I'm leaving Bitcoin

[unclescrooge]

OK two things about trading:

-in a world where people are free, trading, ie voluntary exchange between two individuals, will naturally occurs. You may think it's a zero or even negative sum game, it's your right, but if you think it should be forbidden, then you think you know better than others, and you limit freedom of individuals. And i dare to say it's the root of the biggest evils of today's societies. (i don't develop it would take two pages)

-also, like others said it better, trading provides liquidity, which allow anyone to buy bitcoins instantly, at the best price (just think two seconds what would happen if there was no exchange places).

[molecular]

zhou tong, you are one exceptional person.

best wishes and thanks!

[tvbcof]

Good luck-- I share your view that coming up with better ways of playing zero-sum games is not the way to make the world a better place.

The fact that this statement is coming from the 'lead developer' of Bitcoin does NOT make me feel good about the future of the Bitcoin project. Shows a complete ignorance of markets and economics. Epic epic epic fail.

The fact that Zhou thinks that such markets are a 'zero sum game' as well means that it is a good thing he is getting out. He doesn't even understand what he created. Sad.

Gavin,

Can you respond to this?

-Charlie

I'm not Gavin, of course, but I read Zhou Tong's original and Gavin's response and basically agreed.  Certainly I would not consider it a 'fail' of any sort, much less an 'epic epic epic' one.

It looked to me like Bitcoinica spent it's life as a gaggle of idiots trying to make money off one another.  It was 'zero sum' to the extent that some idiots succeeded and some failed but there was (arguably) not much influence outside of that environment.

There is a legitimate business use for futures markets and (probably somewhat less so) for forex-type markets, but with a few exceptions they did not appear in the little Bitcoinica world.

Don't get me wrong...I see nothing wrong with straight up gambling platforms and to the extent that I do, it's an easy choice for me to ignore them.  I also don't believe that Bitcoinica either helped or hurt the Bitcoin economy very much.  If I were putting a huge amount of effort into developing the platform and it was used in this manner, however, I am sure I would feel a bit demoralized and like I was wasting my time.  If that is a factor in Zhou Tong and Gavin's comments, I could certainly relate.

[rjk]

Wow, it only took two pages for it to devolve into Gavin-bashing and talk about economics. This has got to be a record

And if you want my opinion on bitcoin finances being a zero-sum game... well it sure is when all your profits get stolen.

[jimbobway]

Gavin is probably referring to his recent comment on bitcoin mining where bitcoin mining is a zero-sum game.  In an isolated system, however, anything in the closed environment is a zero sum game.  In fact, the entire universe itself is a zero-sum game because of always increasing entropy.

Zero sum games can be proven to be true in an isolated system.  However, it is possible that participants, variables, and other factors that interact on top of that isolated system could be greater than zero sum.  I believe that the platform of Bitcoinica could theoretically be proven to be zero sum, but beyond that closed environment is not zero sum and it something much, much greater.

I am sad to see Zhoutong leave since an opportunity like Bitcoinica/Bitcoin only comes once in a decade/century/millennium/aeon. 

"If you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal and if they can't stop you, you become something else entirely – a legend, Mister Wayne."

You could have been Batman.

[Cluster2k]

Wow, 4.5 days to develop Bitcoinica into a usable platform.  I'm very impressed and wish I could build something so popular, so quickly.  Zhoutong's site was a key member of the early days of Bitcoin (we're still in the very early days, and hopefully not the last). 

Bitcoinica's demise may be another milestone on Bitcoin's overall journey downwards as it gains a reputation in the general media as a currency that's mired in frequent scandal.

I can't help but feel that this week's hack is the primary cause of his leaving Bitcoin.  Things are probably worse than they appear.  After three days we still can't see anything on bitcoinica.com.  Not even a splash page saying the site is down for maintenance.

[muyuu]

Wow, 4.5 days to develop Bitcoinica into a usable platform.  I'm very impressed and wish I could build something so popular, so quickly.  Zhoutong's site was a key member of the early days of Bitcoin (we're still in the very early days, and hopefully not the last). 

Bitcoinica's demise may be another milestone on Bitcoin's overall journey downwards as it gains a reputation in the general media as a currency that's mired in frequent scandal.

I can't help but feel that this week's hack is the primary cause of his leaving Bitcoin.  Things are probably worse than they appear.  After three days we still can't see anything on bitcoinica.com.  Not even a splash page saying the site is down for maintenance.

