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

[R-]

^wow those are some busy blocks.
On a slightly related note: blockchain wallets are offline

[tvbcof]

I don't mean to be rude but I don't understand how people on this forum manage to get scammed literally every day by something new.... and the worst part is.. nothing ever happens.. You guys will make a collection thread no doubt.. and that will be that..

It must be embarrassing for some of you.... ?

Not a great way to make friends and influence people.  Oh well...it's basically true and sometimes the truth hurts.

My unpopular opinion is that these ripoffs actually benefit the Bitcoin economy:

• Vulnerabilities are discovered, security awareness and best practices are spread while Bitcoin is still in beta
• Stolen Bitcoins get into circulation and level the initial imbalance of early adopters vs. others
• Risk of theft counteracts hoarding and the deflationary spiral and encourages people to spend Bitcoins while they still have them

#1 and #2 were my opinion when I was initially interested in Bitcoin.  And remain so.

#3 I had not really thought of and do not agree with.  Possibly because I am a hoarder and because I have never worries to much about people stealing my stuff due to negligence on my part.

[paraipan]

Nice 
...

Can the current owner(s) of bitcoinica comment on these transactions that took place today?

if you look closely those are blocks relayed through bitcoinica's node not transactions, normal network operation if you ask me.

[enmaku]

https://i.imgur.com/1e8J1.jpg
^^^ Coin movement so far. Previous commenter was correct about those blocks simply being blocks relayed by Bitcoinica.

On a related note, we know they "donated" some of Bitcoinica's BTC to the faucet, does anyone recognize any of the other addresses?

[Otoh]

https://i.imgur.com/1e8J1.jpg
^^^ Coin movement so far. Previous commenter was correct about those blocks simply being blocks relayed by Bitcoinica.

On a related note, we know they "donated" some of Bitcoinica's BTC to the faucet, does anyone recognize any of the other addresses?

so atm they are just working with 1 out of the 7 of the 2,600 BTC stashes they split it in to & seems they are just slicing off miniscule bits of it (from 16 coins or less) as the 'donation' to the faucet does so basically they are still sitting on the 18,000 odd coins for now, not sure how these little micro finance dispersments help them unless to spread the loot's taint as wide as possible before they get down to some serious laundering

[terrytibbs]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=58011

Whitelisted without a single post; that's a record!

[Bitcoinica Consultancy]

From now on this will be the official Bitcoinica Bitcointalk account. We asked the moderators to whilelist it.

[Bitcoinica Consultancy]

To all those still speculating about Bitcoinica's ownership, allow us to clear up some facts.

Bitcoinica LP is a New Zealand Limited Partnership which is wholly operated by Bitcoinica Consultancy LTD a New Zealand registered company.

Mr. Heaslip is an accounting professional who assisted us with registrations and company formation. He has his own business interests in New Zealand which are otherwise unrelated.

The majority limited partner in Bitcoinica Limited Partnership is an investment fund which specializes in technology start-up investments. Mr. Seale is a facilitator for this fund and was instrumental in bringing investment into Bitcoinica LP to support it's operation and growth. He has also helped bring investment to CoinLab and other bitcoin businesses. CoinLab and Bitcoinica are otherwise unrelated. Additionally, Mr. Seale is an advisor or investor with dozens of companies outside the bitcoin space. Bitcoinica LP and those companies are also unrelated.

While we appreciate everyone's enthusiasm, we would prefer to focus our efforts on restoring account access for our customers rather than squashing additional speculation and rumors here. We will be giving more announcements as updates come.

We thank everyone for your understanding.

[tvbcof]

...
Mr. Seale is a facilitator for this fund and was instrumental in bringing investment into Bitcoinica LP to support it's operation and growth.
...

Please extend my condolences to the investors.  You win some, you lose some.

Investors should be warned that Bitcoin is a bit like The Hulk.  It seems to have a nasty tendency to indiscriminately smash people and things around it...at least in business land.

[faidsaid]

To all those still speculating about Bitcoinica's ownership, allow us to clear up some facts.

Bitcoinica LP is a New Zealand Limited Partnership which is wholly operated by Bitcoinica Consultancy LTD a New Zealand registered company.

Mr. Heaslip is an accounting professional who assisted us with registrations and company formation. He has his own business interests in New Zealand which are otherwise unrelated.

The majority limited partner in Bitcoinica Limited Partnership is an investment fund which specializes in technology start-up investments. Mr. Seale is a facilitator for this fund and was instrumental in bringing investment into Bitcoinica LP to support it's operation and growth. He has also helped bring investment to CoinLab and other bitcoin businesses. CoinLab and Bitcoinica are otherwise unrelated. Additionally, Mr. Seale is an advisor or investor with dozens of companies outside the bitcoin space. Bitcoinica LP and those companies are also unrelated.

