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

[organofcorti]

Minimizing risk is what causes most problem the world knows today.

Why?

If the risk factor wasn't so diminished and even removed there is no way the current financial crisis could have gotten as big and destructive as it did.

Why?

Unfortunately most people are completely oblivious to human nature and how destructive moral hazard to a market is. 

I couldn't parse that last bit at all. Sorry if you're not a native English speaker, but could you rephrase this last paragraph into something a little clearer?

[Serge]

only legal entity has responsibility before their customers, in this case it's Bitcoinica LLC
owners don't matter, they may or may not even be in day to day dealings of the company.  screaming for owners just derails this thread.

Bitcoinica has been hit hard, they're not running from the issue, their representative, Zhoutong came on here making public announcement of the problem and in recent posts said that customer funds will be covered at their own loss. The real questions that matter in here is what actually happened, what measures will be taken in the future to prevent such occurrences and their immediate steps regarding customer funds.  anything else is just bs noise that hasn't anything to do with this.

This is utter rubbish. I'm sorry but I'm not falling for your delusions. The owner is the company and the company is the owner. Period. It's just common sense. Only a monopoly on violence could possibly say otherwise being in bed with the owner and protecting his ass which is what corporations are.

here's a simple truth for you. just like you have a right not to be happy how a company presents and conducts itself, you can decide and chose to deal with a particular company or not; privately held company has a right not to disclose publicly who their owners, investors, partners, associates, vendors are.

in case of a legal dispute with a company, owners liability and assets may  or may not come in play depending on various factors such as type of registered company, e.g. LLC, INC, LTD, CORP, etc. and owners involvement within presented matter.

your opinion is just that, you can demand full disclosure, but they are not obliged in fulfilling it. this owner talk further derails this thread.

[hazek]

This is utter rubbish. I'm sorry but I'm not falling for your delusions. The owner is the company and the company is the owner. Period. It's just common sense. Only a monopoly on violence could possibly say otherwise being in bed with the owner and protecting his ass which is what corporations are.

It's about minimizing risks in order to be able to provide services and products to consumers like yourself.

Minimizing risk is what causes most problem the world knows today. If the risk factor wasn't so diminished and even removed there is no way the current financial crisis could have gotten as big and destructive as it did. Unfortunately most people are completely oblivious to human nature and how destructive moral hazard to a market is. 

That's just it, the risk wasn't minimized, it was simply rebranded and passed to someone else.

Except that it was fraudulently rebranded as AAA for which the liability will fall with a legal fiction not any actual people hence the risk of providing this service of rebranding was completely removed and presented a moral hazard. Not to mention the government ensuring that AAA rating.

There was no risk in providing the service which is why the service got provided. What the product was is irrelevant.

[N12]

Of course, I support Bitcoinica and the concept of leveraged speculating/hedging. We need more of them (regulated and unregulated so you can pick your flavour). You may not see it but large entities are planning on entering the bitcoin economy in a major way; margin exchanges allow them to hedge their currency exposure without having to sell out of their BTC positions.

A regulated entity does not always inspire trust. Just look at the poor MF Global customers.

I will just borrow the words from someone else: "It is mathematically impossible to get high leverage to work in a thin market."

Until we have a much larger market, high leverage is absolutely nonsensical and will always lead to huge failures.

[hazek]

Minimizing risk is what causes most problem the world knows today.

Why?

If the risk factor wasn't so diminished and even removed there is no way the current financial crisis could have gotten as big and destructive as it did.

Why?

Unfortunately most people are completely oblivious to human nature and how destructive moral hazard to a market is.  

I couldn't parse that last bit at all. Sorry if you're not a native English speaker, but could you rephrase this last paragraph into something a little clearer?

Learn economics. http://www.mises.org/

[hazek]

A regulated entity does not always inspire trust. Just look at the poor MF Global customers.

Whenever regulation is done by a monopoly on violence it usually gets bought and paid to stifle competition and not really protect the consumer.

We don't want a market regulated by a state, we should want a market regulated by consumers if we truly want the best services at the lowest price, something the Bitcoin world will have to wrap their little heads around sooner or later.

