Instawallet claim process

[tvbcof]

Wow, two of those wallets were over 1400BTC each.

I see why some people have been very worried here on the forums.
...

Heh.  That is a powerful lesson in counter-party risk even if the funds do/did get returned.

Lets see...if Instawallet had, say, 20,000 BTC @ what was it, $200/BTC when they locked up, that would be about $4M.  If they return all the coins at $100/BTC that is $2M.

So (again), there is a potential for a $2M profit even if everyone is made whole.  Of course that would require perfect readings of the future markets, but...

 - If the markets went down, A temporary theft scam would make money.

 - If the markets went up, Bitcoin-Central could be shuttered.

...so there would be no loss in such a game.

Do I believe this is what happened?  Not really.  But it is one of a multitude of hypothesis which remain open at this point.  Does it matter?  Not much.  The big take-away, is (for the umteenth time) if you give someone the ability to take your money, there is every possibility that they will do so.  In Bitcoin-land it is a near certainty.

[1714525623]

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[1714525623]

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[1714525623]

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[hous]

My claim has finally came back to my wallet  Thank you for not running away!!
  Ill buy u some snails next time i am in France. 

[frendlybtc2]

My claim has finally came back to my wallet  Thank you for not running away!!
  Ill buy u some snails next time i am in France. 

Not everybody gets BTC back from Instawallet. I'm still waiting for my own.

[Boussac]

The big take-away, is (for the umteenth time) if you give someone the ability to take your money, there is every possibility that they will do so.  In Bitcoin-land it is a near certainty.

We can see that you keep going with your endless, paranoid, calomnious ranting even though you have been paid back in full.
Why do you linger in bitcoinland then  ? Why don't you tvbcof travel off to your paracoinland (Note: paracoin, strangely an anagram for paranoic, is tvbcof brainfart )?

[giszmo]

The big take-away, is (for the umteenth time) if you give someone the ability to take your money, there is every possibility that they will do so.  In Bitcoin-land it is a near certainty.

We can see that you keep going with your endless, paranoid, calomnious ranting even though you have been paid back in full.
Why do you linger in bitcoinland then  ? Why don't you tvbcof travel off to your paracoinland (Note: paracoin, strangely an anagram for paranoic, is tvbcof brainfart )?

Don't turn unprofessional for him stating the obvious. You barking back certainly won't gain you trust.

Me, too I got my coins but bitcoins I sent to a friend in Iran are still unreturned and I guess mostly for the fact that I needed a translator to call her to walk her through the process at your site to initiate the claims process. They did that and now you require her to go to the very same page and click "yes I'm sure" 3 months after the process started? I mean, seriously? It was hard enough to reach her before and this extra step just doesn't add *any* security as whoever filled in the data in the first round will obviously have a way to go there again and click that button and I want to hear from you how many people went through the first, complicated (at least for iranian non-bitcoiners) step and never came back for the second. How much money did you gain through making things more complicated than necessary?

[Phinnaeus Gage]

The big take-away, is (for the umteenth time) if you give someone the ability to take your money, there is every possibility that they will do so.  In Bitcoin-land it is a near certainty.

We can see that you keep going with your endless, paranoid, calomnious ranting even though you have been paid back in full.
Why do you linger in bitcoinland then  ? Why don't you tvbcof travel off to your paracoinland (Note: paracoin, strangely an anagram for paranoic, is tvbcof brainfart )?

Boussac serves tybcof.

tvbcof leaves.

[Boussac]

The big take-away, is (for the umteenth time) if you give someone the ability to take your money, there is every possibility that they will do so.  In Bitcoin-land it is a near certainty.

We can see that you keep going with your endless, paranoid, calomnious ranting even though you have been paid back in full.
Why do you linger in bitcoinland then  ? Why don't you tvbcof travel off to your paracoinland (Note: paracoin, strangely an anagram for paranoic, is tvbcof brainfart )?

Boussac serves tybcof.

tvbcof leaves.

Nah. He loves it. He's coming back for more.

[Boussac]

They did that and now you require her to go to the very same page and click "yes I'm sure" 3 months after the process started? I mean, seriously?

Perhpas you should think things through before barking along with tvbcof.
It did not cross your mind that the payout amount could be less than what people expected ? This extra step is a simple precaution to make sure people will let us know that they are in such situation (in those rare cases, they will then be requested to show a cryptographic proof).

Now you are writing that clicking on a button is such a difficult task that you can suggest we did it "to gain money"?
Pathetic.

[justusranvier]

The big take-away, is (for the umteenth time) if you give someone the ability to take your money, there is every possibility that they will do so.  In Bitcoin-land it is a near certainty.

This doesn't help people who are caught up in this mess right now, but tvbcof is exactly right.

Third parties who hold bitcoins on behalf of their users will eventually lose or steal those users' funds, with a certainty that approaches 100% on a sufficiently long time scale.

Trusting third parties to store money is an unnecessary and dangerous relic of legacy currencies which should be abandoned now that we have superior alternatives.

Apparently fiascoes like this will keep happening over and over again until everybody learns this lesson.

[giszmo]

It did not cross your mind that the payout amount could be less than what people expected ? This extra step is a simple precaution to make sure people will let us know that they are in such situation (in those rare cases, they will then be requested to show a cryptographic proof).

Now you are writing that clicking on a button is such a difficult task that you can suggest we did it "to gain money"?
Pathetic.