While we appreciate everyone's enthusiasm, we would prefer to focus our efforts on restoring account access for our customers rather than squashing additional speculation and rumors here. We will be giving more announcements as updates come.

We thank everyone for your understanding.

If you don't have a plan by now you are simply hopeless. Just to entertain the notion that you aren't, what is the plan for restoring customer's funds to them? What is the timeline and where is the process on that timeline?

Please, no hip shooting on this, a coherent formal response is long overdue. Start a thread, you know the drill.

[btcgoldsilver]

So...

when can i get my bitcoins refunded?

any timeline?

[Bitcoinica Consultancy]

The plan has already been mentioned. However I can understand it can be hard to filter the amount of information, particularly in this thread. The plan is to create a reclaim process where we can identify users based on their account information. Users with larger balances will undergo a more thorough screening process as well for safety.

Operationally, we were only days away from fully being in a general partner position. However, as previously stated, these switch overs cannot happen overnight. Once we had fully taken over, one of the first things we would have done is change the administrative access capacity to the server. We are now adamant to have that done before we put up the claims page.

We'd like to apologize for the delay in putting up the reclaim page. As stated, we want to be sure that we have full and exclusive administrative access before allowing people submit reclaims. Our technical officer is both in a different time zone than Zhou and Zhou also has obligations with his school. Initially, we needed to investigate and internally discuss how we would move forward. With a situation like this rushing things is by far the worst decision. For that reason, I can't guarantee a time frame but my best guess would be that the claims form will be done by tomorrow. I will update you once I have more information.

[btcgoldsilver]

Thanks for the update

[guruvan]

The plan has already been mentioned. However I can understand it can be hard to filter the amount of information, particularly in this thread. The plan is to create a reclaim process where we can identify users based on their account information. Users with larger balances will undergo a more thorough screening process as well for safety.

Operationally, we were only days away from fully being in a general partner position. However, as previously stated, these switch overs cannot happen overnight. Once we had fully taken over, one of the first things we would have done is change the administrative access capacity to the server. We are now adamant to have that done before we put up the claims page.

We'd like to apologize for the delay in putting up the reclaim page. As stated, we want to be sure that we have full and exclusive administrative access before allowing people submit reclaims. Our technical officer is both in a different time zone than Zhou and Zhou also has obligations with his school. Initially, we needed to investigate and internally discuss how we would move forward. With a situation like this rushing things is by far the worst decision. For that reason, I can't guarantee a time frame but my best guess would be that the claims form will be done by tomorrow. I will update you once I have more information.

You'd like to apologize, but never have bothered to. Don't. Just get the money.

You've delayed long enough, you've convinced enough people that you're
a) dishonest
b) incompetent
c) not concerned with customer service
d) probably not in posession of 100% of your customers' deposits.

Since the form to request the Bitcoinica funds is not up yet, maybe it is best to just report how much Bitcoinica owes them to the New Zealand Serious Fraud Office (complaints@sfo.govt.nz).

I will be making this report this evening. I'm sick and tired of the lame excuses, delay tactics, and other bullshit I've seen from "Bitcoinica Consultancy"

I will add to that when I find out how much bitcoinica has stolen from me by closing my position forcibly before actually giving me the cash.

(oh, yeah, you bet, if the exchange rate is in my favor, and you liquidated me lower, you're gonna hear more from me and the SFO)

[zhoutong]

Nice 

Can the current owner(s) of bitcoinica comment on these transactions that took place today?

I'm not an owner, but I know what happened.

We have a fallback node called fallback.nodes.bitcoinica.com. It's still running in Linode. That was initially set up to provide external connections for our secure vault server (which can only access trusted nodes).

Since the network conditions are great, the node has always maintained hundreds of connections and it's very likely to be the first one to relay new transactions.

[btccomm]

Is this the mass leak?

http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-per-block

[rjk]

Is this the mass leak?

http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-per-block

lol no, that is just the Satoshidice gambling platform.

[btccomm]

Is this the mass leak?

http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-per-block

lol no, that is just the Satoshidice gambling platform.

what's the deal with this then?
http://blockchain.info/tree/5416502

 why did the tree get so big so fast.  what am i missing?

[rjk]

Is this the mass leak?

http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-per-block

lol no, that is just the Satoshidice gambling platform.

what's the deal with this then?
http://blockchain.info/tree/5416502

 why did the tree get so big so fast.  what am i missing?

It's something called "money laundering": breaking up the stolen coins into smaller units to make them harder to follow, and sending them to many different addresses. Fortunately with Bitcoin, we have a blockchain that makes it a bit easier to follow.

[btccomm]

it looks exponential and very methodical to me