I find 'untrustworthy' to be completely fitting and appropriate.  I bet you would agree.  Am I right?

...or maybe the interest in obtaining Instawallet was as a way to fund someone's retirement?

I request to know whether user ~davout who is labeled as 'staff' has:

 - the ability to read PM's of arbitrary users

 - the ability to edit, move, or delete posts which are not his own.

 - has he ever had either of the two abilities, and if so, over what time periods.

Thanks.

I did a little hitorical reading and captured a few things of interest.  Does not look like Jan ever open-sourced things.

  https://sites.google.com/a/tcilgl.com/paymium/home/unorganized-info/instwallet_history

Unless he is more full of shit than I would expect, it looks like ~davout should have and could have noticed if the database held sensitive data in plain-text.  Whether he told ~ballsac so he could, if he chose, answer the question asked is unknown.

Reminder to self:  If someone claims a 'military grade server', run, don't walk away from the bozo.

Mt. Gox is probably every bit as likely to form a 'plunge provocation team' which would suite the needs of their important customers better.

(Yes, that is baseless slander, and no, I do not believe that Krapels is a crook.  He has shown no sign of this that I've detected and I've found various of his actions (and in-actions) to be honorable.  OTOH, he's one of the few guys who can make a fortune without resorting to outright theft.)

Personally I'm pretty ambivalent about the guy.

My hopes for Bitcoin to be 'revolutionary' in a healthy way were at one time significant albeit always guarded.  Now to me more and more "it's about the money, Lebowski."

The:

 - Mt. Gox owning the pleb's exchange (at least), the bitcointalk.org forum, a good portion of the Bitcoin Foundation, etc
 - The likelihood of mining effort being significantly monopolized when modern ASIC's come out
 - The prospect of full nodes being as rare as hens teeth when system growth can be unleashed
 - Various other things which I won't mention

all have worked to quash my own more altruistic hopes for the solution.  But the efforts and bodies which have evolved are producing a solution trajectory such that the actual value of my own BTC stash will be maximized.  I cannot complain about that, and can honestly thank Mr. Vessenes for the role he has played and is playing in the ecosystem.  Or that I suspect him of at least.  If I fail to capitalize effectively that will be my bad.

I pulled the info straight out of my ass.  That's why I used terms like 'I figure' and 'I assume'.

Not that some of my conjectures don't have some basis in observation however.  For a period of time I had hoped to make use of either Tradehill or Coinlab's services so I've been watching for updates and noticing how extraordinarily silent they've become.  At least in terms of threads on this forum, responsiveness to communication attempts by us plebs,  and updates on their respective web sites.

It is especially interesting to note that in addition to being the CEO of this organization, ~vess is also the chairperson of the Bitcoin Foundation.  Or at least has a strong leadership role in each.  One has to conjecture that their interests are aligned to some extent.

I assumed that Coinlab got the class of customers they wish to provide service to and are happily chipping along.  Same with Tradehill.

I figure that some months ago Bitcoin markets generally move into the same mode as Wall Street.  That is, where a bulk of the participants are getting ass-raped without even knowing it and the real action happens outside of the channels they see.  Unlike in traditional markets where there is some token body who is, in theory, responsible for protecting the participants there is no such thing for Bitcoin at all.  Also unlike the traditional markets, the 'normal' participants still have plenty of wealth though.  The markets will, I'm confident, evolve to be highly efficient as stripping this.  When that task is done they can move on to mostly playing amongst themselves.

For what it's worth, here is my analysis cribbed from an e-mail I sent do an associated earlier today:

----------

Such bounces are common in big buys or sells because there is a large no-mans land between the two liquidity.

One possibility and something I've been anticipating is that if/when big money enters, they'll have the will, ability, and need to shake out the flighty geeks and petty criminals who hold much of the currency base.  This pretends, however, that they have formed some sort of a cooperative relationship with one another which might be a challenge.  Certain of the money seem likely to me to be prone to eat one another's lunch, but no party has an unlimited appetite (except perhaps the fed.)

