Tuesday is going to be a huge day for Bitcoin. The Winklevoss twins, Naval from AngelList and Balaji from Counsyl are going to share their thoughts about The Bitcoin Revolution (http://techcrunch.com/events/disrupt-sf-2013/agenda/), while the Australian-based CoinJar team is exhibiting in Startup Alley (http://startupalley.techcrunch.com/company/1073).

If you're in TechCrunch Disrupt SF tomorrow, please come and say hi! As this event is a showpiece of the tech community, I think it's a great opportunity for some positive Bitcoin publicity.

[CoinJar]

Hi Bitcointalk,

I'm Ryan Zhou (aka zhoutong). I recently joined a Melbourne-based Bitcoin startup with two other co-founders Asher (Australian economist and business writer) and Jerrold (Enterprise software engineer with 10 years of experience). I think it's great to give bitcointalk forum members a quick update and overview about what we are doing and how we are improving the Bitcoin economy.

CoinJar: https://coinjar.io/

"CoinJar is a Melbourne-based startup bridging the divide between digital currency and the dollars in your wallet. Bitcoin was naturally the best place to start, being the world's leading digital currency. Founded in 2013, we quickly caught the eye of early start-up investor AngelCube who have generously provided us seed funding and mentorship."

Currently we offer three Bitcoin services:

CoinJar

CoinJar is a hosted Bitcoin wallet ("hosted" means "store just enough for transactional purposes and NEVER use it for savings") that integrates well with other parts of the platform. To be honest, there's nothing too much we can innovate on Bitcoin hosted wallets because they are so simple. However, we aim to deliver the best possible user experience. Aside from the web, we are also building an iPhone app for CoinJar wallet with great mobile experience (finally).

Please note that CoinJar wallet is a full-reserve platform with automated sweep to cold storage and we will never use customer funds for our business expenses. That said, be aware with any hosted wallet service. We recommend against our users to use CoinJar for Bitcoin savings. Always use cold storage!

CoinJar Checkout

CoinJar Checkout is the best Bitcoin merchant solution. We provide a PayPal-compatible API (in addition to our standard RESTful API) to help any online merchant to integrate. On top of that, industry-standard features: 1% fee, daily settlement in local currency (Australia only for now) and exchange rate guaranteed for 15 minutes.

CoinJar Filler

This is our killer app. Most other Australian Bitcoin buying sites charge excessive fees (usually 8-10%) and we really HATE to see that. A high fee will severely limit adoption and result in bad consumer confidence. Even though Australia has a well-developed financial system, when it comes to anything related retail foreign exchange services, it's a straight-up nightmare (even major banks in Australia all charge ridiculous ~4% spread each side for AUD/USD TT rate). As a full-service Bitcoin startup, we have sufficient liquidity available from our merchant solution and arrangements with institutional forex brokers (who give us wholesale rates), we want to pass on the savings to consumers by charging a just 2% flat fee.

Both Checkout and Filler are Australia-only for now, but we are definitely interested in expanding overseas. (Contact us at info@coinjar.io if you're interested in partnerships. Please reference this post when you contact us.)

We also have a by-product:

Melbourne Bitcoin Euthusiasts meetup! (http://www.meetup.com/Melbourne-Bitcoin/)

I attended yesterday's first meet-up session with 17 other Bitcoiners. It was really a great event and CoinJar plans to do it approximately every two months. So please join the meetup group if you're located in Melbourne!

Let me know if you have any feedback with our service offerings. Feel free to comment in the forum post.

We are in the process of setting up a company bitcointalk account.

There is an increased speculation that my identity is questionable. As almost no other Bitcoiners know me personally, I think a video introduction may be of great help to clarify some of the issues.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNVeuwxbqb0

This video was shot just now using my iPhone. I included today's ASX All Ordinaries index in the video to prove the date. I also showed my credit card issued by Commonwealth Bank of Australia recently with my full name.

I hope the speculation of whether I'm really 18 or not can come to an end. After all it's not at all important. I won't accept any requests for similar entertainment in the near future and I will focus on my work.

It has been exactly 345 days since I left Bitcoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=81581.0).

Nothing really has changed, except the soaring prices (it doesn't have a lot to do with me other than seeing my out-of-pocket 5,000 BTC personal compensation is valued at >$1 million at peak, that was over 80% of my entire Bitcoin savings and I didn't purchase more after the incident). Bitcoinica LP is still not liquidated with zero progress of the fund return.

In fact, I have been following the forum for some time (I changed my forum account password to resist my temptation to login again). I have been searching my name every 9 days ever since I logged out last time.

