Legal complaint against bitcoinica.com

[teflone]

Paraipan,

The only time I have ever posted anything negative about someone on the forums was in regards to Tom Williams.

This will be the second time.

People like you are exactly what is wrong with the world.
Bitcoinica hasn't hurt anyone, so you should mind your own business.
If you don't trust Bitcoinica,  don't use them,  but don't try to use men with guns to block the rest of us from doing business with whoever we want.


Please spend some time reading some books on economics,  and morality.  
It will change your view of the world, and make you a better person.

THIS!!!


Well said..

You are such a spoiled little baby Parapain...

[paraipan]

Paraipan,

The only time I have ever posted anything negative about someone on the forums was in regards to Tom Williams.

This will be the second time.

People like you are exactly what is wrong with the world.
Bitcoinica hasn't hurt anyone, so you should mind your own business.
If you don't trust Bitcoinica,  don't use them,  but don't try to use men with guns to block the rest of us from doing business with whoever we want.


Please spend some time reading some books on economics,  and morality. 
It will change your view of the world, and make you a better person.

Thanks for the advice dude, i will consider it
The thing is we're on the same boat, and if it takes water we all go down, looking into another direction isn't an option only addressing the issue. I will appreciate you enabling the logic "chips" of your brain and reconsider your position, any help is appreciated.

[teflone]

This complaint for legal investigation has been put into Mtgox attention today with a support ticket.

What in the fuck does this have to do with MtGox? What is this I don't even

Rocking the boat some more eh ?

[paraipan]

This complaint for legal investigation has been put into Mtgox attention today with a support ticket.

What in the fuck does this have to do with MtGox? What is this I don't even

Rocking the boat some more eh ?

Bitcoinica uses Mtgox services (trading platform, mtgox codes), i hoped you guys saw this one.

[Rassah]

This complaint for legal investigation has been put into Mtgox attention today with a support ticket.

What in the fuck does this have to do with MtGox? What is this I don't even

Rocking the boat some more eh ?

Bitcoinica uses Mtgox services (trading platform, mtgox codes), i hoped you guys saw this one.

How is Gox supposed to track which codes were exchanged person to person, and which were exchanged through Bitcoinica? Seems like that complaint will be as effective as complaining to Spain about a site in Asia.

[teflone]

This complaint for legal investigation has been put into Mtgox attention today with a support ticket.

What in the fuck does this have to do with MtGox? What is this I don't even

Rocking the boat some more eh ?

Bitcoinica uses Mtgox services (trading platform, mtgox codes), i hoped you guys saw this one.

Hahaha..  did you just find this out ?  my god man..

Your little mission here is becoming more ridiculous every time you open your mouth..

Can you not see how stupid you are making yourself look ? Is this your cry for help ?
Are you depressed ?  

Life is good, go find some street thugs and beat them up, they are criminals..  

Then report yourself for assault dont forget!

[paraipan]

This complaint for legal investigation has been put into Mtgox attention today with a support ticket.

What in the fuck does this have to do with MtGox? What is this I don't even

Rocking the boat some more eh ?

Bitcoinica uses Mtgox services (trading platform, mtgox codes), i hoped you guys saw this one.

How is Gox supposed to track which codes were exchanged person to person, and which were exchanged through Bitcoinica? Seems like that complaint will be as effective as complaining to Spain about a site in Asia.

mtgox already tracks internally it's codes. Bitcoinica has it's own codes that need to follow the same procedure. Spain has laws that include economic on-line services outside it's frontiers. Bitcoinica.com is hosted in US, Texas so it has to comply with laws and regulations there too not only in the country where they registered.




Quoting zhoutong from other thread

...
No. We will not operate the business in the United States, nor will we respond to requests outside of our operating jurisdiction.

[paraipan]

The thing is we're on the same boat, and if it takes water we all go down, looking into another direction isn't an option only addressing the issue.

...

And people wonder why I want to opt out...

