Mybitcoin.com Press Release #2

[John (John K.)]

I said this before, and it only applies if MyBitcoin's losses are at the "thousands" scale: I wonder if we can buy him out.

Let's say 10000 BTC got stolen. A trusted intermediary (the new administrative board + jury) could create a new asset on GLBSE with 10000 shares, each worth 1 BTC, so that the new company would be 100% publicly owned.

This way, everyone gets their money back AND we save MyBitcoin, which is IMO a valuable asset for the community. Otherwise, both will be lost. Plus, Tom Williams can stay anonymous. Win-Win-Win.

+1

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[Nefario]

I said this before, and it only applies if MyBitcoin's losses are at the "thousands" scale: I wonder if we can buy him out.

Let's say 10000 BTC got stolen. A trusted intermediary (the new administrative board + jury) could create a new asset on GLBSE with 10000 shares, each worth 1 BTC, so that the new company would be 100% publicly owned.

This way, everyone gets their money back AND we save MyBitcoin, which is IMO a valuable asset for the community. Otherwise, both will be lost. Plus, Tom Williams can stay anonymous. Win-Win-Win.

Hmmmm, this...looks like a bailout.

I don't think we'd be buying him out, we should offer him 1btc for all of mybitcoin.com, all it's assets and liabilities, end result being we take over responsibility and Mr. Williams can walk away from this mess. There is no reason to actually pay him more than a token amount for mybitcoin and everything with it, it's already broke and worth nothing to him, if anything it's a major headache for him.

That's only if some conditions are met:
1) The amount of btc lost is less (perhaps a lot less) than the share capital we raise to "recapitalise" mybitcoin (oh God this sounds familiar).
2) mybitcoin.com could generate enough profit to eventually repay these capital costs.

IF those conditions are met then yeah, we can bail ou.... I mean buy out mybitcoin.com

Interested parties should pm or email me doctor.nefario@gmail.com, I'll handle everything with regards GLBSE, someone else needs to get in contact with Mr. Williams and get a response from him on this as I don't know the guy.

Nefario.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

I said this before, and it only applies if MyBitcoin's losses are at the "thousands" scale: I wonder if we can buy him out.

Let's say 10000 BTC got stolen. A trusted intermediary (the new administrative board + jury) could create a new asset on GLBSE with 10000 shares, each worth 1 BTC, so that the new company would be 100% publicly owned.

This way, everyone gets their money back AND we save MyBitcoin, which is IMO a valuable asset for the community. Otherwise, both will be lost. Plus, Tom Williams can stay anonymous. Win-Win-Win.

Hmmmm, this...looks like a bailout.

I don't think we'd be buying him out, we should offer him 1btc for all of mybitcoin.com, all it's assets and liabilities, end result being we take over responsibility and Mr. Williams can walk away from this mess. There is no reason to actually pay him more than a token amount for mybitcoin and everything with it, it's already broke and worth nothing to him, if anything it's a major headache for him.

That's only if some conditions are met:
1) The amount of btc lost is less (perhaps a lot less) than the share capital we raise to "recapitalise" mybitcoin (oh God this sounds familiar).
2) mybitcoin.com could generate enough profit to eventually repay these capital costs.

IF those conditions are met then yeah, we can bail ou.... I mean buy out mybitcoin.com

Interested parties should pm or email me doctor.nefario@gmail.com, I'll handle everything with regards GLBSE, someone else needs to get in contact with Mr. Williams and get a response from him on this as I don't know the guy.

Nefario.

Very interesting solution! I hope this one, or something like it, pans out. As a caveat, I once bought out the entire stock of this one guy's business. The next day when I went to load up the merc, some items that had good value were missing. I didn't call him out on it because the price point I offered, and he accepted, was quite low, but I also knew that it was not outside the realm of possibilities that this would happen--and this time it did.

[kiba]

The only problem is: getting in contact with Tom Williams.

[Piper67]

The only problem is: getting in contact with Tom Williams.

Heh, simply ask mtgox who is that dude that dumped 10,000 BTC a few hours ago 

[Anonymous]

Protip:

MyBitcoin.com will come back as MtGoxxed.com

[Bunghole]

MyBitcoin is a Limited Liability Company, so the owner(s) is not personally responsible for the company's debts.  This is a very good thing, because it allows entrepreneurs to start risky ventures without putting their entire lives on the line.  If we didn't have limited liability entities, there would be a whole lot less innovation, a lot less wealth, and a lot fewer jobs.

Tom Williams,

You better come up with %100 of everyone's bitcoins ASAP even if you need to buy them with your own money from one of the exchanges.

Those bitcoins are YOUR responsibility.

I can think of times in my life where I made mistakes,  and paid tens of thousands of dollars out of my own pocket to make things right.

Now it is your turn.

Do the right thing.

[Anonymous]

I said this before, and it only applies if MyBitcoin's losses are at the "thousands" scale: I wonder if we can buy him out.