When I left Bitcoin, I felt that I was not adding value to the economy by developing Bitcoinica because speculation is a zero-sum game. But now after seeing speculative activity sky-rocketing without a viable solution to short Bitcoin: I'm feeling a bit regretful that I sold Bitcoinica.

Without selling Bitcoinica, the Linode hack would still happen, but the platform can still survive with the profits it generated. There wouldn't be the Rackspace hack or the Mt. Gox hack because the email server wouldn't be compromised and the source code wouldn't be leaked by an insider. The platform might still be around to serve Bitcoiners by maintaining the price stability more effectively than a single long-only exchange.

But that's daydream. I'm not going to start another Bitcoin exchange. Bitcoin is not just a speculative vehicle. It's the first currency/commodity/whatever with both 1) strictly limited quantities and 2) native mechanism to be transmitted over data networks. We desperately need killer apps that make Bitcoin a truly global alternative currency that replaces some of the functions of the traditional banking system. (Note that I'm not so ambitious that Bitcoin will replace fiat currencies. I think it's more beneficial to the world economy by being a parallel/alternative currency, like gold. This is just an opinion, though.)

The Bitcoin community has given me nightmares (mainly the reputation hit) but I'm never giving up on Bitcoin. True believers are going to be believers forever.

I don't really have any clear ideas at the moment, but I'll be more than happy to build a killer app for Bitcoin from stratch. If you have any thoughts, feel free to PM me or email me at bitcointalk@zhoutong.com.

I'm also answering any questions you have in this thread. I really hope that I can provide valuable service to the community and regain the lost trust/reputation by building something really useful.

PS> Despite my repeated clarifications, I want to say the same thing again:

As I had no financial interest in Bitcoinica LP after early 2012, I had no savings that were owed or distributable to Bitcoinica creditors other than the 5000 BTC compensation out of my personal funds. As I was neither the director nor an owner of any Bitcoinica-related entity since then, I had no power to do anything to help the creditors. 

I know a lot of people are being hurt by the incident. So is me. I really hope that my previous compensation was valuable and useful to the people being hurt. 5000 BTC at peak Bitcoin price was several multiples of Bitcoinica's sale price but I had no regret for doing something I could to help people in need.

[The important truths]

The important truths

Truth 1: My $40K LR transaction is legitimate at AurumXchange, associated with a friend in Singapore.
Truth 2: All my assets at Mt. Gox, my wallet balances, my recent Bitcoin transactions and the 5,000 BTC compensation are from legitimate sources.
Truth 3: I had no knowledge of myself being suspicious until the public statement was posted by AurumXchange. There's no possible way of me being involved in the investigation earlier.
Truth 4: Even though there's evidence showing that I'm linked to this hack, I have absolutely no relationship with all previous hacks.
Truth 5: If either AurumXchange or Mt. Gox had communicated their investigation with me earlier, there wouldn't be so many wrong interpretations and assumptions and this thread could have come out much earlier.
Truth 6: I didn't steal the money.

Who is Chen Jianhai?

Chen Jianhai is my previous business associate. He was very familiar with credit card fraud and by my observations he's quite active in financial black markets. He didn't know much technical stuff personally but he has many technical people working with him everyday. He heard about Bitcoin from me last year from a random chat, and I have not communicated with him this year.

Did he admit the wrong-doing?

Surprisingly, yes. He strongly denied at first, but he changed his attitude entirely when I mention that this matter is an international-scale crime, and intelligent netizens from all over the world are actively investigating this matter. And I also told him that the accidentally exposed a bank account number. (He claimed that it was a debit card purchased from black market.)

He used my secret identity because he felt that "it would be impossible to discover the hacker" and "it would be much easier to deny if the suspect account is an insider because you (Zhou Tong) can always distract people from investigating". I have repeatedly said that I have zero tolerance in this matter and I will report all his information, including his real bank account number and address to the police once the official investigation has started.

How did he do it?

He said one of his co-workers was quite active in Chinese Bitcoin community and he had noticed the source code of Bitcoinica being leaked. The reason that he (the technical guy) knew the correlation between the Mt. Gox API key and the LastPass master password remains unknown. I have only communicated this password in-person with Tihan in Chimelong Hotel (Guangzhou) lobby once in February this year and I'm quite sure that no one else has paid any attention to our conversation.

He was unwilling to share more information about the specifics of the hack, but he remembered that he only thought of using my secret identity *after* he was able to withdraw money from Mt. Gox. It was possible that he only withdrew the Bitcoins first, and then a few moments later, the USD.