... because you keep seeing it as your own boat

[Otoh]

I have lived in Spain a long time & if I can be bothered then in the interests of openness & full disclosure that the OP seems so keen on I shall ask my contacts here if what I suspect is true, that denuncias are documents in the public domain & so one can request a copy of them without the OP's redactions & I will then happily post it here, 2 of my contacts are female black belt lawyers  

edit: copy would be requested through intermediaries 

[RaggedMonk]

Paraipan,

The only time I have ever posted anything negative about someone on the forums was in regards to Tom Williams.

This will be the second time.

People like you are exactly what is wrong with the world.
Bitcoinica hasn't hurt anyone, so you should mind your own business.
If you don't trust Bitcoinica,  don't use them,  but don't try to use men with guns to block the rest of us from doing business with whoever we want.


Please spend some time reading some books on economics,  and morality. 
It will change your view of the world, and make you a better person.

+1

[paraipan]

I have lived in Spain a long time & if I can be bothered then in the interests of openness & full disclosure that the OP seems so keen on I shall ask my contacts here if what I suspect is true, that denuncias are documents in the public domain & so one can request a copy of them without the OP's redactions & I will then happily post it here, 2 of my contacts are female black belt lawyers  

edit: copy would be requested through intermediaries 

i will happily provide you an unedited copy, no need to contact third parties for that. "Denuncia", complaint can be made public if the complainer choses too, guarding his privacy.

[P4man]

Someone help me understand.

I see some people here raving against the OP; to some extend even the same people that accuse(d) Butterfly Labs from running a scam and (rightfully) demanding correct information about the company's registration, legal status, location, contact data etc. Some even going so far as putting a bounty on pictures or video of the people behind the alleged scam. Butterfly lab at that time probably held less than a few $1000 of customers money, all of which was protected by paypal policy anyway.

Then we have Bitcoinica, a financial service provider which holds significantly larger sums of money and btcs with zero customer protection and operating in a legal vacuum. All we know about the company is .. nothing (afaik), other than a pseudonym of the guy running it. Its not even disclosed what country its operating from, what legal status the company, if any, has, nothing. Not even the name!

I dont know, but demanding such information is absolutely the right thing to do IMO. If said company is not forth coming with that info, I see no harm in pursuing legal options to ensure Bitcoinica's customers at the very least know who to sue if something goes terribly wrong.

I certainly hope no one here will have to thank paraipan one day for getting that info out, but its not exactly unthinkable. Have we learned nothing from mybitcoin.com?

[PatrickHarnett]

Most jurisdictions allow the public to inspect the physical records (registration/articles of association etc) at the registered address.  There is normally no requirement to provide them free to anyone that asks.  The OP could go to Singapore and view them, if it is a registered business. 

Of course, many "businesses" are not registered and do not need to be under local laws if they are small (self employed people often come under that category, or sole traders).

Then again, there are some other places where you can register a business without any paper work at all, and for no fee - and you can stay secret as long as you like. 

Zhou has answered many questions.  Like others, having a formal account identification is not necessary (I don't have an account or id with many people I exchange cash or credit with - others I do).

[Otoh]

I have lived in Spain a long time & if I can be bothered then in the interests of openness & full disclosure that the OP seems so keen on I shall ask my contacts here if what I suspect is true, that denuncias are documents in the public domain & so one can request a copy of them without the OP's redactions & I will then happily post it here, 2 of my contacts are female black belt lawyers  

edit: copy would be requested through intermediaries  

i will happily provide you an unedited copy, no need to contact third parties for that. "Denuncia", complaint can be made public if the complainer choses too, guarding his privacy.

sure that makes it simpler, please to PM me one or a link to it, I may look in to what freedom of information pertains to denucias in any case now that I've got curious about it so that I can be sure of it

First |  Previous

[m3ta]

Yeah. It is this attitude that got TH shutdown.

Not really.
Imagine the following hypothetical scenario:

- user account gets suddenly "locked out, contact support" @ TH.
- user contacts TH support for multiple times, no answer given.
- user does not like to be robbed, and with all means at his disposal, does all he can to inflict pain on those who stole from him.

So, yeah, this is NOT the attitude that got TH shut down. It was TH shooting their own foot.

