Instawallet claim process

[tvbcof]

Did Phinn ever get his 1000 BTC returned?

Ask him. I do not know about any valid claim of such amount. It sounds insane to store so much on an instawallet.
If there was ever a valid claim from this person, it would have been paid back.

I'll take that as a 'no'.

Ordinarily I would have trouble believing that a principle in a business would be so out-of-touch that he would not know the status of a nearly $1M claim.  In Boussac's case, maybe.

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[Boussac]

I'm not saying they should go on the ignore list. I'm rather saying that even though some customers are acting uncivilized, you should be the better man, and answer them without sinking to their level.

Understood; please bear in mind that instawallet had users but no customers since it was run as a free service.
As a volunteer, all I owe to the users is a full refund, making sure I pay only valid claims. The rest is about mutual respect.

[Entropy-uc]

Did Phinn ever get his 1000 BTC returned?

Ask him. I do not know about any valid claim of such amount. It sounds insane to store so much on an instawallet.
If there was ever a valid claim from this person, it would have been paid back.

I'll take that as a 'no'.

Ordinarily I would have trouble believing that a principle in a business would be so out-of-touch that he would not know the status of a nearly $1M claim.  In Boussac's case, maybe.

It would be pretty hard to be so out of touch.  It's 2 pages back in the thread.

To be fair, davout is currently working on my three claims totally 1,100+ BTC via email.

To be fair too, I'm not in the "working on it" phase yet. 
Still in the "collecting factual information" phase. I'll try to update you this week.

... and the coward will not come out and confirm definitively he will not be returning my coins ... in which case I could initiate counter action ... so still waiting ... but the clock is ticking.

I asked you a couple of questions which you ignored. If you want a conversation, then converse. If you want a monologue then you don't need me.
If you, a bitcointalk regular, want to blame me for not finding five minutes in three months to make a claim, then go for it, blame me.

Whatever you call it or are doing, it's still an honest attempt to get a resolution, and that's what I was I trying to relay, davout.

~Bruno Kucinskas

[justusranvier]

Ordinarily I would have trouble believing that a principle in a business would be so out-of-touch that he would not know the status of a nearly $1M claim.  In Boussac's case, maybe.

On the other hand, it's perfectly consistent with the normal behavior of a scammer.

In any case, this thread will stand as a monument to the reasons that nobody should ever trust them in any capacity ever again.

[giszmo]

Ordinarily I would have trouble believing that a principle in a business would be so out-of-touch that he would not know the status of a nearly $1M claim.  In Boussac's case, maybe.

On the other hand, it's perfectly consistent with the normal behavior of a scammer.

In any case, this thread will stand as a monument to the reasons that nobody should ever trust them in any capacity ever again.

Yet I'm the only one to call them out as scammers? Come on, how do you expect future customers of theirs will find this thread?

[thelema93]

Dear Instawallet users,

I am a co-founder of Paymium, the company behind Instawallet.

We have now finished our analysis of the events that lead to the suspension of the service.
An intruder was able to access the instawallet database. As a result, all "hidden" urls, i.e wallets, have been compromised and are no longer safe to store bitcoins.
Funds were stolen: a police report was filed by Paymium with BEFTI ( Brigade d’Enquêtes sur les Fraudes aux Technologies de l’Information, a unit of the French "Police Judiciaire") and an investigation is in progress.
Computer forensic analysis is in progress with independent auditors.
We will be able to refund all instawallet balances up to 50 BTC per wallet.
In the next few days we are going to open the claim process for Instawallet balance holders to claim the funds they had stored before the service interruption.

Important information on claims submission:

1. For the first 90 days we will accept claims for individual Instawallets. Your wallet's URL and key will be used to pre-populate a form to file the claim.

2. After 90 days, if no other claim has been received for the same url, your Instawallet balance under 50 BTC will be refunded.
If several claims have been filed for the same url, we will process those claims on a case by case basis, under the presumption that the claim we received first belongs to the legitimate balance holder.

3. Claims for wallets that hold a balance greater than 50 BTC will be processed on a case by case and best efforts basis.
The number of such wallets represents less than 0.5% of the number of funded wallets in our records.
In other words, 99.5% of instawallets will be fully refunded.