Also he revealed an important piece of information not mentioned in the public statements: He used the Mt. Gox account of Chris Heaslip, which is a verified account, to deposit some Mt. Gox code and buy Bitcoins with the money, and withdrew all of them. This account's credentials were also in the LastPass account.

In the entire process, he used My Wallet (Blockchain.info) with Tor to access the Bitcoins, and he transferred some Bitcoins to his servers in United States as well. The IP 184.22.31.180 (which was used to access Mt. Gox accounts) is actually zeraba.ddns.info. This is actually a public SSH proxy server for some Chinese users to bypass the national firewall with randomly rotating passwords. He had attempted to access the Mt. Gox accounts with Tor and he failed (note: Mt. Gox bans all Tor exit nodes).

How about the money?

He's a multi-millionaire in China living with a family. I'm not sure how much of his money comes from illegal sources but he has a genuine interest in relic collections and he has made a lot of money from speculating precious collections.

After my warning, he seemed unwilling to return the funds. However, I have threatened him with reporting his information to the police. He later more or less agreed to return the funds to Bitcoinica users, under the condition that Bitcoinica will no longer pursue the case (and Bitcoinica isn't pursuing at the moment) and I keep his other personal information secret.

I'm currently in a moral dilemma because even though I don't have definitive proof that Chen Jianhai is indeed a long-time criminal with an active presence in stolen credit cards and possibly other hacks, it might be worthwhile to pursue with police investigation so that justice can be served. However doing that will significantly delay the claiming process of Bitcoinica and the Chinese police may not be willing or capable to effectively investigate or co-operate in this matter. Otherwise I can always get all the stolen funds from him first. The only evidence in my email account was a credit card fraud case of only a few hundred dollars, which isn't very significant compared to the Bitcoinica hack.

Currently I'm very willing to co-operate with any investigation because this is the only way I can completely prove my innocence. However the non-reponse from Bitcoinica side is indeed worrying. I have gathered some data to estimate the amount that can be recovered from Chen Jianhai:

USD: about $140,000 + $5000 frozen at AurumXchange (under SJ account)
BTC: about 20,000 BTC

There's an unknown amount of funds left in Chris Heaslip's account and I have no way of knowing the exact balance.

It's important to note that the pending $40,000 transaction at AurumXchange is my genuine transaction, so it can be used to offset the USD payment. And also all Bitcoin balances in my Mt. Gox account are mine, and it shouldn't be used to further compensate Bitcoinica customers as well.

However, my previous donation of 5,000 BTC and community donation of 101 BTC were entirely separate from this matter and the claimants can rightfully hold on to the full amount. These funds come from my profits of previous sale at Bitcoinica, and I genuinely feel that Bitcoinica users deserve the early compensation due to them being affected by the inefficiencies of Bitcoinica's operations.

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. If Bitcoinica or the community wants him to cover the full amount at today's prices, I'm willing to co-operate with any police investigation. But either case, my previous donation should have pretty much covered the difference.

It's up to Bitcoinica to appoint a bank account and also a Bitcoin address so that Chen Jianhai (or possibly I) can return the funds. AurumXchange can either return the $40,000 to me, or send the funds to Bitcoinica's nominated account (in which case another $100,000 will be sent to Bitcoinica from Chen Jianhai or me).

About my situation

I'm not asking him to transfer to me or to anyone else the amount today because it can be illegal to possess such funds until Bitcoinica has provided any written form of authorisation and/or agreement (so that I won't be wronged again because of arranging the return of the stolen funds).

It's important to note that I have been, I am and I will always be standing on the side of Bitcoinica customers, regardless of my position and situation at Bitcoinica. I have absolutely no tolerance of illegal activity of any kind, especially those damaging my personal reputation.

I promise that I have honestly reported the amounts and 100% of those recovered from Chen Jianhai will be returned to Bitcoinica's customers. At the same time, I have to emphasise that Bitcoinica should return the amounts to customers as quickly as possible, so that the company and related people will not get into serious legal troubles. It's my best interest to make Bitcoinica's customers happy so that this issue will not have further impact on my future careers.

I have no problem of either formal police investigation, or returning the funds without police investigation. I would prefer the former so that my name can be cleared, but I guess that some Bitcoinica customers may choose the latter.

Sitenote: I have released an improved design of NameTerrific (https://www.nameterrific.com/), which I finished during my lunch break, until AurumXchange's statement was posted.

