Yup, they were the first to offer leverage or any sort of short-selling for BTC.  All the orders went through MtGox, and all the funds were stored there as well as I understand it.  So when MtGox went under, it took Bitcoinica down with it.

Ahh yes, Bitcoinica.  That was a fun place while it lasted

OMG, I come back to this forum after 10 years and @proudhon is still here?  I didn't expect any of us the old timers to still be around.  Last time I remember hearing your bearish wisdom was when BTC was < $100 

When did it disappear?  I put in for a check withdrawal a little over a week ago.  Looks like the money was deducted from my account last week sometime (I was on vacation).  Haven't checked the mail to see if I got the check or not yet though.

Not a lawyer or an accountant, but my understanding would be that you could claim it as a capital loss.

I've been using them for a long time now and never had any issues.  I do wonder how they continue to operate with such low volume though.  My best guess is that their Bitcoin exchange is a sideshow part of another business they have that is actually profitable and that's how they've continued to stay in business.

Just noticed as well that it doesn't force you to use HTTPS for the login, so if just go to mtgox.com without explicitly using https://mtgox.com you may be submitting your username/password oven an unencrypted channel.

This was my thought too.  At the risk of simplifying things too much, a fix for this might be something like (pseudo-codey):

BEGIN TRANSACTION
INSERT INTO Ledger ...
UPDATE UserBalance SET balance = balance + @amt WHERE user_id = @id AND (balance + @amt) > 0
// if previous update didn't update any rows, rollback
INSERT INTO WithdrawalQueue ...
COMMIT

Bonus points if you digitally sign the records in the database with a private key known only to your application to help guard against direct database manipulation.

But as someone writing financial software, he should have known this already.  Of course it could just be an oversight on his part (everybody makes dumb mistakes sometimes), but if there are bugs like this, there are likely other data consistency bugs that can be exploited as well.

Ahh, gotcha, I misunderstood.

Yeah, that shows they had it in 2011, but doesn't prove they have squat today.

about 23 BTC

I think CampBX would qualify there.  Can't think of anybody else though.  Maybe Cassicus if you count that.

I have about 22 BTC there.  It's a gamble that they'll come back, but I'm HODLing for now.

I also have 2 factor, and it looks like I can withdraw just fine. 

I didn't actually try to make a withdrawal, but I don't see the error message on the withdrawal page that others have mentioned (just the usual withdrawal form)

Why do you assume this?  From what I've seen the bid sum on Gox has dropped massively over the last few days.  This tells me people are reluctant to buy (obviously).  But where is that money going?  It certainly isn't being withdrawn (we all know about the huge fiat withdrawal delays).  So it's sitting in people's Gox accounts. 

So what happens when/if bitcoin withdrawals are restarted?  People who want to get their money out will buy bitcoin, send their coins elsewhere and sell them - just as they've been trying to do for the last few months.  People with low ask orders will cancel them now that they know they can send their coins elsewhere and get more money for them.  This causes the Gox price to skyrocket and prices elsewhere to (maybe) drop moderately.  And we end up right back where we were before this whole malleability mess - with a Gox price higher than everywhere else.

I've been doing this since 2011, and a year is an awfully long time in bitcoin land.  I wouldn't be making predictions a week in advance much less a year.

Yeah, but that was for selling explosives on e-bay.  Doesn't get much cooler than that 

Really?  Not saying your wrong here, but I've done a lot of trading on Gox and I've never seen that happen.

The ticker at the top of the site has always been inaccurate for as long as I can remember.  I always just ignore it.  Last I heard from Gox they said it was something about multiple currencies and conversions or some other such nonsense.

If you watch the trades go by on bitcoinwisdom.com or any other real-time charting site you'll get a much better picture of what is *actually* happening.

I know years ago Overstock was famous in the markets as a target of short sellers.  I know the CEO complained about it pretty regularly.  Could be that it still is today (haven't checked the short interest in that stock laterly)