Another possibility is that there is a technical glitch.  I watch the #bitcoin-dev IRC, but when serious things happen, the half dozen developers who actually mean anything can and do disappear to handle the issues more efficiently.  This may be happening now.

Most of the time I never understand or can appreciate the forces which cause such things to happen.  Things are currently so unstable that pretty significant events can probably be explained by chaos alone.

BTW, and you may have already realized this, but if you have secret keys you control value in the block chain.  I consider the block chain to be fairly independent of the protocol, and likely to form at least part of the basis of value in whatever thing or things crawl out of the smoking crater should Bitcoin collapse.

I just had a peek at the stock market which I rarely do (my having no horse in that race) and it seems to be doing swimmingly today.

You bring up a good point.  I would say that from a legal perspective nothing communicated to or by 'Boussac' has any meaning.  Paymium could always just say 'Boussac at bitcointalk.org?  Never heard of the guy' if we are unfortunate enough to need to take this thing any distance.

I think that all communications should go through official channels starting at whatever can be obtained from the Paymium family of web sites and including any e-mail addresses which are referenced through official e-mails or snail-mails from them.

I am sorry to report that so far I have gotten no bites on my solicitation for the initial legal work associated with ensuring that police reports have been filed.  I think it is time to explore other more mainstream channels.  I would appreciated assistance from any user in France who may have the ability to help identify and evaluate potential legal assistance.

I have also set up the following:

  https://sites.google.com/a/tcilgl.com/paymium/

I would like to publish as much information obtained by the community as possible which may be helpful in our efforts.

I would also love it if someone else had a better idea or wished to take a management role in this effort.  I suck at management and hate it and have a lot of other things I would rather do, but I don't want to let this thing just die away.  Crooks believe (correctly) that they can shit all over the Bitcoin userbase and get away with it without a fight.  This is wrong and and bad for the ecosystem and it pisses me off and I feel some desire to see it change even if I have to put in some effort.

A little history (as I understand it):

'Instawallet' was conceived of and implemented by a user named ~jav.  He seemed to me like a pretty straight up guy.

~jav got tired of it and/or busy and ~davout adopted it because 'it was to cool to let die' or something along those lines.  I don't recall if I started using it before or after this switch.

It would make perfect sense to me if ~jav never really put in the effort to adequately secure the thing.  It would be a good reason to drop it since such work would be tedious.  Remember, back in those days BTC were not worth anything near what the are today.

It would also make sense that ~davout never got around to either evaluating th implementation, or doing the necessary security work (assuming he was even capable.)  He has likely been very busy with other projects.  In short, it would not surprise me if it were true that theft of the database would result in loss of the URL's.

As I recall, ~jav open-sourced it and ~davout just took his work so perhaps some of these conjectures about at least the original ~jav vintage implementation could be verified.  A good task to run down at a later date since it is late tonight and I'm tied up most of tomorrow.

---

But, as I said in the other note, the ONLY thing that adequately explains the evasiveness about the supposed police report is that it is bullshit.  And the only thing that adequately explains them lying about that is that they are, in fact, the perps.

This in turn means that they have all the URL's and and all the coins and the mythical 'attackers' do not.  They could give all of them back at any time if they so chose.

It was a giant favor to re-remind me of the various potential attack vectors and spur me into being reasonably proactive about implementing a good risk management strategy.  Things which made sense at $3/BTC now seem horribly risky at $233/BTC.

Bosack claims that they have filed a police report but refuses to give any details.  There is no reason for this unless he is lying as I see it.  That he would lie about it is, to me, extremely compelling evidence that this is a complete sham.

This means, to me, that they not only have all the coins but also that they could open Instwallet safely and let users reclaim their funds.