[Limited-time Promotion: only BTC1.2 per year]

While still waiting for the merchant account (which requires an 18-year-old company director), I want to kick off NameTerrific Bitcoiners' Beta today.

You can already use Bitcoins to purchase domain names on NameTerrific. Most features are complete, including TerrificDNS (Standard and Anycast), DNS Snippet, Domain Admins, Profiles, etc.

NameTerrific is already running on production-quality code and infrastructure.

Visit NameTerrific: https://www.nameterrific.com

You can scroll down to the page bottom to change transactional currency. Currently .COM domain costs only 1.41 BTC per year Limited-time Promotion: only BTC1.2 per year. The exchange rate may change at any time.

All domains are registered through eNom, a large and reliable registrar.

No confirmations are required. You can purchase or transfer a domain instantly!

[Refunds]

I, Zhou Tong, hereby announce that I will resign from any position(s) in Bitcoinica LP, Bitcoinica Consultancy Ltd and/or Core Credit Ltd (whichever is applicable) effective from today, July 15, 2012.

Refunds

I have not been involved in refunding process for over 30 days. And Bitcoinica has refused my offer to take over. Here I officially withdraw my offer and relevant partner(s) in Bitcoinica LP will be fully responsible for customer refunds.

Personal Compensation

I have paid out 5,000 BTC to compensate for customers' losses. This compensation is entirely personal and voluntary. It does not affect my legal status, assumed responsibility and position with regards to Bitcoinica. No information from Bitcoinica apart from my memory (during my employment period) has been used.

Further Communication

I reserve the right to talk about Bitcoinica publicly, but I will not share any information that has been made known to me due to my employment or ownership. Any employee/officer from Bitcoinica should not communicate any confidential information with me, and any communication from this point, will be deemed as public knowledge unless stated otherwise.

Customer Documents

I promise not to access any documents owned by customers until I receive any official instruction from Bitcoinica. Up to that point, I have no secure and accountable means of transferring these documents to relevant parties.

Previous Positions

I was CEO & Lead Developer from September 4, 2011 to April 21, 2012. After that period, my position was unknown.

Expense Claims

I have attempted to cancel the accounts with recurring billing to my personal credit cards, however some accounts are no longer under my control. If there are continued expenses incurred by Bitcoinica, I reserve my right to request expense reimbursement from Bitcoinica.

Till date, Bitcoinica owes me S$990.04 (SGD) or $782.76 USD in hosting expenses, SaaS products and GitHub subscriptions since May 1, 2012.

Representation

I automatically give up my representation of Bitcoinica. My public communication will no longer represent the view of Bitcoinica.

Email Address

I will stop using ryan@bitcoinica.com as my email address and all emails sent to that mailbox may be ignored. Bitcoinica can delete my email account any time.

Other Issues

Other issues can be discussed via this thread, or through email bitcoinica@zhoutong.com.

Disclosure: The full content of this post will be sent as email to all relevant parties and all people related to Bitcoinica.

[Conclusion: The program has ended today.You can expect your eligible payout in 48 hours. See the other thread for details.]

Conclusion: The program has ended today.

You can expect your eligible payout in 48 hours. See the other thread for details.


=========== Archive ==============

Today I have been advised to withdraw myself from the personal contribution program. It's important to make it clear that I'm not involved with Bitcoinica's management and finance, and I had no financial interest since the transfer of ownership.

In any case, such kind of personal compensation program will only cause greater confusion for community members, and distract everyone from uncovering the secrets of Bitcoinica's operations and management. Even some of my own business transactions were regarded as "suspicious" and "potentially linked to the hack".

The total claim amount far exceeds the amount available in the pool, so everyone can only expect to receive 2-5% of their funds or even much less.

I'm now looking for a reputable community member to take over the compensation entirely. I will pass the credentials for claim system and the 5,000 BTC to that person as well as all the future Bitcoins sent to the donation address. I'll help to delete fake claims on a voluntary basis and the designated person will have absolute power to decide who to pay and how much to pay.

I sincerely hope that someone can volunteer to take over this job. If some payment is required for this job, I can also donate 50 BTC personally to the volunteer to facilitate the claim process.

Please self-nominate only. If you wish to nominate someone else, PM the person to ask him/her to come here to reply.

Thank you for all the trust and encouragement!

[UPDATE: The program has ended.]

UPDATE: The program has ended.

In order to prevent further confusion, I have terminated this program. Again, this is not affiliated with Bitcoinica. It's just a voluntary donation to anyone who feels negatively impacted by Bitcoinica's actions. I do not assume responsibility for Bitcoinica's debt. I do not represent Bitcoinica in any way. I do not claim that Bitcoinica has done anything right, or wrong.

