURCE CODE. BITCONICA IS NOW OFFICALY DONE! LASTPAS PASWORD: c02e1a27-5524-449f-ba65-aff9581ddedc I also appreciate the fact that although it appears his keyboard is stuck in ALLCAPS mode, he is able to write a proper subject header before switching to allcaps [Subject: Bitcoinica is done]. Also in one message he understands the difference between YOU and YOUR [e.g. YOUR EXCHANGE] but in another doesn't [e.g. YOU SOURCE CODE] Cool story bro. |
|
|
|
|
I like this proposal & thinking behind it. Strict self regulation seems to be the best way forward for bitcoin.
Can we add 'mandatory encrypted data backups in at least 2 offsite locations' to the list of company requirements?
|
|
|
|
Agreed. It seems Zhou has been digging a deeper and deeper hole for himself and needs to come up with more fantastical explanations each time. This one really cracked me up: Chen Jianhai was only able to offer the above-mentioned amount due to the cost of his laundering activities and also the significantly lower Bitcoin price when he cashed out. ...A multi-millionaire relic collector and former business partner admitting theft and then complaining about high money laundering costs when it comes to returning the stolen money. Brilliant! Whoever did it - The money better return to Bitcoinica LP asap before legal and/or criminal investigations commence or people will end up in jail. Playtime is over. |
|
|
|
We don't have all the information, and I'd avoid leaping to conclusions until you know more. Personally I'm staying out of this as I'm not qualified to make judgements and adequate people are already involved.
Genjix, what is Bitcoinica LP doing in all of this? It seems it is possible to recover the majority of funds lost in the last MtGox compromise. Bitcoinica owes it to their customers to make the utmost effort to retrieve these funds which now seem within reach. Please tell me that 'adequate people' includes Bitcoinica LP representatives. So far I have only seen Patrick post funny youtube videos to the statement thread from AurumXchange, MtGox and BitInstant which is aggrevating as a Bitcoinica Customer that has over 30K locked up in Bitcoinica for the last 2.5 months. |
|
|
|
|
Whoops! root password reset over a mailing-list
Whoops! failed to make backups & unrecoverable.
Whoops! failed to take ownership after public announcement
Whoops! failed to file GP legal paperwork
Whoops! failed to register with a dispute resolution scheme
Whoops! source code leaked
Whoops! forgot to change master password to something other than a public API key
Whoops! forgot to enable 2factor on lastpass
Whoops! forgot to enable 2factor on MtGox
Whoops! 33% of customer funds stolen
Whoops! Christopher Heaslip's MtGox account compromised.
Whoops! Zhou's secret gmail got hijacked
Whoops! Zhou's millionaire & credit-card fraudster business associate did it.
I am a pretty gullible person, and have been trying very hard to rationalize and believe all the stories over the last couple of months. But I think I just reached a limit; My mind reels trying to accept Zhou's latest revelations. It is all just too fantastical and implausible.
Don't get me wrong, I *want* to believe (just like I would still like to believe in Santa) but I ... just ... can ... not ... do ... it...anymore. There is a limit to the amount of BS someone can take and I've just reached that point. (...If I could turn BS into BTC I would have earned back all my funds already by now)
|
|
|
|
Then there was the issue of ownership. Bitcoinica Consultancy was
not yet completely formed. Zhou was an employee. Bitcoinica did not
believe themselves to be in charge. Ah, so Bitcoinica did not believe themselves to be in charge of themselves (Bitcoinica)? Glad to have that cleared up. |
|
|
|
I think that the position of the Intersango guys was that weren't technically general partners at the time of the Rackspace intrusion because the paperwork for establishing Bitcoinica Consultancy hadn't been completed and that therefore they had neither any liability for the intrusion nor any authority to initiate the claims process. Tihan's position was that they did have both liability and authority and that not completing the paperwork would be regarded as an attempt to avoid that liability.