I have started the process of moving the ball forward here, and I don't intend to cease until and unless everyone gets their 100% funds back by next Monday(*).  Even if they do get their funds back but it takes longer, I still intend to pursue this matter until it is clear that it has pushed into the French court system(**).  Where it goes from there I have less interest.

I am disappointed to report that I've got no bites yet on my request for and estimate of initial legal services:

  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=171764.0

but if that ends up not going anywhere I'll switch to more mainstream channels.  If anyone knows a suitable candidate for provisioning this service I'd appreciate having them pointed in my direction.

* The Paymium scum is welcome to take the 20BTC from my account for their troubles.  I suggest they do so and call it a win.  I was fully aware of the risks and have nobody to blame but myself for the loss.  I've PM'd them earlier so they know the one account from which theft is authorized.

** I have a short attention span so I cannot make any 100% promises, but as we used to say back in one of my earlier 'jobs': "ESSAYONS"

I don't know either, but it's a Godamn good idea.  I bet the bank's marketing department would just loooove to have their name dragged through the Bitcoin muck in mainstream news sources, so as long as they entertained any relationship at all it might be that their legal department could be convinced to take an interest in the situation.

I'm tired of fucking around with these guys:

  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=171764.0

I wish to get cost estimates for the following scope of work:

Required prerequisites:

1) Provide verifiable information on your qualifications to perform the work, and accept independent verification of these.

2) Accept remittance for services in Bitcoin (BTC) with decent accounting which can be legally attested to as being accurate.

3) Work exclusively on behalf of those who retain said services for the time this work is underway, and as it relates to the event in question.  The duration of this work is expected to be short.

Work:

1) Understand generally the Bitcoin 'ecosystem'.

2) Become roughly familiar with 'Instawallet', 'Paymium', 'Paytunia', and 'Bitcoin-Central'.

3) Understand generally the failure which resulted in Instawallet users losing access to the URL's they were provided and which make it possible to use the service.

4) Use whatever legal means are available to discover whether a police report (or whatever) has been filed by the principles of the umbrella organization responsible for 'Instawallet'.  Provide understandable feedback on any information gleaned.

5) Formulate strategies of filing effective police reports to the proper authorities should national or international effected parties wish to do so.

Anyone interested it providing this service, please leave me a brief PM with a contact e-mail and nothing more since this forum's messaging system is not expected to be secure.

Thanks,

 - Tom

Evidence?

When it comes to unfounded accusations, 'what's good for the goose is good for the gander.'

Thanks for your thoughts.  I'm actually a lot more interested to know what the French investigators think though.  And have every intention of ensuring that they at least have the opportunity to explore the situation if they find it compelling enough to do so.

I'm not about to wait 90 days to ensure that the ball starts rolling.  Show of hands about who feels at this point that Paymium is being sufficiently evasive that we should solicit cost estimates from a French attorney or para-legal to assist in filing police reports?

Actually it is very possible that Paymium will prejudice people who are willing to file police reports when it comes to pay-outs, and ~davout is still staff here who I presume can evaluate PM's posted under this forum.  So, don't show hands or use PM's just yet perhaps.  I may be inclined to produce a personal e-mail addy or some other method since my identity is shot anyway if I end up playing an organizational role in this effort.  And I suck at such things

If one is a high-lost-value user who Paymium has offered to make whole in exchange for dropping it, I would suggest jumping on the deal.  You could always choose to 'do the right thing' later, particularly if you are careful to keep any evidence of the deal.  Myself having modest losses it is not about the money to me.  It's about trying to make sure that the crooks (or incompetents) in the ecosystem have to worry at least a little bit about their malfeasance (or incompetence.)

You can provide the information necessary so that we may verify that this attack and theft is being investigated by the relevant authorities.  This was a crime, and I desire to see it treated as such.

It is worth a lot more to me than the BTC I potentially lost to see that a counter-attack occurs on every legitimate front.

I do not believe that you studies this thread so poorly as to have missed the discussion of this point.  I find it almost certain now that you are being evasive.