Let's say 10000 BTC got stolen. A trusted intermediary (the new administrative board + jury) could create a new asset on GLBSE with 10000 shares, each worth 1 BTC, so that the new company would be 100% publicly owned.

This way, everyone gets their money back AND we save MyBitcoin, which is IMO a valuable asset for the community. Otherwise, both will be lost. Plus, Tom Williams can stay anonymous. Win-Win-Win.

Hmmmm, this...looks like a bailout.

I don't think we'd be buying him out, we should offer him 1btc for all of mybitcoin.com, all it's assets and liabilities, end result being we take over responsibility and Mr. Williams can walk away from this mess. There is no reason to actually pay him more than a token amount for mybitcoin and everything with it, it's already broke and worth nothing to him, if anything it's a major headache for him.

That's only if some conditions are met:
1) The amount of btc lost is less (perhaps a lot less) than the share capital we raise to "recapitalise" mybitcoin (oh God this sounds familiar).
2) mybitcoin.com could generate enough profit to eventually repay these capital costs.

IF those conditions are met then yeah, we can bail ou.... I mean buy out mybitcoin.com

Interested parties should pm or email me doctor.nefario@gmail.com, I'll handle everything with regards GLBSE, someone else needs to get in contact with Mr. Williams and get a response from him on this as I don't know the guy.

Nefario.

This is a good plan Nefario. The site should be administered by the community and fees used to help compensate the victims.

If we can open source the site the bitcoin community can ensure this crap never happens again.

Id buy at least 100btc of shares in this venture.

[markm]

MyBitcoin is a Limited Liability Company, so the owner(s) is not personally responsible for the company's debts.  This is a very good thing, because it allows entrepreneurs to start risky ventures without putting their entire lives on the line.  If we didn't have limited liability entities, there would be a whole lot less innovation, a lot less wealth, and a lot fewer jobs.

However one of the few things purportedly known about MyBitCoin is that it is a bitcoin millionaire early adopter.

The fact that having become a bitcoin millionaire by virtue of adopting early caused it to be rich enough to not only be perceived as trustable (being in possession of so many bitcoins) but also to actually register itself as a "real company" is now supposedly to be taken as a red flag instead of a green flag???

Hype is such bullshit. A real company is to be trusted because real means absolutely untrustworthy because real means no liability?

Of course we also discovered that one of the main public relations arms of MyBitCoin, Bruce, is nowadays claiming not to know the guy/company/whatever at all, despite having run around way back when seeming to be trying to give the impression he and MyBitCoin are buddies from way back and both trustable (again part of that trust being based on the sheer number of bitcoins they have).

So now part of the propaganda machine known as MyBitCoin, specifically the public media broadcasting part aka the propaganda department, is claiming to have lost a fortune to the other part of that same propaganda machine?

Handy thing about Nevis I guess is it won't tell us what percentage of the "real legal incorporated company" is Bruce and what part is someone else. How many people are needed in order to become incorporated in Nevis? (But presumably the stooges there who for whatever reason do actually create such a company for you in return for the $2000 or so they charge for doing so instead of saying "ha sucker thanks for the $2000 good luck sue-ing us we are in Nevis like you wanted to be and for the same reason hahahahah" can provide enough stooges to fill the quota...)

-MarkM-

P.S. they even named it clearly as being their bitcoin, so even if you are correct that their bitcoin is not the same as their biological lifeform(s) all that does is free the lifeform from liability not the lifeform's bitcoin which are what actually constitute the corporation...

[giantdragon]

How many people are needed in order to become incorporated in Nevis?

In Latvia ONE person can create corporation, minimum capital is just ridiculous 1 LVL ($2).

[kiba]

Of course we also discovered that one of the main public relations arms of MyBitCoin, Bruce, is nowadays claiming not to know the guy/company/whatever at all, despite having run around way back when seeming to be trying to give the impression he and MyBitCoin are buddies from way back and both trustable (again part of that trust being based on the sheer number of bitcoins they have).

So now part of the propaganda machine known as MyBitCoin, specifically the public media broadcasting part aka the propaganda department, is claiming to have lost a fortune to the other part of that same propaganda machine?

Clearly, some people have a knack for inventing conspiracies.

[kgo]

If he's not incorporated, he can be sued for his personal assets and cash by anyone and everyone who lost bitcoins from this.  I encourage people to take this route once more of his information is revealed, and if he does not fully reimburse every single person who used the service.

MyBitcoin is Limited Liability Company, i.e. owners don't take any liability for company's debts. In this case maximum you can get suing them is corporation's assets.

Their website says they're an LLC, but has anyone seen the paperwork?  I'm guessing no, since if they had there would probably be a way to track down the owner(s).

[markm]

Clearly, some people have a knack for inventing conspiracies.

Apparently so. For those of us still trying to learn how best to construct our conspiracies though this is all very educational. For example I had hitherto not really looked into the possibility of basing my conspiracies in Nevis. Currently my own conspiracy is not even limited liability, thus maybe is not a very secure conspiracy...

