[Emergency ANN] Bitcoinica site is taken offline for security investigation

[EhVedadoOAnonimato]

This is awful.

I think some people are being too harsh on Zhou. He has proven to be an honest person, with greater achievements in life than most, if not all, the participants of this thread. And that even before completing 18 years old! He deserves a lot of respect.

What about a setup where hot wallet is on separate machine which periodically fetches instructions for transfers.

That with a Tor circuit in between, to make it particularly hard to find the machine holding the keys. Plus a larger percentage of funds in cold storage, of course.

[zhoutong]

Somehow I believe that blogpost is fake.

Especially after zhoutong himself said "if" they compensate and the word "shutdown" ...

No official confirmation is making this even more of a joke

If they had 80% of funds stored offline then surely they would compensate the stolen 20% you would think.

Funds does not equal profit.

We don't want to make Bitcoinica a fractional reserve. The sum of margin balance is the absolute minimum of funds we have to keep (so that we can honor every withdrawal request). Since the system is down at the moment, we don't have the knowledge of open positions. We're pretty sure that margin balance can be covered with our off-site reserves, but we are unable to determine value of unpaid unrealized profits and the unpaid swaps.

We will try our best to restore the system by Monday, and we will get back to you with a detailed investigation report and our resolution on impacted customers. Thank you for your patience!

Disclaimer: I'm representing Bitcoinica but I don't control the company any more ever since the corporate reorganization. I'm personally confident that other team members are going to give everyone a fair resolution.

[Yankee (BitInstant)]

We will try our best to restore the system by Monday

in 48h the price will change way to much and many ppl will take unnecessary losses (that you have to compensate)

restore the service today and block any new position to be open

+1

[M4v3R]

Judging by some open positions that I am aware of and the current market conditions, the sum of your users' P/L should be either negative or only marginally positive, so you most likely can handle this. So I also say that you should restore the site as quickly as possible to minimize unnecessary complaints.

[Littleshop]

The short selling option at bitcoinica is actually helping avoiding bigger sell offs, as short sellers MUST eventually buy back to avoid getting wiped out.

Now, with bitcoinica down, no one has to buy (=cover shorts) any more, and selling pressure could mount.

That makes no sense.  To short on Bitcoinica you need to have some money in the system.  While in a big swing your account could go negative, most shorties would not have a negative balance.  They have lost funds that if they want to recover they would need to buy more bitcoins.  They may choose not to, but shorting on bitcoinica could only drive down investor sentiment but it can not actually create more bitcoins.  In the stock market, because of the three day rule, people can actually create more stock for three days.  

I do believe this incident will lower the price of bitcoin, mostly due to sentiment and due to the thief potentially selling.  But it will not cause a price drop due to the lack of short buybacks.  

[muyuu]

We will try our best to restore the system by Monday

in 48h the price will change way to much and many ppl will take unnecessary losses (that you have to compensate)

restore the service today and block any new position to be open

You are assuming that these restrictions are trivial to set up in a reliable fashion. I doubt it.

But I wouldn't worry too much, the price is relatively stable. Bitcoin will be fine. Bitcoinica, I don't know.

[thest0ckman]

Am I going to get my money back from bitcoinica?

if i dont get my money back they should all go to jail. this is bs.

there is no need to shut down the site.

i want my money out now not on monday wtf

[the joint]

Each time my trust in bitcoin raises it get kinda crush by a new hacking scandal. This scare me as I invested quite a lot in bitcoin both financially and in my expectations.

In my humble opinion, one of the best solution agaisnt the theft is this proposal I made earlier (and went largely unoticed) :

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68188.msg794810#msg794810

Btw, are multi key address already in the protocol by now ?

Don't lose trust in Bitcoin.

This is simply what happens when dumb sheep all congregate in the same place.

I've never used Gox, never used Bitcoinica, and I haven't had a single problem.

Use your head and you decrease your chances of losing your BTC.

[davout]

Am I going to get my money back from bitcoinica?

if i dont get my money back they should all go to jail. this is bs.

there is no need to shut down the site.

i want my money out now not on monday wtf

le hurr, le durr.

[girlsgonebitcoin]

As requested before can we have list of who owns bitcoinica posted on this thread?

Much appreciated.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Am I going to get my money back from bitcoinica?

if i dont get my money back they should all go to jail. this is bs.

there is no need to shut down the site.

i want my money out now not on monday wtf

Yeah shutting down a site which has just been robbed of just under six figures stolen is a bad idea.  In the future all sites should remain active and running even while a theft is in progress.  Actually when a theft is detected they should move the cold storage wallet to the server so $400K more is put at risk. 

Now that is how you run a business.

[the joint]

Each time my trust in bitcoin raises it get kinda crush by a new hacking scandal. This scare me as I invested quite a lot in bitcoin both financially and in my expectations.

In my humble opinion, one of the best solution agaisnt the theft is this proposal I made earlier (and went largely unoticed) :

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68188.msg794810#msg794810

Btw, are multi key address already in the protocol by now ?

Don't lose trust in Bitcoin.

This is simply what happens when dumb sheep all congregate in the same place.

I've never used Gox, never used Bitcoinica, and I haven't had a single problem.

Use your head and you decrease your chances of losing your BTC.

Famous last words.

Maybe, but that's why I created my super-secret emergency BTC bailout system

[BCB]

Have we hear from Bitcoin Consultancy/Intertsango?  Sorry if I missed it in this long and mostly annoying thread.

[phungus]

THIS IS SEWIOUS!

[JusticeForYou]

I have repeatedly told people that Bitcoinica is a scam and that Bitcoinica staff should be banned from the forums.

Maybe now people will actually listen.

Bitcoinica is a regulated entity, verifiable by government records. We are one of the most legitimate businesses in Bitcoin community, by any standard.

The security standard?

[enmaku]

I love how angry people are getting over one weekend without access to their funds. Apparently no one learned any lessons or got any perspective from the MtGox hack.

[bulanula]

Am I going to get my money back from bitcoinica?

if i dont get my money back they should all go to jail. this is bs.

there is no need to shut down the site.

i want my money out now not on monday wtf

this is why the website need to be UP asap and if is needed bitcoinica should manually process any withdraw, you need to understand that you can separate ppl from their money for a weekend(48h) just like that, the end result will be worse monday

Calm down man ! How are they going to get 18k BTC back today

The only people selling 18k right now are probably the hackers ...

[thest0ckman]

this is why the website need to be UP asap and if is needed bitcoinica should manually process any withdraw, you need to understand that you can separate ppl from their money for a weekend(48h) just like that, the end result will be worse monday

well said!!

[rjk]

NEVER DEPOSIT MORE THAN YOU CAN AFFORD TO LOSE
HOW FUCKING HARD IS THAT TO COMPREHEND?

[muyuu]

I have repeatedly told people that Bitcoinica is a scam and that Bitcoinica staff should be banned from the forums.

Maybe now people will actually listen.

Bitcoinica is a regulated entity, verifiable by government records. We are one of the most legitimate businesses in Bitcoin community, by any standard.

In the UK you wouldn't be allowed to run even a betting site on anything less than colocated or on-site servers. Certifications and security clearance of the personal in charge of said servers would also be required.