Total claim value is 81787.2334 BTC. Total available funds is 5101.01 BTC. Everyone will be paid 6.237% of their claim, rounded to nearest 0.0001 BTC. You can use the link in the email to see your eligible payout.

No complaints or disputes are accepted. You still deserve a full refund from Bitcoinica. If Bitcoinica repays you in full, or you want to financially support me for my projects in the future, I would appreciate if you can send the coins to: 1G4iqMitXTmNYvY5tDaaYANWxhwJW84sr2. I will take all the money in this address to do whatever I wanted to do otherwise.

Again, this is a no-strings-attached program for both you and me. It shouldn't affect any legal proceedings or value judgement. If you have read the Conditions of Claim carefully before you submit it, you should understand everything by now.

Payments will be sent in the next 48 hours. I'll make this as quick as I can.

UPDATE 2: Everyone has been paid!

It took me about 8 minutes of hard work to finally pay everyone something. TXIDs:

50ec12d08970ade781bda0b65c4b17cf59745828898094567c0f7bec5fce988f
045dbab77795fc1f1ba700e92c18987aaabd5793b512ecfc442d1d0154666a4c
1bb7983de928455d804f82be4156beb5f56022f7efaa51bf1b69db1bb77ca31b

Everyone who submitted a claim and verified through email has been deemed as accurate. I have also checked the top list and I can recognize all usernames. If you have intentionally/unintentionally submitted a wrong claim, please pay me back so that I can build good stuff for the world. (Sponsor Zhou Tong @ 1G4iqMitXTmNYvY5tDaaYANWxhwJW84sr2)


=========== Archive ============

Dear community,

First of all, I would like to clarify that I had zero financial interest in Bitcoinica since January 2012. I can't touch any of your funds or Bitcoinica's profits. I was paid for operating Bitcoinica on monthly salary basis until April 1.

However, I did sell Bitcoinica at a profit last year. I know that I have no responsibility to pay for Bitcoinica's losses occurred after the transfer of ownership (it's business common sense). I do feel that some Bitcoinica customers were unfairly treated by inefficient internal operations.

I was born in a middle class family and vast majority of the sale was used to pay back the mortgages for my family. The remainder was used to fund my education in Australia. I don't have much money left but I'd like to contribute as much as I can.

I pledge to contribute 5,000 BTC to all Bitcoinica customers. The money comes from my personal investment in Bitcoin and I wouldn't have touched it at all without the disaster happening. In order to reduce potential problems and inefficiencies caused by Bitcoinica team, I have spent 3 hours to independently develop a claim system for this purpose. Please note that it's not affiliated with Bitcoinica in any way. The claim form was not designed to be secure because payments will be made in a separate program.

Everything will be done in a voluntary basis. Please be honest. All payouts will be made in proportion. I'll verify the claims based on the information I have. I have the right to disregard any claim if I feel it's not genuine.

If you want to contribute some money to offset Bitcoinica customer losses, please send the coins to 1Lmb3fGLtizurD3mBq3QAKZ6mVb9kGMLSh. I will add 100% of the donations in this address into the pool. Any contributions, big or small, are appreciated.

Please submit your claim here: http://bitcoinica-compensation.zhoutong.com

(Please read the Conditions of claim carefully before you submit anything. The claim will close on July 21, 2012.)

If you have any problems, simply reply to this thread.

EDIT: This is entirely separate from Bitcoinica's own claim system. You can submit a claim here regardless of your status at Bitcoinica. However if you have received full payment from Bitcoinica please give the opportunities to others. Total amount of funds is highly limited and we can only expect a small percentage of funds to be reimbursed. If you're feeling generous, you can ignore this claim system and give your share to others, who may need the money more. All payouts will be made after July 22, 2012 (depending on my availability).

EDIT 2: I can't be involved in such kind of program. Help is needed: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=93401.0

This purely off-topic. I posted on bitcointalk.org simply because I'm deeply associated with Bitcoin, and nothing else.

I have launched the Alpha version of NameTerrific to a small group of people (including you). Currently it's already production-ready, so you can really register or transfer your domain names to NameTerrific and enjoy the cool Cloud-based DNS!

Currently only PayPal is supported (I know we all hate it, but there isn't a choice at the moment). Your feedback is definitely welcome!