-MarkM-

[NetTecture]

If he's not incorporated, he can be sued for his personal assets and cash by anyone and everyone who lost bitcoins from this.  I encourage people to take this route once more of his information is revealed, and if he does not fully reimburse every single person who used the service.

MyBitcoin is Limited Liability Company, i.e. owners don't take any liability for company's debts. In this case maximum you can get suing them is corporation's assets.

Their website says they're an LLC, but has anyone seen the paperwork?  I'm guessing no, since if they had there would probably be a way to track down the owner(s).

On top of that you may find that a LLC does not protct you from gross neglegiance, and whether that was the case or not is not decided in courts. It may be quite simpe or quite complex to pierce the corporate veil.

Given that I have been working on two accounting frontends for financial insttutions and we were always auditing all transactions of the day every night I would certify that not doing so validates what I have been teached is common practice and thus is gross neglegiance / criminal behavior. Heck, we were PRINTING every transaction directory onto a line printer to make sure that in case of some desaster / hack wiping out the computers we had a separate non-destructable log (it is quit hard to delete printed pages from a computer).

Compliance with legal regulalations may be one of the attack vectors that could possibly be used here. At the end, lawyers will have to fight that out.

[theymos]

I totally called it.

MyBitcoin is still accepting payments with only 1 confirmation. This is insane for a bank. Any miner capable of mining two blocks in a row can steal money from MyBitcoin pretty easily. I'm surprised no one has attempted it yet.

There's another attack made possible by accepting payments with less than 6 confirmations that would allow you to see exactly which coins MyBitcoin has, and possibly do other damage.

I'm not surprised. MyBitcoin is still accepting payments with only 1 confirmation, which would allow some of the larger pools to steal BTC right now.

I can't believe anyone is still using MyBitcoin. They've had problems like this since the beginning, and they still accept payments with only 1 confirmation, which is likely to cause a major disaster.

[theymos]

MyBitcoin should post the transaction hashes of the transactions that have been reversed so that their story can be verified.

[memvola]

Let's say 10000 BTC got stolen. A trusted intermediary (the new administrative board + jury) could create a new asset on GLBSE with 10000 shares, each worth 1 BTC, so that the new company would be 100% publicly owned.

Hmmmm, this...looks like a bailout.

I don't think we'd be buying him out, we should offer him 1btc for all of mybitcoin.com, all it's assets and liabilities, end result being we take over responsibility and Mr. Williams can walk away from this mess. There is no reason to actually pay him more than a token amount for mybitcoin and everything with it, it's already broke and worth nothing to him, if anything it's a major headache for him.

That's only if some conditions are met:
1) The amount of btc lost is less (perhaps a lot less) than the share capital we raise to "recapitalise" mybitcoin (oh God this sounds familiar).
2) mybitcoin.com could generate enough profit to eventually repay these capital costs.

Well it smells so, but technically it's not a bailout, since a new board would take over (a new company that's 100% on GLBSE). A trusted group of people are still needed to make the transition, hopefully people who plan to buy a bigger portion of the shares and/or plan to be employed by the company. The site probably would need to switch to a different business model to be able to generate enough profit though.

[Mike Moceri]

On the one hand, I like the GLBSE sell-off idea. I would even be willing to buy a few shares (10 or so). I also like the idea of it being a privately-funded bailout.

On the other hand, I'm really looking forward to the release of their source code! I'd like to be able to offer my brokerage customers a digital wallet service that's easy to use. Of course, I'll have to alter a few lines of code to require 3 confirmations instead of 1, but meh.

[Maged]

OMG, I love ABE! Turns out that we can read all of the branches pretty easily!

Here's some examples:

Block 137571:
http://abe.john-edwin-tobey.org/block/0000000000000779066b823cc302316ca6cf5550f7b1d28f79a26ebff09503d4
http://abe.john-edwin-tobey.org/block/00000000000001fba6bcf0c15d3fecc4d1f2837e934d6ee5afff3ff28a0888a2

Block 136755:
http://abe.john-edwin-tobey.org/block/00000000000000f48d1225842ed629fce1d1e5ae0fba6ae04d4ae7dbfc9e34af
http://abe.john-edwin-tobey.org/block/0000000000000152fd8df6e551d1d3db507132ed34495cde176eb799057871f3

Anyone want to look for conflicts? If we check every reorg, we'll be able to INDEPENDENTLY verify the amount of funds stolen, and where they went to. Additionally, we might even find out that a pool was behind this. Game = changed.

[bitstarter]

I said this before, and it only applies if MyBitcoin's losses are at the "thousands" scale: I wonder if we can buy him out.

Let's say 10000 BTC got stolen. A trusted intermediary (the new administrative board + jury) could create a new asset on GLBSE with 10000 shares, each worth 1 BTC, so that the new company would be 100% publicly owned.

This way, everyone gets their money back AND we save MyBitcoin, which is IMO a valuable asset for the community. Otherwise, both will be lost. Plus, Tom Williams can stay anonymous. Win-Win-Win.

+1 I think this is a sound idea!