If you're handy with RoR/Django/Flask or some other RAD framework, you can get a fully working non-trivial system in a weekend. The main difficulty would be having a very clear idea of what exactly you want to do. Mockups can be done in 1 or 2 days for sites that are not trivial at all.

Usually frameworks come with some example step-by-step tutorials you can go through in a matter of minutes or hours, typically blogs, wikis or simple forums.

But from a first workable solution to a polished back-end there can be a lot of work that shows very little superficial difference.

[hoo]

No, this isn't related to the Bitcoinica hack. The hack just makes the choices obvious and straightforward.

I, Zhou Tong (Zhou is my surname), will discontinue all involvement in Bitcoin-related projects after the Bitcoinica incident has been fully resolved until further notice.

I always believe in Bitcoin, or simply anything that brings people financial liberty. I have heavily invested in Bitcoin (I purchased one 1,000 BTC gold coin from Casascius and will keep it for as long as I can). And I have enjoyed what I have done for the Bitcoin community.

Really, thank you for all the wonderful support. It feels great to have an experimental project become the "best thing since sliced bread", and run one of the most profitable businesses in a new economy. Bitcoinica has a total historical revenue equivalent to about 0.67% of the whole Bitcoin economy. Not even Apple can match this record in the real world economies.

The first time I read about Bitcoin was in late 2010. My first reaction was "these coins are cheap, maybe it just doesn't work". I learned about Bitcoin again in mid 2011, when the first bubble started. I bought my first Bitcoin when it fell to $8. I told all my close friends and classmates about Bitcoin, simply because I think it's a cool idea. The idea of a margin trading platform quickly went into my mind, and I started working on Bitcoinica.

I lied about the time it took to build Bitcoinica. (I said I spent one week on it.) I started on September 4, 2011 and launched on September 9, 2011. Just four and half days. In a week, trading volume passed one million dollars. I started making profits like crazy.

In November, an investor approached me to acquire Bitcoinica. Due to regulatory concerns, I agreed to the deal and signed the agreement. Bitcoinica was sold for a good price. However, since the investor is unable to arrange for a replacement team, I continued to become the sole operator until Team Intersango took over two weeks ago. The investor let me keep all profits until late January, the official handover time. After handover, he continued to offer generous salary and performance bonus every month. The investor demands his identity to be protected so I won't share more information on this.

I left school in Singapore and decided to continue my education in Australia. I made the decision because of the Internet industry, and the hacker culture. I'm a web developer and I want to become a really good one. I want to work with smart hackers and wonderful designers to change the world. Singapore isn't particularly good at this. (Obviously, US West Coast should be a better choice, but for some other reasons I didn't consider US.)

I have started working on another project (not Bitcoin-related) that is going to make a little difference on the Internet. So far I have achieved great progress and I'm pretty confident about this new venture.

My life hasn't changed much except that I became more confident after Bitcoinica's success. I realized that I have the power to make something profitable. Such kind of confidence is extremely hard to get, until you really experience a significant success. I worked on several projects before, and all of them failed eventually. I thought I was confident because I kept building new stuff and improving myself. But the real confidence comes from the success itself.

I failed at one thing though, that is generating value for the society. Bitcoinica did create a place for people to trade more efficiently and provide liquidity to the market. However, speculation is a zero-sum game (or negative-sum, strictly saying). I know there can be many justifications for Bitcoinica's value, but all of them are against my intuition and values.

With the confidence and the innate intuition to build wonderful things for a better world, I decided to move on. I didn't quit Bitcoinica because it's the only source of income that I currently have.

I know that my time is valuable and industry establishment is really important. I don't want my name to be remembered by only Bitcoiners. It's true that I believe in Bitcoin's potential, but not everyone believes. If I'm a influential person I wouldn't have to do this, but the best way to be known in the Internet industry is to build products that save people time, money and headaches.

I'm going to be a young entrepreneur that solves problems for everyone. I leave Bitcoin only because it doesn't help address my real needs. Making money isn't that important after all.

I'll be a Bitcoin lover forever, and I will come back to this forum regularly to discuss about the future that's in our own hands! I will keep the 1,000 BTC  gold coin as a lifetime investment and I'm pretty confident that it'll be the best investment ever in my life.

Bitcoin FTW!

To put this bluntly, you will fail at everything you do from now until the day you die.
Consider yourself a cursed man.

[organofcorti]

Wow, hoo continues to carry on like a 13 year old girl trying to win a bitch fest. Threats of violence, random ventings of spleen, homophobia - check out a few posts and you'll see he has it all : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=43137;sa=showPosts


So ignore him ZT. And if you're ever in Sydney, look us up and say 'hi'.