Agreed. I appears Tihan set up CORE CREDIT LIMITED as the GP on 2012/02/09 (*1) However he did not find an actual party willing to act as GP until sometime before 2012/04/24 when the Bitcoin Consultancy signed the 'Bitcoinica limited partnership agreement' (*2). After this contract was signed the Bitcoin Consultancy group was pretty clear in Donald's announcement that they were acting as the new operators and managing directors of Bitcoinica (*3): While Bitcoinica had some previous security concerns, namely where the attack on the Linode cloud hosting provider generated them a loss of 40k BTC, Bitcoinica has fully recovered from the loss and no longer depends so heavily on 3rd party platforms. The Bitcoinica reigns have been taken up by the recognized development group called the Bitcoin Consultancy which have a record of solid security in the tumultuous world of Bitcoin. Despite their growth and their recent announcement, Tong is still a developer for Bitcoinica. However Zhou kept operating the site on a daily basis in practice and the Bitcoin Consultancy guys failed to supply the NZ Companies office with valid docs to reflect their director status and so technically the GP was not fully formed: We kept sending the paperwork back saying it's incomplete and there's problems, so when the initial compromise happened, the company was not yet fully formed. The problem is that Bitcoinica Consultancy only begun the process of being formed when the attack happened. The paper work was not completed and we weren't acting as GP. Tihan is asking us to finish completing the formation of Bitcoinica Consultancy first, while we are asking for legal authorisation to conduct payments on their behalf. Although Bitcoinica Consultancy was not fully formed in terms of documentation, the Bitcoin Consultancy guys were assumed to bear all liabilities of Bitcoinica LP ever since the takeover on April 24. Bitcoinica Consultancy has three people including two technical experts. They have been working in Bitcoinica for more than one month. And they're assumed to bear all liabilities of Bitcoinica LP.
Finally on May 30 the General Partner 'CORE CREDIT LIMITED' was renamed to 'BITCOINICA CONSULTANCY LIMITED' (*4) and a couple of days ago Genjix mentioned that they *did* finalize the formation of BITCOINCA CONSULTANCY so that would imply that they *are* the Bitcoinica GP at least at this point in time. We had no responsibility to take on payments, but we did (and finalised the formation of Bitcoinica Consultancy to do so). In the end it seems they have been playing a game of hot potato over who would be responsible at the expense of their customers. Everybody in Bitcoinica LP has been too busy covering their collective asses and pointing fingers at each other. Even at this late stage they have not been able to put on a united front and take decisive action in the best interest of their customers. There have been no police reports, no official updates on their website and previous promises such as 'All withdrawal requests will be honored.' are demonstrably false. Things have gone from bad to worse and hopefully we finally have reached rock bottom now so salvage operations can begin. References: (*1) http://www.societies.govt.nz/scanned-images/06/BC10060962006.pdf(*2) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=84042.msg953326#msg953326(*3) http://bitcoinmedia.com/first-licensed-advanced-trading-platform-for-bitcoin/(*4) http://www.business.govt.nz/companies/app/ui/pages/companies/3715077/documents |
|
|
|
Which Consultancy is Tihan referring to, Bitcoin Consultancy or Bitcoinica Consultancy? Should that be obvious from reading his post? Good question. I know Bitcoin Consultancy signed a contract before April 24. Donald wrote about that here: http://bitcoinmedia.com/first-licensed-advanced-trading-platform-for-bitcoin/This platform announced today, a new contract signed with the Bitcoin Consultancy Ltd. Bitcoin Consultancy will be taking a dominant role in the operations of Bitcoinica, ushering forward its continued safety and stable operation.
I assume this contract was the the Bitcoinica Limited Partnership agreement that genjix mentioned earlier: Quoting from the Bitcoinica limited partnership agreement...
"
4.1 Management
(a) The General Partner has exclusive responsibility for the management and control of the business and affairs of the Limited Partnership
...
