[How many Bitcoinica customers have received their money back?]

Question: How many Bitcoinica customers have received their money back?

Answer: 0

Why? After all it has been well over a year since Bitcoinica locked customers out of their accounts claiming that all withdrawal requests would be honored.

Imho, the key reasons are these:

• 1) No backups: Bitcoinica was holding over 1M USD in customer deposits but did not bother to create a backup. As a result they lost all their customer data.
• 2) No responsibility: The VC set up a limited partnership with themselves as a limited partner (to avoid liability) and the Bitcoin Consultancy as the general partner. However the Bitcoin Consultancy never finished the formal paperwork establishing this fact. When things went south both parties simply walked away, leaving their customers completely screwed.
  

Since the beginning of this year a NZ court appointed liquidator has been responsible for getting depositors their money back (or what is left of it). Before the Bitcoinica partners walked away they send most of the customer deposits into an account at MtGox. So far MtGox has been unwilling to hand over the account to the liquidator claiming it would be against their 'privacy policy'. Despite numerous attempts from the liquidator to comply they have not succeeded. What happens if MtGox goes belly up? Well it ain't going to be pretty and will leave the Bitcoinica customers in an even deeper hole. (Liquidation in a liquidation? we must go deeper)

In the end I feel MtGox will end up being the biggest thief. The hacks amount to perhaps 30% of customer deposits. MtGox can simply hide behind their lawyers and privacy policy to keep the rest. For them it is just a waiting game. The Bitcoinica liquidator is burning through whatever USD balances were left on the Bitcoinica NZ bank account (at the expense of customers of course). And when that runs out before the end of the year I suspect they might just throw in the towel. The only alternative would be for the depositors to sue MtGox (Throw good money after bad and feed the lawyers), or hope that the Cartmell suit will have a positive outcome that results in regaining access to the Bitcoinica account on MtGox. Unlikely.

I really hope there will be some kind of happy ending to this disaster. For most Bitcoinica users it has been a long and painful journey that exposed the worst aspects of the Bitcoin community. I guess most depositors have given up at this point, which seems exactly what the other parties are counting on. As for me, I'd like to beat this dead horse one more time (since it is only playing dead).

[So if you happen to be a Bitcoinica creditor/investor - Now would be a good time to email Taslim at: Taslim[dot]Bhamji[at]pkfcr[dot]co[dot]nz]

Today I received the following email from Taslim Bhamji, a Senior Insolvency Administrator from PKF Corporate Recovery & Insolvency Ltd (the NZ Court appointed liquidator for Bitcoinica LP):

We confirm that we have been appointed liquidators of the Bitcoinica Limited Partnership, which is registered in New Zealand. We are currently collecting information and our immediate priority is securing the investor funds (in both cash and Bitcoins) and determining investor balances. It is too early to know how long the liquidation process will take, but we would like to move as quickly as possible towards a distribution to investors/creditors.
 
With this in mind, we would be grateful if all investors and creditors could email us and provide their address and contact details, as well as details of any amounts owed to them and proof of the claim. Also the Liquidators’ first report is due to be sent to all creditors by 26 November 2012, but we are unable to do so if we do not have contact details for creditors or investors.
 
We would also appreciate feedback from investors on whether they would prefer to receive a distribution in the form of Bitcoins (where possible) or whether they would prefer a straightforward cash distribution. We are still seeking to determine what options are available to us at law, and will let investors know in due course.
 
Lastly, we are aware of legal proceedings underway in California against the Limited Partnership. The Liquidators have sought to have the Limited Partnership withdrawn from the proceedings on the basis that it is in liquidation. We urge creditors/investors to refrain from taking any legal action against Bitcoinica, as it will simply add to the plaintiffs costs with no benefit. Any legal claims against Bitcoinica would need to be made in the New Zealand Courts. Judgements against the Limited Partnership in any foreign jurisdiction will not be recognised by the liquidators.
 
Please contact me directly if you have any queries or wish to bring any matters to the liquidators’ attention.

So if you happen to be a Bitcoinica creditor/investor - Now would be a good time to email Taslim at: Taslim[dot]Bhamji[at]pkfcr[dot]co[dot]nz

Note: I understand Bitcoinica got a few false claims during their claim period back in May. If you don't have a valid claim with Bitcoinica already then please realize that sending a false claim to a court appointed liquidator is probably not a very bright idea.

Sorry, posting in newbie because I just registered and cannot respond in the relevant thread.

This is in response to: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=81045.msg897900#msg897900

We are building an account claim page. You can submit your account information, financial information (balances) and trading information to verify your identity. We will then match with the records we have. If they have matched, we will send Bitcoin balance to your nominated Bitcoin address within 24 hours and USD balance with unrealized P/L to your email as a Mt. Gox code. If you sent the funds to us via Wire (i.e. you don't use Mt. Gox at all), we will try our best to fulfill wire transfer requests.

Current positions will all be liquidated at a settlement price. We haven't decided the price yet, but my personal estimate is 4.98 / 4.94. (All long positions can liquidate at 4.98 and all short positions can liquidate at 4.94, we pay the spread for you.) All unrealized P/L will be settled in USD. If you don't have sufficient USD balance, we will use your BTC to settle, with the mid-point exchange rate (again, we pay the spread).

The page will be up in a few days but I don't have accurate information on this. Patrick is working on the page now. Thanks for your understanding and patience.

This worries me. Some people have a significant amount of USD and BTC tied up in Bitcoinica. The hacker seems to have had full access to the MySQL database containing account information, balances etc. The hacker also hinted this will be public information soon using the 'MASS LEAK SOON' message in the stolen bitcoin transactions. So matching accounts based on name, email, account balance is a poor idea. I understand the AML data is not compromised but not everybody might have the exact digital copies of the documents they sent initially, and it might be easy to forge and/or find similar data online for some cases. This process depends on human judgement and is not foolproof.

Any bitcoin transfer has to be at least authorized through the owners email address. Not just through some random 'claim page'. Sending bitcoins and/or USD as a MtGox code is also a poor idea since email is not encrypted and can be intercepted. Since the hacker compromised a mailserver already and is notified the claim process will work like this I can imagine they will try to intercept all MtGox claim codes sent out over email by Bitcoinica to drain customer accounts.

Finally, Would it not be possible to bring back a read-only version of bitcoinica with trading disabled that still allows users to log in using their password & two-factor code and use the exiting transfer functionality that does not depend on email? Unless the 2-factor login has been compromised also I assume this should be a more secure approach?

Worst case: Impersonator using leaked account data runs away with my BTC, and the hacker intercepts the unencrypted MtGox codes for USD sent to my email.