EDIT:

I forgot the link!

https://www.nameterrific.com/

EDIT 2:

If you want to order a domain by Bitcoin. Just generate an invoice, and then PM me with your invoice number. I'll give you a Bitcoin address for you to pay. :-D

EDIT 3:

Bitcoin payment is now automated. Comes with discounted exchange rates!

I have violated my promise (of "not to post anything [about Bitcoinica]") yesterday, by posting this in the emergency announcement thread:

Thanks in advance to all the wonderful people of this forum, and at the risk of biting the hand that once sort of fed me, Bitcoinica, wtf dudes? at least put up a place holderpage at bitcoinica.com to explain your position, very unprofessional, is this show still being run by a 17 year old? Cause I remember 17, I wasn't a financial wizard, I was in the back of a night club dry humping some girl I barley know.

Nope. I wouldn't handle things like this.

Undoubtedly, I felt upset about some confusing commenters. I objectively disagreed with Intersango guys' ways of doing things and I think if Bitcoinica is still under my control, some of our customers' immediate issues can be addressed in a more timely manner.

However, I want to express my sincere apology to the General Partners of Bitcoinica LP, because I should not have criticized them when I should bear part of the responsibility by not doing my best in securing the system. The direct cause of the issue is not important, we shouldn't argue about "if someone didn't do X this thing wouldn't have happened", instead, we should say more about "if I did X this thing could be prevented". In this case, I can express these statements:

- If I have firewalled the wallet server properly (like web production servers), this thing could be prevented.
- If I have spent enough time on the re-implementation of the bitcoin client, this thing could be prevented.
- If I have set up strict access policies, and proactively communicate with Rackspace to disable certain insecure features, this thing could be prevented.

Respect for teammates is extremely crucial to achieve productivity. Everyone's reputation has been damaged badly in this event, and we shouldn't criticize each other due to the differences in the way we work. Even though I have announced that I would leave the Bitcoin economy a few days ago, I'm still actively monitoring our customers' feelings and communicating with the General Partners about the progress.

I am also extremely grateful for the Limited Partner (an investment group) of Bitcoinica LP for exceeding their legal obligation to bear the full cost of both recent attacks. Without their active support, Bitcoinica couldn't have survived until today to serve our customers well.

In the end, I would like to request everyone who cares about the community to be objective about this matter. I am no longer legally associated with Bitcoinica and I had no control over the attacked system. However, other team members are working in their greatest ability to deliver a fair solution to everyone. I have the advantage in understanding our customers (because I'm more familiar everyone using Bitcoinica) so I keep contributing some ideas as well. Please appreciate their hard work and understand the difficulties in resolving a serious security attack. We have already assured you the full compensation.

Thank you everyone for showing your support, understanding and patience.

PS. You can claim your Bitcoinica account at https://claims.bitcoinica.com/ now.

[the best way to be known in the Internet industry is to build products that save people time, money and headaches.]

No, this isn't related to the Bitcoinica hack. The hack just makes the choices obvious and straightforward.

I, Zhou Tong (Zhou is my surname), will discontinue all involvement in Bitcoin-related projects after the Bitcoinica incident has been fully resolved until further notice.

I always believe in Bitcoin, or simply anything that brings people financial liberty. I have heavily invested in Bitcoin (I purchased one 1,000 BTC gold coin from Casascius and will keep it for as long as I can). And I have enjoyed what I have done for the Bitcoin community.

Really, thank you for all the wonderful support. It feels great to have an experimental project become the "best thing since sliced bread", and run one of the most profitable businesses in a new economy. Bitcoinica has a total historical revenue equivalent to about 0.67% of the whole Bitcoin economy. Not even Apple can match this record in the real world economies.

The first time I read about Bitcoin was in late 2010. My first reaction was "these coins are cheap, maybe it just doesn't work". I learned about Bitcoin again in mid 2011, when the first bubble started. I bought my first Bitcoin when it fell to $8. I told all my close friends and classmates about Bitcoin, simply because I think it's a cool idea. The idea of a margin trading platform quickly went into my mind, and I started working on Bitcoinica.

I lied about the time it took to build Bitcoinica. (I said I spent one week on it.) I started on September 4, 2011 and launched on September 9, 2011. Just four and half days. In a week, trading volume passed one million dollars. I started making profits like crazy.

In November, an investor approached me to acquire Bitcoinica. Due to regulatory concerns, I agreed to the deal and signed the agreement. Bitcoinica was sold for a good price. However, since the investor is unable to arrange for a replacement team, I continued to become the sole operator until Team Intersango took over two weeks ago. The investor let me keep all profits until late January, the official handover time. After handover, he continued to offer generous salary and performance bonus every month. The investor demands his identity to be protected so I won't share more information on this.