4.2 Authority and Powers
Subject to and without prejudice to the generality of clause 4.1, in respect of the Business, the General Partner and its agents and delegates and their respective delegates have the full powers and the authority of the Limited Partnership and the power to bind the Limited Partnership without prior consulation with any of the Limited Partners
... In the same post genjix mentioned that Tihan would consider it an abandonment of their legal obligations if the Bitcoin Consultancy guys would not state that they were acting as directors for the Bitcoinica LP general partner: This is what I need from each of you today:
1) A sign of life that the claims processing has begun -- an announcement to that effect and/or actually paying people back
2) An email reply that you are acting as directors for the Bitcoinica LP general partner.
3) An email reply that you will supply the NZ Companies office with valid docs to reflect your director status at your earliest opportunity
I must consider anything less to be an abandonment of your legal obligations.
Donald, since you are the only one not in favor of moving forward, I will look for you to respond first. So I guess that after June 10 this is exactly what happened. Edit: Also, who is the "we" Genjix is referring to in his OP?
I think that refers to the Bitcoin Consultancy guys (Donald, Patrick, Amir) |
|
|
|
The initial confusion was over who is responsible as the GP - the part time owner devoting maybe 5 hours a week? The new owners who had no experience operating the site? The middleman who acts on behalf of the owner and has no technical knowledge? That's why payments were initially complicated and delayed. So it seems that internal wrangling over who would be responsible as a GP directly caused the delay in customer reimbursements (and by extension the more recent theft of 350.000 USD from customer deposits)? For those who doubt we were not the GP, you can run 'git log' in the sourcecode. We had no responsibility to take on payments, but we did (and finalised the formation of Bitcoinica Consultancy to do so).
So you guys finalized the formation of Bitcoinica Consultancy, but not as the GP? Then as what? A charitable organization? 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? |
|
|
|
Yeah what is up with that? @4:50: For someone like me, I can st.. I can rob the bank! haha, it is SO easy for me to like - if someone is not accepting confirmations - to take.. to get things for free.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ2rb4pHH1g#t=4m45sSure, I'm probably obviously taking this quote out of context but still... |
|
|
|
+1
Zhou has returned 6.2% of my claimed value from his donations fund. Bitcoinica LP so far has returned 0.
Note: If Bitcoinica returns at least 70% of my deposits I *will* return this donation to Zhou.
Hat tip to you sir!
EDIT: Hey Zhou, after reading up on the thread a bit more I understand your donation fund received a 100 BTC donation from the MtGox thief is that correct? Did you return that 100BTC to Bitcoinica LP or is it included in the payouts to customers? If so that would create a conflict of interest for me and I'd prefer to return a portion of my received BTCs to make sure the verified stolen coins in the donation pool are returned to Bitcoinica LP so they can be used for the official reimbursement process.
I treated the 100 BTC donation as all other donations. There's no conflict of interest if you don't believe in the concept of tainted coins. All coins are created equal. I used the official client to send the funds, so I can't control which "coin" to send users. It's also possible that the "tainted coins" were mixed into my own wallet. In this case I might be wronged but I think it can be explained nevertheless. I agree that all coins are created equal and I am not talking about tainted coins, I'm saying that if you *know* that 100 BTC comes directly from the theft ( https://blockchain.info/tree/12134191 ) then the ethical thing to do is return 100 BTC to the rightful owner (doesn't have to be the exact same coins IMHO). I understand it might be a bit late now for Zhou to reverse this action so I'm willing to send 100 BTC from the donation I received to Bitcoinica LP if requested (by an official representative). |
|
|
|
Not only that - the change in management was announced publicly on 24 April. People did have the option of withdrawing their money when that change was announced. Zhou certainly can't be blamed for people not doing that - he's not responsible for users choosing to put their faith in the
Intersango guys.
That is true, but there were certainly a lot of loose ends that might have caused people to believe he was still CEO. For example I've received emails from the Bitcoinica Support autoresponder after April 24 that still stated Zhou as the CEO: Also I believe his sig on bitcointalk.org listed him as CEO until sometime after this date. (I could be wrong here) |
|
|
|
|
+1
Zhou has returned 6.2% of my claimed value from his donations fund. Bitcoinica LP so far has returned 0.
