I'm really sorry that this has happened but I just want to ask the community somthing.
Andre from worldbitcoinexchange had an intersango email address. his site goes down and no money is returned. I loose 500AUD then intersango buys bicoinica and 2 weeks later it goes down! I dont know these guys and dont know what they do and presume they are big on these forums is there a dodgy connection here or am I connecting dots that dont exist?
While I can't speak to any of your events, I have serious questions about this situation.
"intersangoed" is how I feel about it, I don't feel like I'm getting "zhoutonged"
I've seen, in the past, questions raised by exchange owners after the intersango crew "penetration tested" their sites. This raised a red flag, but I trusted them anyhow.
It seems somewhat suspicious to me to just take over this business, and then immediately have a security event that is "significant enough to justify closing down the business and
force liquidating the entire customer base" is awfully convenient if youd like to restructure the finances that you've recently acquired. It's also very convenient to have allowed a security flaw as gaping as this before "actually assuming complete control"
I'm not saying that this is the case, but I can't believe that everyone is naive enough to immediately blame a kid for stealing his way out of a company, or "being stupid enough to have a hot wallet that big" Didn't Intersango do due diligence before acquiring a stake?
I also can't believe that everyone is naive enough to think that just because someone is a "core bitcoin developer" that they're somehow above reproach. While these guys may indeed be 100% honest, how are we to truly know that?
How many times will we trust these guys? After multiple security breaches of their own, it could be that they're just not as good as everyone would like to think. It could be that one or more of them is less than honest. At this point, I have no way of knowing I can truly trust them. (regardless of whether the problem is incompetence or dishonesty)
How is it that a US$100K loss is enough to close the business and liquidate the entire customer base? This just doesn't make sense. If it does, show us the money. Transparency is the only way to true trust. And that means a 100% independent audit of the whole situation. But, if it's dishonest, the books are already cooked.
Either that, or keep running the business, and don't liquidate the customer positions (unless the customer insists on regaining access to funds asap)
It shouldn't take weeks to get this back up and running. There's something not right. I'm not sure what it is, but I don't see people asking a lot of the right questions.
How much money is being cleared by bitcionica by closing out all the positions? Show us the money. But, there's no way to independently verify any of it, really. So. Hm. Anyone willing to tally losses from this forced liquidation
The short of it is anyone would probably be a fool to trust these guys with any more money. They were knowingly negligent, at the very least, in this. They knew what they bought, and they failed to secure it. And now the customers are suffering the loss. For their gross negligence.
If you had a position at bitcoinica, how much will you lose? (or make, but I'm betting the minority are in a profit position at any given point given the astronomical spread)
I'm pretty sure I'm not willing to trust them with more money when they get back up and running. I've seen others refer to bitcionica as the ticking time bomb in bitcoin. I'm thinking this new crew running it is the real time bomb. They appear to be either incompetent, negligent, or of criminal intent. Without them making any kind of real statement, I have nothing to refute those notions. That is unfortunate.
I'm pretty sure I'm not willing to put more money in to find out which problem I have with these guys, and I do know one thing for damn sure: They're not communicating any better than zhoutong has historically, and that's enough to make me not want to do business with them in the future.
Absent while there is an ongoing security incident in their company is completely unacceptable. Leaving the response to a major security incident to the 17yo former owner is, um....pretty pathetic, at best, and probably suggests that there is something more going on than meets the eye. This should raise serious red flags IMO.
"Aaannd. It's gone."
