During this transition period we were hesitant to conflict with Zhou's statements, however we have decided that a clarification is necessary.

Much of the information available is misleading.  We will be issuing a statement later today to clarify the situation.

the claims process should be finished tonight. It took long because we did not want to use a 3rd party service such as Wufoo for obvious security reasons.

The plan has already been mentioned. However I can understand it can be hard to filter the amount of information, particularly in this thread. The plan is to create a reclaim process where we can identify users based on their account information. Users with larger balances will undergo a more thorough screening process as well for safety.

Operationally, we were only days away from fully being in a general partner position. However, as previously stated, these switch overs cannot happen overnight. Once we had fully taken over, one of the first things we would have done is change the administrative access capacity to the server. We are now adamant to have that done before we put up the claims page.

We'd like to apologize for the delay in putting up the reclaim page. As stated, we want to be sure that we have full and exclusive administrative access before allowing people submit reclaims. Our technical officer is both in a different time zone than Zhou and Zhou also has obligations with his school. Initially, we needed to investigate and internally discuss how we would move forward. With a situation like this rushing things is by far the worst decision. For that reason, I can't guarantee a time frame but my best guess would be that the claims form will be done by tomorrow. I will update you once I have more information.

To all those still speculating about Bitcoinica's ownership, allow us to clear up some facts.

Bitcoinica 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.

While we appreciate everyone's enthusiasm, we would prefer to focus our efforts on restoring account access for our customers rather than squashing additional speculation and rumors here. We will be giving more announcements as updates come.

We thank everyone for your understanding.

From now on this will be the official Bitcoinica Bitcointalk account. We asked the moderators to whilelist it.