[chsados]

so wtf is going on... is bitcoinca going back online monday or not?  am i missing any official announcement other than that blogpost a few days ago?

[hoo]

@organofcorti, without knowing what you wrote since I have you on ignore,
I am sure someone else can verify you are indeed breaking forum rules and harassing me,
consider yourself reported paedo.

edit, he is also a liar and culpable of slander.

[rjk]

@organofcorti, without knowing what you wrote since I have you on ignore,
I am sure someone else can verify you are indeed breaking forum rules and harassing me,
consider yourself reported paedo.

et tu, brute. Get out and don't come back with your unfounded accusations.

Quote below so you can see what he said:

Wow, hoo continues to carry on like a 13 year old girl trying to win a bitch fest. Threats of violence, random ventings of spleen, homophobia - check out a few posts and you'll see he has it all : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=43137;sa=showPosts


So ignore him ZT. And if you're ever in Sydney, look us up and say 'hi'.

And I see you trying some SEO trickery with your sig, too bad it isn't actually going to work as well as you think it might.

[hoo]

@organofcorti, without knowing what you wrote since I have you on ignore,
I am sure someone else can verify you are indeed breaking forum rules and harassing me,
consider yourself reported paedo.

et tu, brute. Get out and don't come back with your unfounded accusations.

Quote below so you can see what he said:

Wow, hoo continues to carry on like a 13 year old girl trying to win a bitch fest. Threats of violence, random ventings of spleen, homophobia - check out a few posts and you'll see he has it all : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=43137;sa=showPosts


So ignore him ZT. And if you're ever in Sydney, look us up and say 'hi'.

And I see you trying some SEO trickery with your sig, too bad it isn't actually going to work as well as you think it might.

2nd offense, if you continue harassing me I will contact the authorities.

[rjk]

@organofcorti, without knowing what you wrote since I have you on ignore,
I am sure someone else can verify you are indeed breaking forum rules and harassing me,
consider yourself reported paedo.

et tu, brute. Get out and don't come back with your unfounded accusations.

Quote below so you can see what he said:

Wow, hoo continues to carry on like a 13 year old girl trying to win a bitch fest. Threats of violence, random ventings of spleen, homophobia - check out a few posts and you'll see he has it all : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=43137;sa=showPosts


So ignore him ZT. And if you're ever in Sydney, look us up and say 'hi'.

And I see you trying some SEO trickery with your sig, too bad it isn't actually going to work as well as you think it might.

2nd offense, if you continue harassing me I will contact the authorities.

Come get me, bastard.

[organofcorti]

@organofcorti, without knowing what you wrote since I have you on ignore,
I am sure someone else can verify you are indeed breaking forum rules and harassing me,
consider yourself reported paedo.

et tu, brute. Get out and don't come back with your unfounded accusations.

Quote below so you can see what he said:

Wow, hoo continues to carry on like a 13 year old girl trying to win a bitch fest. Threats of violence, random ventings of spleen, homophobia - check out a few posts and you'll see he has it all : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=43137;sa=showPosts


So ignore him ZT. And if you're ever in Sydney, look us up and say 'hi'.

And I see you trying some SEO trickery with your sig, too bad it isn't actually going to work as well as you think it might.

2nd offense, if you continue harassing me I will contact the authorities.

Holy crap! Not the Internets Police!

hoo, just continue putting forum members on ignore. Eventually it will get to the point that you'll only see posts from people that can stand you. Or, more likely, you'll be alone.

[paraipan]

Wow, hoo continues to carry on like a 13 year old girl trying to win a bitch fest. Threats of violence, random ventings of spleen, homophobia - check out a few posts and you'll see he has it all : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=43137;sa=showPosts


So ignore him ZT. And if you're ever in Sydney, look us up and say 'hi'.

hey organof sup with your blog, do you still make updates on it ?

[organofcorti]

Yep, just been sidetracked for the last month doing projects to earn cash. I'll get back to NPW once I have a few paying ventures under my belt.

[dirtycat]

18K+ BTC disappears.. and now he is gonna jump ship.. where the conspiracy theorists at? lol 

[giszmo]

good luck Zhou

[paraipan]

Yep, just been sidetracked for the last month doing projects to earn cash. I'll get back to NPW once I have a few paying ventures under my belt.

We need some of your "pron" dude on prop pools, think you could do it ? Will be throwing some coins your way for that to happen, same address right...

/off topic

silent thread watch mode...