If you file a claim with Paymium, please do not contact us regarding your claim until the 90-day period has elapsed.
We will need to wait the end of the period to send the refunds as some people might have forgotten about their instawallet and need time to retrieve it.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

EDIT:
The reason some of you have not seen their payout is simply that they did not approve the proposed payout.
We need discharge from the people we pay out otherwise there is no way to remove the liability from our books.
The discharge is required also because the database might have been tampered with: even though it may be minimal and partial, there is a non zero probability that the proposed amount does not match the expected amount.
Payouts may be approved until the end of the year. Unapproved payouts will be considered as donations after the end of the year.
A sendmany transaction will be sent  in January 2014 to those who filed a claim on time but failed to approve their payout so far.
To approve a payout, simply visit your wallet page (do not forget to type https://www.instawallet.org/w/yourwalletsecreturl in full). Thanks for your cooperation in getting these claims resolved.

Can you please call Mark Karpeles and suggest he does the same courtesy to his customers?

[TheFootMan]

I'm not saying they should go on the ignore list. I'm rather saying that even though some customers are acting uncivilized, you should be the better man, and answer them without sinking to their level.

Understood; please bear in mind that instawallet had users but no customers since it was run as a free service.
As a volunteer, all I owe to the users is a full refund, making sure I pay only valid claims. The rest is about mutual respect.

Mutual respect is important. But I think many people can lose their cool if things are dragging out too long, I know I would.

As for the difference of a user and a customer, if you're referring to a customer as someone that's a paying customer, that might be the case, not sure if instawallet generated any fees for the operator, but I would think that most customers/users is not particularly concerned about the term used to describe them, but rather just interested in having their claim solved.

But I think everybody got your point in that it wasn't a premium service with 24/7 customer support. :p

[tvbcof]

I'm not saying they should go on the ignore list. I'm rather saying that even though some customers are acting uncivilized, you should be the better man, and answer them without sinking to their level.

Understood; please bear in mind that instawallet had users but no customers since it was run as a free service.
As a volunteer, all I owe to the users is a full refund, making sure I pay only valid claims. The rest is about mutual respect.

In order to more effectively play the 'we are so generous in shouldering the burden of running this free service for the benefit of the community' card,  it would be handy to Mesrrs Boussac et-al if people would forget that his group took possession of a large mass of BTC from Jan who developed Instawallet.  This in spite of the fact that one of their own in-house developments was a service which did the same thing.  ('Not saying anything...just saying...')  One way or another, it was a sure bet that a great number of BTC in this BTC hoard that Jan gave/sold them would never be claimed since the people who put them there had abandoned them.

Of course in order to identify the unclaimed BTC which were free for the taking, Instawallet itself would have to have a little hicup and be forced to shut down.  Miracle of miracles, it seems that that happened.  And at an opportune time to on the top of the 2013 $250 peak.

I never sent any BTC to Instawallet after Paymium/Bitcoin-Central/whatever took possession of the pot.  I did get paranoid and drew down about half of my holdings (which had increased in value from about $100 to about $5,000 in increased valuations) before the little problem.  My losses were returned to me promptly with the first round of payouts.

[justusranvier]

Yet I'm the only one to call them out as scammers? Come on, how do you expect future customers of theirs will find this thread?

I never had any money in Instawallet so I'm not going to use the trust feature in this forum, but I do point out this thread in relevant situations.

[Boussac]

It would be pretty hard to be so out of touch.  It's 2 pages back in the thread.

I am not so out of touch as you would like to make believe.
Hundreds of refunds sent are a testimony that we stay on top of the issues in spite of all the dirt thrown at us.
We looked at the evidence provided by the claimants and if you friend was not paid back its because the evidence was NOT supporting his claim.

[Boussac]

Can you please call Mark Karpeles and suggest he does the same courtesy to his customers?

They announced a solvency problem so a claim handling process does not seem like an option for mt gox

[marcus_of_augustus]

Payouts may be approved until the end of the year. Unapproved payouts will be considered as donations after the end of the year.

Would BTC-Central Paymium davout Boussac or whoever like to say how much of the unclaimed BTC ("unclaimed" being defined under the specific terms created by Paymium BTC-Central davout and boussac) awere considered to be "donations"??