[cryptoanarchist]

This is utter rubbish. I'm sorry but I'm not falling for your delusions. The owner is the company and the company is the owner. Period. It's just common sense. Only a monopoly on violence could possibly say otherwise being in bed with the owner and protecting his ass which is what corporations are.

It's about minimizing risks in order to be able to provide services and products to consumers like yourself.

Minimizing risk is what causes most problem the world knows today. If the risk factor wasn't so diminished and even removed there is no way the current financial crisis could have gotten as big and destructive as it did. Unfortunately most people are completely oblivious to human nature and how destructive moral hazard to a market is. 

+  

Hazek has it right. Corporations are state entities that only exist through use of force. No one should be able to create a fake entity to unload their liability onto. Legal fictions don't do anything - it's people that take the actions, and people own what actions they take. In this case, the people running Bitcoinica lost? a ton of bitcoins. It was their responsibility to protect them and they are absolutely liable in any moral justice system.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

They are on the move again.

http://blockchain.info/tx-index/5484758/c141115ff13ad9331e0d46776d850f06083a60fab88b15a2a2df35f2fdf565da

Seven 2600 btc transactions, and that one for 347.66367623 BTC goes to
http://blockchain.info/address/1EMLwAwseowTkDtKnEHRKrwQvzi4HShxSX  which then has splits into a bunch of smaller transactions. WTF? how do you follow this many splits?

found something strange while following the stolen coins.  Sent from the thief to many small accounts and one large one.
 http://blockchain.info/address/1EMLwAwseowTkDtKnEHRKrwQvzi4HShxSX

1.01100101 BTC
2.01111 BTC
3.0111 BTC
4.01100101 BTC
5.01100011 BTC
6.011101 BTC
7.001 BTC
116.4569963 BTC
8.01101101 BTC
9.01100001 BTC
10.01110011 BTC
11.01110011 BTC
12.001 BTC
13.011011 BTC
14.01100101 BTC
15.01100001 BTC
16.01101011 BTC
17.001 BTC
18.01110011 BTC
19.01101111 BTC
20.01101111 BTC
21.0110111 BTC

Why would they split it up like that?  are they trying to hide it by making it whole bunch of small transfers?

I stopped reading here to decipher the code, therefore forgive me if this has already been done.

01100101 01111000 01110000 01100101 01100011 01110100 00100000 01101101 01100001 01110011 01110011 00100000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01101011 00100000 01110011 01101111 01101111 01101110

translates to expect mass leak soon

EDIT: All this work, and it was already done. At least I'm on record for knowing that it was a message within 2 seconds of reading it.

Edit: the whole 21 characters spell "expect mass leak soon".

Cool way of releasing a message. The thief clearly has some familiarity with Bitcoin.

If you mean familiarity with the Bitcoin code, I wouldn't know heads or tails of it if I saw/read it. But I recognized the pattern straight away and am familiar with how to write a message in binary.

[hazek]

This is utter rubbish. I'm sorry but I'm not falling for your delusions. The owner is the company and the company is the owner. Period. It's just common sense. Only a monopoly on violence could possibly say otherwise being in bed with the owner and protecting his ass which is what corporations are.

It's about minimizing risks in order to be able to provide services and products to consumers like yourself.

Minimizing risk is what causes most problem the world knows today. If the risk factor wasn't so diminished and even removed there is no way the current financial crisis could have gotten as big and destructive as it did. Unfortunately most people are completely oblivious to human nature and how destructive moral hazard to a market is.  

+  

Hazek has it right. Corporations are state entities that only exist through use of force. No one should be able to create a fake entity to unload their liability onto. Legal fictions don't do anything - it's people that take the actions, and people own what actions they take. In this case, the people running Bitcoinica lost? a ton of bitcoins. It was their responsibility to protect them and they are absolutely liable in any moral justice system.

Yep, but don't count on people indoctrinated in government schools or currently hiding behind a legal fiction to admit that.

[organofcorti]

Minimizing risk is what causes most problem the world knows today.

Why?