"It didn't cross your mind" that paying out without requiring to click a button would also be a nice gesture? So if the wrong person got the link, he will press the button no matter what. If the right person receives a smaller amount than expected, he will complain no matter what. Clicking the button would have no legal implication if later it occurred to me that you only sent me half of my money as the amount is kind of hidden below, so why bother thousands of users with this extra step? I assume that clicking this button costs on average 2 minutes taking into account all the people that regularly checked their wallet to see if their claimed money arrived (in my case with my Iraninan friend it cost 2 hours and involved 3 people) so the justification to having this button in the first place are pretty lousy compared to 10.000 * 2minutes = 13 days of your users' time.

[davout]

Umm...

We're talking about clicking a button here :

in my case [...] it cost 2 hours and involved 3 people

[giszmo]

Umm...

We're talking about clicking a button here :

in my case [...] it cost 2 hours and involved 3 people

yes. language barrier, chatting with a translator friend, him trying various times to call the friend in Iran who is not really online a lot, the friend not understanding a thing about bitcoin, the whole thing not getting done in days, me again and again checking back with my friend and my "translator" + the fact that I checked on my bitcoin wallet various times to see if the claimed money was released yet.

[davout]

yes. language barrier, chatting with a translator friend, him trying various times to call the friend in Iran who is not really online a lot, the friend not understanding a thing about bitcoin, the whole thing not getting done in days, me again and again checking back with my friend and my "translator" + the fact that I checked on my bitcoin wallet various times to see if the claimed money was released yet.

I can understand how clicking on a single button can become a nightmare in this context.
But you can't really blame that on us, can you ?

[AvL42]

I can understand how clicking on a single button can become a nightmare in this context.
But you can't really blame that on us, can you ?

That translator thing with iran surely can't be blamed on you, but the expired certificate (that makes my firefox not even offer a "continue anyway", thus cuts me out of the procedure) can...

PS: fortunately it were just a few peanuts in my instawallet, so I don't care too much, but others might have the same problem with certificates and more money at stake...
Without the rather useless necessity of "click that one more link", this would be a non-issue...
(and like some previous posters I don't really understand what real (not-already-refuted) advantage there is to that extra click.

[brickhouse464]

I have a wallet that has mutliple claims because I accidentally claimed it twice.  Who do I need to contact for this?  Thanks!

[Boussac]

I have a wallet that has mutliple claims because I accidentally claimed it twice.  Who do I need to contact for this?  Thanks!

If you put the same address in both claims, you should have been paid by now. I can infer from your message that you accidentally put two different addresses.
We would like to make sure which one we are supposed to use for your payout. Please contact arsy or myself with your claim numbers and amount.

[giszmo]

I can understand how clicking on a single button can become a nightmare in this context.
But you can't really blame that on us, can you ?

That translator thing with iran surely can't be attributed to you, but the expired certificate (that makes my firefox not even offer a "continue anyway", thus cuts me out of the procedure) can...

PS: fortunately it were just a few peanuts in my instawallet, so I don't care too much, but others might have the same problem with certificates and more money at stake...
Without the rather useless necessity of "click that one more link", this would be a non-issue...
(and like some previous posters I don't really understand what real (not-already-refuted) advantage there is to that extra click.

Well, the translator thing only puts an x20 to every time estimate to resolve issues but as I said before I don't see a good reason for having this extra step at all. It serves no purpose at all but costs 10k users 20k minutes.

And yes, the certificate was one minor issue when I chatted with my friend. She said it won't open, using some browser that didn't offer "ignore" neither.

[davout]

but others might have the same problem with certificates and more money at stake...

Others will click on "add security exception" (and you should probably do the same).

Without the rather useless necessity of "click that one more link", this would be a non-issue...
(and like some previous posters I don't really understand what real (not-already-refuted) advantage there is to that extra click.

This question was already answered a few times. You may not agree, or you may not understand but the answers are here.

And since I've seen this  idea fly around here a couple of times : no, it's not designed to filter-out people who have a legitimate claim but don't pay attention, people with significant balances do pay attention, and insignificant balances are, well... insignificant.

I don't see a good reason for having this extra step at all

Like I said, feel free to re-read the answers posted earlier.

[AvL42]

but others might have the same problem with certificates and more money at stake...

Others will click on "add security exception" (and you should probably do the same).

Just for the record: I found the dialogue for adding a security exception, but adding one for instawallet.org's certificate didn't show any effect - it was still telling me that the cert had expired and still only gave me the "get me outta here"-button, even after expanding the collapsed paragraph (only one, the "I know..."-one wasn't there).

I then set the system clock of my machine back by two weeks (*before* July 17th), re-opened the site, clicked that button and then set the clock back to the correct date.

This might or might not be an option for others fighting against some stubborn browser (that allows one to add exceptions for completely bogus certs but not for recently expired ones).

[davout]

Just for the record: I found the dialogue for adding a security exception, but adding one for instawallet.org's certificate didn't show any effect - it was still telling me that the cert had expired and still only gave me the "get me outta here"-button, even after expanding the collapsed paragraph (only one, the "I know..."-one wasn't there).

I then set the system clock of my machine back by two weeks (*before* July 17th), re-opened the site, clicked that button and then set the clock back to the correct date.

This might or might not be an option for others fighting against some stubborn browser (that allows one to add exceptions for completely bogus certs but not for recently expired ones).

I'm on Firefox and it works just fine...