[P4man]

Most jurisdictions allow the public to inspect the physical records (registration/articles of association etc) at the registered address.  There is normally no requirement to provide them free to anyone that asks.  The OP could go to Singapore and view them, if it is a registered business. 

Do we even know where its registered and under what name? I certainly dont.

[Rassah]

Someone help me understand.

Big difference between
"I demand you make your information public for the safety of all Bitcoin users"

and

"I have submitted a complaint against you to the authorities. Now tell me some information."

Personally, I'm all for demanding that Bitcoin based businesses follow some minimum level of public disclosure and reporting, even to the point that if enough of them do it, those who choose not to get shunned. What I am against is bringing the authorities into it before the business even has a chance to reply. Talk first, shoot later.

[RandyFolds]

Someone help me understand.

Big difference between
"I demand you make your information public for the safety of all Bitcoin users"

and

"I have submitted a complaint against you to the authorities. Now tell me some information."

Personally, I'm all for demanding that Bitcoin bases businesses follow some minimum level of public disclosure and reporting, even to the point that if enough of them do it, those who choose not to get shunned. What I am against is bringing the authorities into it before the business even has a chance to reply. Talk first, shoot later.

Well stated, my man. I have no problem with demanding disclosure, but to whine to the police and then boast of it is reprehensible.

[Matthew N. Wright]

Someone help me understand.

Big difference between
"I demand you make your information public for the safety of all Bitcoin users"

and

"I have submitted a complaint against you to the authorities. Now tell me some information."

Personally, I'm all for demanding that Bitcoin bases businesses follow some minimum level of public disclosure and reporting, even to the point that if enough of them do it, those who choose not to get shunned. What I am against is bringing the authorities into it before the business even has a chance to reply. Talk first, shoot later.

Well stated, my man. I have no problem with demanding disclosure, but to whine to the police and then boast of it is reprehensible.

Agreed. I have been hearing about this for the past 12 hours from my group regarding association with Parapain as well. Let me take a moment to make something absolutely clear.

If he doesn't budge another inch until there is a reason to (ZhouTong does or does not provide said documents), then I think this issue needs to die. We all know (or most of us) that there is nothing legally he could complain about in his country that wouldn't just incriminate himself only, but it's important the personal attacks stop so that the silence before the revelation will be deafening.

When Zhou Tong posts the information (which he will, and I know for a fact what he's going to post) Parapain needs to apologize for the way he went about this. Other than that, there is absolutely nothing wrong with inquiring to the police to look into something you personally feel could be a scam, and all the misinformation Parapain is believing should be excuse enough for his actions.

Whether he ever translates a single word for the magazine should never be a topic of discussion, nor should his character. What should be a topic of discussion is "correct ways to inquire into the legality of something" followed by "correct ways to teach forum members a lesson". Since no actual harm has (nor probably will) come from this, the only thing we have is a thread about bitcoinica full of spite and vile, agging on a person who thinks they are doing the right thing.

One thing is for absofuckinglutely sure-- if I were parapain, I'd be fueled even further by it, so why not let this thread dust up a bit until 3 weeks from now?

That's my advice as an ex-constant-self-embarrasser-on-the-forums. Hell, I can even tell you guys a story of when Zhou Tong himself did something exactly like this and then later apologized. Education is key guys. Education.

[P4man]

Someone help me understand.

Big difference between
"I demand you make your information public for the safety of all Bitcoin users"

and

"I have submitted a complaint against you to the authorities. Now tell me some information."

As I understood, the OP had made several such requests and got nothing. Maybe I misread that? Even so, fact is even now Zoutoung doesnt even want to say the country his business is registered in (let alone all the other thing his customers ought to know), that should raise red flags and alarm bells all over.

Dont get me wrong, I have no reason to assume he will scam anyone, but I cant see any reason why Zoutoung wouldnt put this information on his website either (AFAIK, he is legally obliged to in several countries, among them Germany). Instead we have a 17 year old wizzkid controlling what most likely is a small fortune in dollars and btc, perhaps more than anyone else in the bitcoin world, and we have no clue who he is, what company is running the show, nothing.

That he says he will say so soon is simply not good enough by any stretch.