If the risk factor wasn't so diminished and even removed there is no way the current financial crisis could have gotten as big and destructive as it did.

Why?

Unfortunately most people are completely oblivious to human nature and how destructive moral hazard to a market is.  

I couldn't parse that last bit at all. Sorry if you're not a native English speaker, but could you rephrase this last paragraph into something a little clearer?

Learn economics. http://www.mises.org/

Well, thanks for the link. However, in the interests of keeping the conversation alive now and not returning to it after a four year degreed course, perhaps you'd like to explain your statements? A little?

how destructive moral hazard to a market is

Maybe just this one, since I still don't understand it. I understand each word separately but it just reads like word salad to me.

[Serge]

+  

Hazek has it right. Corporations are state entities that only exist through use of force. No one should be able to create a fake entity to unload their liability onto. Legal fictions don't do anything - it's people that take the actions, and people own what actions they take. In this case, the people running Bitcoinica lost? a ton of bitcoins. It was their responsibility to protect them and they are absolutely liable in any moral justice system.

Yep, but don't count on people indoctrinated in government schools or currently hiding behind a legal fiction to admit that.

wtf that has to do with this thread?  Zhou has said that customers funds will be covered by them, what is the problem?

[matonis]

Of course, I support Bitcoinica and the concept of leveraged speculating/hedging. We need more of them (regulated and unregulated so you can pick your flavour). You may not see it but large entities are planning on entering the bitcoin economy in a major way; margin exchanges allow them to hedge their currency exposure without having to sell out of their BTC positions.

A regulated entity does not always inspire trust. Just look at the poor MF Global customers.

I will just borrow the words from someone else: "It is mathematically impossible to get high leverage to work in a thin market."

Until we have a much larger market, high leverage is absolutely nonsensical and will always lead to huge failures.

This breach (and potential failure of Bitcoinica) had absolutely nothing to do with leverage or margin trading. It was a policy and network security issue and it could have happened to an un-careful Faucet. Unless you don't believe that it was a security breach from the outside.

Bitcoinica's broad customer base is testament to the fact that there is a huge pent-up demand for that type of service.

[N12]

I will just borrow the words from someone else: "It is mathematically impossible to get high leverage to work in a thin market."

Until we have a much larger market, high leverage is absolutely nonsensical and will always lead to huge failures.

This breach (and potential failure of Bitcoinica) had absolutely nothing to do with leverage or margin trading. It was a policy and network security issue and it could have happened to an un-careful Faucet.

Bitcoinica's broad customer base is testament to the fact that there is a huge pent-up demand for that type of service.

I agree there is tons of demand for leveraged trading. Just telling you that were it not the hacks, it would be the fact that they give out x10 leverage to anonymous accounts which can be created en masse.

Any such service providing big leverage without proper risk management (which is really hard with a small market like Bitcoin) is doomed to fail and get into Bitcoin debt potentially as high as all deposits, possibly with the price skyrocketing.

Endorsing Bitcoinica is like endorsing MyBitcoin. That is my stance.

[hazek]

how destructive moral hazard to a market is

Maybe just this one, since I still don't understand it. I understand each word separately but it just reads like word salad to me.

You know you could google "moral hazard" if you really wanted to learn.. and find the first link going here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard

In short it's a theory that says that if you remove risk from a market transaction you create an environment where there is an added incentive for committing fraud or simply doing stupid things. Risk is what keeps greed in check and without it you have moral hazard and a lot more bad outcomes.

[hazek]

+  

Hazek has it right. Corporations are state entities that only exist through use of force. No one should be able to create a fake entity to unload their liability onto. Legal fictions don't do anything - it's people that take the actions, and people own what actions they take. In this case, the people running Bitcoinica lost? a ton of bitcoins. It was their responsibility to protect them and they are absolutely liable in any moral justice system.

Yep, but don't count on people indoctrinated in government schools or currently hiding behind a legal fiction to admit that.

wtf that has to do with this thread?  Zhou has said that customers funds will be covered by them, what is the problem?