I left school in Singapore and decided to continue my education in Australia. I made the decision because of the Internet industry, and the hacker culture. I'm a web developer and I want to become a really good one. I want to work with smart hackers and wonderful designers to change the world. Singapore isn't particularly good at this. (Obviously, US West Coast should be a better choice, but for some other reasons I didn't consider US.)

I have started working on another project (not Bitcoin-related) that is going to make a little difference on the Internet. So far I have achieved great progress and I'm pretty confident about this new venture.

My life hasn't changed much except that I became more confident after Bitcoinica's success. I realized that I have the power to make something profitable. Such kind of confidence is extremely hard to get, until you really experience a significant success. I worked on several projects before, and all of them failed eventually. I thought I was confident because I kept building new stuff and improving myself. But the real confidence comes from the success itself.

I failed at one thing though, that is generating value for the society. Bitcoinica did create a place for people to trade more efficiently and provide liquidity to the market. However, speculation is a zero-sum game (or negative-sum, strictly saying). I know there can be many justifications for Bitcoinica's value, but all of them are against my intuition and values.

With the confidence and the innate intuition to build wonderful things for a better world, I decided to move on. I didn't quit Bitcoinica because it's the only source of income that I currently have.

I know that my time is valuable and industry establishment is really important. I don't want my name to be remembered by only Bitcoiners. It's true that I believe in Bitcoin's potential, but not everyone believes. If I'm a influential person I wouldn't have to do this, but the best way to be known in the Internet industry is to build products that save people time, money and headaches.

I'm going to be a young entrepreneur that solves problems for everyone. I leave Bitcoin only because it doesn't help address my real needs. Making money isn't that important after all.

I'll be a Bitcoin lover forever, and I will come back to this forum regularly to discuss about the future that's in our own hands! I will keep the 1,000 BTC  gold coin as a lifetime investment and I'm pretty confident that it'll be the best investment ever in my life.

Bitcoin FTW!

[New thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=84042]

New thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=84042

Today, we have discovered a suspicious Bitcoin transaction that doesn't seem to be initiated by any one of the company owners. Some of them are not online at the moment so this is not conclusive.

Suspicious transaction:

  {
        "account" : "",
        "address" : "182tGyiczhXSSCTciVujNRkkMw1zQxUVhp",
        "category" : "send",
        "amount" : -18547.66867623,
        "fee" : 0.00000000,
        "blockhash" : "00000000000003f6bfd3e2fcbf76091853b28be234b5473a67f89b9d5bee019c",
        "blockindex" : 1,
        "txid" : "7a22917744aa9ed740faf3068a2f895424ed816ed1a04012b47df7a493f056e8",
        "time" : 1336738723
    },

We have contacted Rackspace to suspend all our servers and lock down our accounts. All your trading and financial data is safe (as far as I know), apart from the Bitcoin loss.

Thank you for your patience and understanding while we investigate this issue in detail.

Bitcoinica has started using a new bank account in New Zealand for wire transfers. This account is opened with Bitcoinica's banking partner Core Credit Limited (an approved FSP in New Zealand).

From today, please send wire transfers to the following destination:

[EDIT: We have temporarily suspended wire deposits. More details will be announced soon.]

Also, you are now required to create a deposit notification when you send the funds. There are no incoming transfer fees, but intermediary fees (if any) will be deducted from the transfer amount.

Press Release: https://www.bitcoinica.com/posts/joining-forces-with-bitcoin-consultancy

April 25, 2012 —

It's a "big news" week at Bitcoinica. After announcing our corporate reorganization as a registered Financial Services Provider, we'd like to share another big announcement. Going forward, Bitcoinca will be managed and operated by the well known Bitcoin Consultancy team.

Bitcoin Consultancy has been an influential force for bitcoin since its early days. Founders Donald Norman, Patrick Strateman and Amir Taaki are well known for their contributions to bitcoin open source, public outreach, and special efforts to encourage best practices in online security.

The Bitcoin Consultancy team will be responsible for the daily operations of Bitcoinica, including customer support, compliance and new features. We have some amazing improvements in the works that we know our customers will love.

As Bitcoinica's founder I will continue to be involved in Bitcoinica, both aiding in the operational transition and as an ongoing contributor the long-term vision for Bitcoinica.

I have enjoyed our journey together and look forward to exciting times ahead.