They closed the window on claims after a short period and said "those BTC are ours now, fuck you for being slow." ... and followed up questions with abuse.

[jaycee1974]

Nothing new here!
I´m on the wait!

[CMDlu]

I don't think is right you transfer the partial loss of theft to the user body

[lucretiamyreflection]

 
nm sent PM.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

It seems like it would be easy to answer the simple questions asked by Marcus above.

If it so easy then I suggest you start putting together the report with all the transactions reported here. I'll fill in the blanks.
You can be  a volunteer too like the people who ran instawalllet as a free service.

...unless there is reason those 'haters' are correct.  Lots of MtGox people used similar arguments when people challenged their solvency.

Mtgox customers are victims, not haters.
The haters are not victims because they got their money back  yet continue to spread FUD.

Did Phinn ever get his 1000 BTC returned?

Ask him. I do not know about any valid claim of such amount. It sounds insane to store so much on an instawallet.
If there was ever a valid claim from this person, it would have been paid back.

Well, jack me off and happy 1 year anniversary.

Back in December, a dialog was started between me and Davout via emails to look into the three claims I submitted on the first day last year claims were able to be made. Back then I submitted three claims: 1000 BTC; 132 BC; 0.835 BTC. After several back-and-forths, and after even denying all three claims, guess which one they finally honored. You guessed it! The latter. I can finally retire and purchase my own island with that ~$700 USD and falling (actually already fell) amount.

So, because I was insane to have 1,132 BTC on InstaWallet, it gives them the right to keep it. I consider that insane, not my actions. What's really insane is just a couple weeks prior to the supposed "hack" I expressed a concern about InstaWallet, but was rest assured that all is well with no need to worry.

Well, it now is going to look like Paymium and Bitcoin-Central will need to do the worrying for if this is not settle fairly quickly, the bank backing Bitcoin-Central WILL be conducting an audit on both those and InstaWallet's concerns. After asked hundreds of times to provide who conducted the audit investigation, that question was never answered, thus safely assuming there never was one, simply doing it themselves.

I'm Goddamn sure they don't want ANY official body looking into their books, fearing what they will find. The following is not a threat, but a promise. If this is not resolved immediately, I WILL make this a crusade to have said books of ALL three entities opened. We can all clearly see via the 'blockchain' that there's still over a million bucks in InstaWallet's coffer that belongs to its customers, and 1,132 BTC of it is mine.

I will start on that promise now by penning a Scam thread about all three entities, and only lock it once this issue has been resolved, with Post #2 of said thread reserved for later stating that InstaWallet has resolved my issue.

I started penning in this thread relatively calm, but soon went on a vitriol attack, then later was informed by a fellow Bitcoiner to chill, whereupon I did, realizing that you'll get more with honey than vinegar. Well, I'm sad to say that vinegar was stuck up my ass and my balls about to rust off, thus it's back to my turn to bust some balls.

My two wallets that yet to be returned to me:

https://www.instawallet.org/w/rL2DhMWW9tDvs24oFwtiq99zhh7A3ii6bg
https://www.instawallet.org/w/gZh1afVVl5aAtjNwXo0BiYChTxjwln33ab

Where I was rest assured that all is well...

I like IW, but something has changed recently and I can't put my finger on it.

[...]

~Bruno K~

PS: To be clear, the wallet address is 1JppeHVdYQEBGR4uHVTqLQsb2FY1wUTziH

Dear Bruno,

Instawallet has always worked like a shared wallet, nothing has ever changed in this respect.

The fact you used to see coins remain at the deposit address simply means that :
 - there used to be less coin turnover,
 - the cold storage was less used,
 - any combination of the previous reasons.

Some stuff does change though, you used to get your transaction ID back immediately when sending coins, that's not the case anymore, sends are now asynchronously handled by a background worker. That's much more secure in terms of potential race conditions, much more robust in terms of infrastructure, much more maintenable (since now I can simply stop the worker, do some work on bitcoind and switch it back on).

The traffic also increases a lot, to give you an idea, our average weekly turnover is around 10kBTC in, and 10kBTC out, it recently peaked at around 50kBTC/week.