"Will be" and "were" are not the same last I checked. Owners hiding behind a legal fiction make it that much less likely we'll ever get to the "were" part.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

The last address on the list is bitcoin faucet:

http://blockchain.info/address/15ArtCgi3wmpQAAfYx4riaFmo4prJA4VsK

Way to spread that coinage thin and make sure everybody gets some. Even better than donating some to pools in terms of ensuring the coinage wont be black listed.

Now that's far more interesting than the binary message (:  The faucet has also already started sending out payments out of that chunk of coin.

See how interesting the argument gets.

The faucet has knowingly received 'supposedly' stolen coins and passed them on to others. Isn't there a name for that?

This is why the whole idea of 'tainted' coins is a bad idea. You can't enforce the unenforceable and trying will do more harm then good.

Lets put the focus where it belongs. How did they get stolen? And try to prevent that from happening again.

If a bridge collapses, the engineers don't do an analysis of where the pieces fell. They do an analysis of how the bridge collapsed.

Yes they do! And the same if a plane crashes due to it falling apart in the sky prior to the crash. Where the pieces land is an important part of the investigation. Same with a bridge.

~Bruno~

[bulanula]

Accepting stolen coins here :

17upZsFjg6DKbHMwLpzyzqf2H9JAWTWFSC

Love the 17upZs part

What is this mass leak crap

[Serge]

+  

Hazek has it right. Corporations are state entities that only exist through use of force. No one should be able to create a fake entity to unload their liability onto. Legal fictions don't do anything - it's people that take the actions, and people own what actions they take. In this case, the people running Bitcoinica lost? a ton of bitcoins. It was their responsibility to protect them and they are absolutely liable in any moral justice system.

Yep, but don't count on people indoctrinated in government schools or currently hiding behind a legal fiction to admit that.

wtf that has to do with this thread?  Zhou has said that customers funds will be covered by them, what is the problem?

"Will be" and "were" are not the same last I checked. Owners hiding behind a legal fiction make it that much less likely we'll ever get to the "were" part.

yeah makes great sense, ruin a perfect golden goose.  they may or may not, atm we have their word, we'll see what happens in the upcoming week, given history Bitcoinica has made things right in the past. so what is your "legal fiction" has to do with anything?

[hazek]

+  

Hazek has it right. Corporations are state entities that only exist through use of force. No one should be able to create a fake entity to unload their liability onto. Legal fictions don't do anything - it's people that take the actions, and people own what actions they take. In this case, the people running Bitcoinica lost? a ton of bitcoins. It was their responsibility to protect them and they are absolutely liable in any moral justice system.

Yep, but don't count on people indoctrinated in government schools or currently hiding behind a legal fiction to admit that.

wtf that has to do with this thread?  Zhou has said that customers funds will be covered by them, what is the problem?

"Will be" and "were" are not the same last I checked. Owners hiding behind a legal fiction make it that much less likely we'll ever get to the "were" part.

yeah makes great sense, ruin a perfect golden goose.  they may or may not, atm we have their word, we'll see what happens in the upcoming week, given history Bitcoinica has made things right in the past. so what is your "legal fiction" has to do with anything?

It's not like it doesn't happen. Are you familiar with the FullTiltPoker ordeal? They too had a golden goose and destroyed it because they could abuse their situation.

Just because all past evidence supports a theory it does not follow it will always support it in the future.


But honestly I interjected myself only because someone made a stupid defense of legal fictions and it is in my nature to always challenge irrational and destructive delusions whenever I can.

[organofcorti]

how destructive moral hazard to a market is

Maybe just this one, since I still don't understand it. I understand each word separately but it just reads like word salad to me.

You know you could google "moral hazard" if you really wanted to learn.. and find the first link going here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard

In short it's a theory that says that if you remove risk from a market transaction you create an environment where there is an added incentive for committing fraud or simply doing stupid things. Risk is what keeps greed in check and without it you have moral hazard and a lot more bad outcomes.

Thank you for some interesting reading.

FYI I couldn't google it because I wasn't sure which part of the phrase was important. Destructive moral? Or hazard to a market? I just didn't follow your jargon.