Zhou Tong

Bitcoinica operates one of the most popular Bitcoin trading platforms, with advanced features such as margin trading, short selling and stop orders. Bitcoin users can use Bitcoinica to trade Bitcoins, exchange currencies and receive interests on deposits.

Press Release: https://www.bitcoinica.com/posts/registered-financial-services-provider


April 20, 2012 —

Today we are announcing some highly anticipated news.

Bitcoinica has completed its corporate reorganization and is now a registered Financial Services Provider, organized under the laws of New Zealand.

Bitcoinica began as an experiment to help investors trade bitcoins with the advanced trading features seen in traditional forex markets. The response has been overwhelming and we are very pleased that we've been able to address this need.

We recognize that it's important to operate in a transparent manner and meet all the requirements expected from a legitimate financial services organization. Therefore we have taken the necessary steps to become a registered provider of the following financial services:

- Providing credit under a credit contract
- Operating a money or value transfer service
- Issuing and managing means of payment
- Changing foreign currency
- Entering into or trading on an exchange

Interested parties can verify our registration on the public website of the New Zealand Financial Service Providers Register.

We are also releasing our Terms of Service which formalizes our responsibilities and reinforces the standards of fair dealing Bitcoinica users have come to expect.

Bitcoinica thanks our customers for your continued support and we look forward to serving you.

Bitcoinica operates one of the most popular Bitcoin trading platforms, with advanced features such as margin trading, short selling and stop orders. Bitcoin users can use Bitcoinica to trade Bitcoins, exchange currencies and receive interests on deposits.

[Notice: This deal is expired.]

Notice: This deal is expired.

Disclaimer: This deal is entirely personal. It has nothing to do with Bitcoinica, or any other business.

I'm selling Mt. Gox and Bitcoinica codes at a 0.25% discount. I accept the following payment methods:

- (USD) Wire transfer (I will NOT absorb the fees. However, I pay no incoming fees and no intermediary fees in most cases.)
- (USD) Citibank Global Transfer (This is free if you have a Citibank account, but I haven't done any transfer before. My account should be eligible for this service.)
- (AUD) Local bank transfer (I have an account with NAB.)
- (SGD) Local bank transfer (I have an account with DBS.)
- (CNY) Local bank transfer (I have an account with ICBC.) or Tenpay.

For foreign currencies only:

I will convert the currency at interbank rate (OANDA dealing rates). This should be a very attractive deal!

Examples (at current rates):

If you pay US$10,000, you will get US$10,025.00 in Mt. Gox or Bitcoinica codes.
If you pay A$10,000, you will get US$10,319.09.
If you pay S$10,000, you will get US$7,953.19.
If you pay CN¥50,000, you will get US$7,941.45.

The catch:

I will only accept transactions above US$2,500. It's a waste of time to deal with smaller transactions.

How to deal?

Email me at bitcoin@zhoutong.com and tell me how much you want to transfer. I will then give you the account details.

Why you offer this?

Cashing out from Mt. Gox is slow and expensive (average fee is $40 for me). And I have started building my diversified currency portfolio, since I have lived in three different countries.

Now, the limit order book is public.

Order Book: https://www.bitcoinica.com/pages/order_book

Our to-do list:

- Make it "live".
- Make platform-wide trade history public.
- Make it available via APIs.

This post is intended to inform all interested parties about Linode's response to Bitcoinica.

[829136] LINODE SECURITY BREACH -- $222,520 STOLEN
Status   Opened   Last Updated   Closed On   Regarding
CLOSED    21 days ago by bitcoinica    17 hours ago by tasaro    17 hours ago by tasaro    Other

Dear Zhou,

The entire Linode team would like to sincerely apologize for the security incident that affected your account. We let you down, and this is not the quality of service that we ourselves and our customers expect and deserve.

We want you to know that security has always been one of Linode's top priorities. Our entire team has dedicated themselves these past few weeks towards improving our procedures and policies relating to platform security.

As an act of good faith we have applied one year of service credit to your account. All of us are truly sorry for any inconvenience you incurred. We appreciate your business and hope that you will continue to host with Linode in the future.

Sincerely,

Thomas Asaro
Vice President
Linode

We are offering zero-spread on Bitcoinica again for the next 12 hours to thank you for your kind co-operation in our bad-tick-incidence a few hours ago.

The rules are the same as before, just market depth, no mark-up spreads. We will pay Mt. Gox fees for hedging ourselves.

In case you didn't notice, we have already sent out compensations of $0.80 per BTC for all liquidated short positions. You can check your ledger for that.