Your wallet has exactly the amount you expect to be available, you can't rely on blockchain.info to tell you how much is available in an account on a shared wallet.

This is how your balance is calculated :



Hope it's clearer

That's a fine explanation I can live with. Thanks, bud.

~Bruno K~

I felt all was well in spite of this comment...

I like IW, but something has changed recently and I can't put my finger on it.

[...]

~Bruno K~

PS: To be clear, the wallet address is 1JppeHVdYQEBGR4uHVTqLQsb2FY1wUTziH

Dear Bruno,

Instawallet has always worked like a shared wallet, nothing has ever changed in this respect.

The fact you used to see coins remain at the deposit address simply means that :
 - there used to be less coin turnover,
 - the cold storage was less used,
 - any combination of the previous reasons.

Some stuff does change though, you used to get your transaction ID back immediately when sending coins, that's not the case anymore, sends are now asynchronously handled by a background worker. That's much more secure in terms of potential race conditions, much more robust in terms of infrastructure, much more maintenable (since now I can simply stop the worker, do some work on bitcoind and switch it back on).

The traffic also increases a lot, to give you an idea, our average weekly turnover is around 10kBTC in, and 10kBTC out, it recently peaked at around 50kBTC/week.

Your wallet has exactly the amount you expect to be available, you can't rely on blockchain.info to tell you how much is available in an account on a shared wallet.

This is how your balance is calculated :



Hope it's clearer

You've always being running a fractional reserve bank through.

I'm pretty sure that the above will not bode well with ANY authorities. Ironically, it was shortly after all the above was brought to light that InstaWallet went dark with their supposed "hack".

It seems like it would be easy to answer the simple questions asked by Marcus above.

...unless there is reason those 'haters' are correct.  Lots of MtGox people used similar arguments when people challenged their solvency.

Did Phinn ever get his 1000 BTC returned?

Unless BTC-Central Paymium is running fractional reserve they should have no problem demonstrating the exact status of their solvency and the Instawallet coins using the blockchain.

As has already been done recently by other reputable, transparent exchanges in wake of Mt. Gox debacle.

Notice how Boussac avoided this post like the plague.

Now, back to my promise/threat (however you desire to view it), if I'm not made satisfied, Paymium and Bitcoin-Central WILL be looked into. You folks were given more than ample time to get this resolved, but I sincerely feel that that time was used to cover your tracks.

Sure is strange that after the last payout was made last year, not counting February's payout, millions were still in InstaWallet's coffer: https://blockchain.info/address/1Kk8rWQGX87pc15J3J6ehzFfkC5y7dG1Nr

I am more that prepared to post a myriad more bitcoin wallet addresses all stemming from InstaWallet depicting none of the moneys going to customers (in spite of InstaWallet claiming they didn't have customers) of theirs.

I'm prepared to open up a major can of worms. Just say when. I'm willing to bet that with Mt Gox being predominantly  in the news, this is the last thing Paymium and Bitcoin-Central desire.

Money currently classified as being stolen from me WILL NOT be used to fund either Paymium or Bitcoin-Central. And, from what I can ascertain from the 'blockchain' that's exactly what it's being used for.

~Bruno Kucinskas

[Phinnaeus Gage]

It seems like it would be easy to answer the simple questions asked by Marcus above.

If it so easy then I suggest you start putting together the report with all the transactions reported here. I'll fill in the blanks.
You can be  a volunteer too like the people who ran instawalllet as a free service.

...unless there is reason those 'haters' are correct.  Lots of MtGox people used similar arguments when people challenged their solvency.

Mtgox customers are victims, not haters.
The haters are not victims because they got their money back  yet continue to spread FUD.

Did Phinn ever get his 1000 BTC returned?

Ask him. I do not know about any valid claim of such amount. It sounds insane to store so much on an instawallet.
If there was ever a valid claim from this person, it would have been paid back.