Note: If Bitcoinica returns at least 70% of my deposits I *will* return this donation to Zhou.
Hat tip to you sir!
EDIT: Hey Zhou, after reading up on the thread a bit more I understand your donation fund received a 100 BTC donation from the MtGox thief is that correct? Did you return that 100BTC to Bitcoinica LP or is it included in the payouts to customers? If so that would create a conflict of interest for me and I'd prefer to return a portion of my received BTCs to make sure the verified stolen coins in the donation pool are returned to Bitcoinica LP so they can be used for the official reimbursement process.
|
|
|
|
It's actually not clear that $500,000 investment in CoinLab by Draper Associates and others intersects with Bitcoinica in any way. In fact, there's a post somewhere (I'll try to find it) which says that Bitcoinica approached CoinLab for help after the Linode hack and they were unable to assist, which suggests that the investment group which is the limited partner in Bitcoinica is another group for which Tihan finds investments (this isn't at all uncommon in the world of VC).
I think this is the post you are referring to: Consider that it 2 months of legal negotiation with Bitcoinica as to our role we would be taking, and when the hack happened, we we still completing the ownership transfer: 20:42 <phantomcircuit> tihan isn't like an employee 20:43 <phantomcircuit> he's a middleman 20:43 <phantomcircuit> a finder 20:43 <phantomcircuit> im guessing this huge mess is why he wont be working with him anymore 20:45 <genjix> however you dealt more with tihan, so you know more about everything 20:46 <genjix> i really haven't followed the events, nor read much of the email exchange between donald and tihan 20:48 <phantomcircuit> afaict this is effectively a series of decisions that were made in good faith which were unfortunately poorly thought out 20:48 <phantomcircuit> wendon bought bitcoinica in like october and knew immediately that there were problems 20:48 <phantomcircuit> they went to the coinlabs people but they weren't able to help or reneged on the deal or something i dont know the specifics
20:49 <phantomcircuit> when we got involved in what was it like march? they had been operating for months without a major overhaul 20:50 <phantomcircuit> the paperwork was wrong and tihan was rushing because i think he realized how fucked the situation really was 20:50 <phantomcircuit> then at the worst possible moment the hack happened The email address I have for Tihan mentions splashlab.com - so this could possibly be related to the fund (I am merely speculating here) Also Bitcoinica Consultancy suggested that there are more than one Limited Partners. Stating Tihan's fund as the 'Majority Limited Partner'. See: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=81045.msg902253#msg902253Bitcoinica LP is a New Zealand Limited Partnership which is wholly operated by Bitcoinica Consultancy LTD a New Zealand registered company.
Mr. Heaslip is an accounting professional who assisted us with registrations and company formation. He has his own business interests in New Zealand which are otherwise unrelated.
The majority limited partner in Bitcoinica Limited Partnership is an investment fund which specializes in technology start-up investments. Mr. Seale is a facilitator for this fund and was instrumental in bringing investment into Bitcoinica LP to support it's operation and growth. He has also helped bring investment to CoinLab and other bitcoin businesses. CoinLab and Bitcoinica are otherwise unrelated. Additionally, Mr. Seale is an advisor or investor with dozens of companies outside the bitcoin space. Bitcoinica LP and those companies are also unrelated. |
|
|
|
...but I assume that by now you guys (all Bitconica LP partners) must have had a crisis meeting and made some concrete decisions on how to proceed following this latest MtGox compromise? Please don't leave your customers guessing.
LOL. Based on past posts since this whole clusterfuck began, they hardly every communicate with each other except via the occasional email. I don't think there've been too many all night Skype sessions going on. So what do you assume they are doing now - Sipping Piña coladas? But I am afraid you might be right. A wise man once said: “Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” - and to be honest it doesn't seem they are even trying to solve the problems anymore. Dysfunctional company is dysfunctional. |
|
|
|
|
Show Posts