So, my amount was insane, but some smaller amounts doled out during the first payout weren't insane, eh: https://blockchain.info/address/1HAo32apFqzKcSBkXVHR5vLnnFuuFoxzFU

Like this one that still hasn't been spent, just sitting there: https://blockchain.info/address/17we9qiPqgmirh9JZv1ucshJ9YBKVq1V7q

And, Davout made sure he was included in the first batch: https://blockchain.info/address/1DavouTAsveznCFHsz688xvbrRAq4u2qm8

Like I said, I want this resolved ASAP now, for more than ample time has passed to get this resolved, otherwise I'm opening up a can o' worms I know damn well you folks don't want open. I will also start doxxing every single person involved now or prior (for some have left, but have the names) with InstaWallet, Paymium, and Bitcoin-Central. I WILL NOT leave a single person out. Please take this as a threat or promise, for at this point I don't fucking care which one you choose. And, please don't threaten to sue me. JUST DO IT! It will be welcomed, but I'm betting that that's not an option on your part and you all know why.

~Bruno Kucinskas

[davout]

The URL you reported matches no such walllet.
In order to look into it deeper I requested some more information about the wallet : public address, blockchain-related information etc.

You weren't even able to point me to one, or a set of, transactions funding said wallet that would total to the amount you claim.
Such information might have been a first step and allow us to check for its existence.
I invested a reasonable amount of time in trying to help you, but as far as our data goes this wallet does not exist.

For the record, our server hard-drives were given to law-enforcement when our complaint was filed, if I remember correctly you were given a copy of the receipt.
We're not "hiding" anything, neither are we "covering our tracks".

The next payout is scheduled for the beginning of june, I'll post more information here whenever it is available and if applicable.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Quote from: Entropy-uc on March 01, 2014, 06:26:00 PM
Did Phinn ever get his 1000 BTC returned?

Ask him. I do not know about any valid claim of such amount. It sounds insane to store so much on an instawallet.
If there was ever a valid claim from this person, it would have been paid back.

So, two claims totally 1,132 BTC (one wallet was 1,000 BTC and the other was 132 BTC) is pretty fuckin' insane eh?

Then how the fuck do you explain this: https://blockchain.info/address/1HAo32apFqzKcSBkXVHR5vLnnFuuFoxzFU

1MxSUio91pX2yxHfHwc3ZqgWTSrs9RedsT - (Spent) 1,424.30 BTC

The above was paid out in spite of the following: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=167215.msg1852586#msg1852586

After 90 days, if no other claim has been received for the same url, your Instawallet balance under 50 BTC will be refunded.

And this was how I was treated up to this point (below), and to date no police report was given.

Unignore

I see how the game is played now: Hack your own sites, claim money was stolen, claim to fill out a police report, ignore all requests from those who entrusted you with their assets, then call them trolls for requesting a simple number to set them at ease.

You sir, are one sick mother fucker!

Couldn't agree more...

All ease aside, the one hint is the lack of a police report number (and possibly them being one sick motherfuckers).

Ignore

[Phinnaeus Gage]

The URL you reported matches no such walllet.
In order to look into it deeper I requested some more information about the wallet : public address, blockchain-related information etc.

You weren't even able to point me to one, or a set of, transactions funding said wallet that would total to the amount you claim.
Such information might have been a first step and allow us to check for its existence.
I invested a reasonable amount of time in trying to help you, but as far as our data goes this wallet does not exist.

For the record, our server hard-drives were given to law-enforcement when our complaint was filed, if I remember correctly you were given a copy of the receipt.
We're not "hiding" anything, neither are we "covering our tracks".

The next payout is scheduled for the beginning of june, I'll post more information here whenever it is available and if applicable.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=167215.msg1741392#msg1741392

Funds were stolen: a police report was filed by Paymium with BEFTI ( Brigade d’Enquêtes sur les Fraudes aux Technologies de l’Information, a unit of the French "Police Judiciaire") and an investigation is in progress.
Computer forensic analysis is in progress with independent auditors.

It took two and half weeks to get a link to the police report, and Boussac thought it would be funny to place it in the French section of this forum, knowing full well that THIS thread was the main line of communications. It was some other Bitcoiner that discovered it and migrated the police report to this thread.

Now, it's been over a year, and has been ask a hundred times--at least--with myself asking it again yesterday of which you conveniently ignored again: WHO ARE THE INDEPENDENT AUDITORS THAT DID THE COMPUTER FORENSIC ANALYSIS?