A public plea for help regarding Bitcoinica and my 24,841 BTC

[MemoryDealers]

what's going on behind the scenes Tihan,  Zhou,  Patrick, Donald, Amir, or anyone else with access to Bitcoinica money ??

Tihan and Zhou specifically told Patrick, Donald, and Amir to refund my money,  but they steadfastly refused to send me even 1 bitcoin of it.
They claimed that they needed to wait until the claim process was complete, but refused to set any kind of date.

[MemoryDealers]

Can I ask you why you have such large amount of money in a third party site?

I was attracted by the high interest rates and the money I thought I could earn by depositing bitcoins with them.
I never made a single trade on Bitcoinica.
I simply held a balance and collected interest.

[iCEBREAKER]

Apparently Mt.Gox knows who withdrew the 40k+40k, but they choose to protect the hacker.

Now that's just asinine, if true.

Evil Bit Burglar: "Mt Gox, plz send me, the Bitcoinica thief, lots and lots of stolen monies.  About 80k should do for now."
MtGox "Sure BitBurglar, no problem.  Here they are, you have fun retiring in St Tropez."

iCEBREAKER: "I've been using MtGox for a year with no problems, can I have $100 send to my Dwolla?"
MtGox "ZOMG Y U try to launder money?  We insist U give us copies of your GOVT DOX so U identity can be stolen EZ next time we get our shit haxord!"

[ErebusBat]

Apparently Mt.Gox knows who withdrew the 40k+40k, but they choose to protect the hacker.

Now that's just asinine, if true.

Evil Bit Burglar: "Mt Gox, plz send me, the Bitcoinica thief, lots and lots of stolen monies.  About 80k should do for now."
MtGox "Sure BitBurglar, no problem.  Here they are, you have fun retiring in St Tropez."

iCEBREAKER: "I've been using MtGox for a year with no problems, can I have $100 send to my Dwolla?"
MtGox "ZOMG Y U try to launder money?  We insist U give us copies of your GOVT DOX so U identity can be stolen EZ next time we get our shit haxord!"

Haha, now to spread FUD (because that is what the forums are for now right?) MtGox is bitconica hacker

[gnar1ta$]

Apparently Mt.Gox knows who withdrew the 40k+40k, but they choose to protect the hacker.

Now that's just asinine, if true.

Why fight Gox on this...If the BTC/$ was withdrawn from Bitcoinica's Mt.Gox account, Bitcoinica has the information.  They can login and do whatever they want with it, post it publicly even.  Or do they no longer have access to their own account? I can't keep up.  But it's sad to see Memory Dealers lose so much when they have done so much for Bitcoin.  I hope you can recover something.

[justusranvier]

I was attracted by the high interest rates and the money I thought I could earn by depositing bitcoins with them.
I never made a single trade on Bitcoinica.
I simply held a balance and collected interest.

So you were gambling.

Is there no one left in the world that understands economics and compound interest any more? Getting paid high interest rates on investments indicates high risk, including the risk that the entire scheme is a fraud

Betting on mathematically-impossible returns on financial instruments will always end in tears.

[kiba]

* kiba faceplams

MemoryDealers: You should have known better than to risk such a large sum of money at a 3rd party site.

[sadpandatech]

Apparently Mt.Gox knows who withdrew the 40k+40k, but they choose to protect the hacker.

Now that's just asinine, if true.

Why fight Gox on this...If the BTC/$ was withdrawn from Bitcoinica's Mt.Gox account, Bitcoinica has the information.  They can login and do whatever they want with it, post it publicly even.  Or do they no longer have access to their own account? I can't keep up.  But it's sad to see Memory Dealers lose so much when they have done so much for Bitcoin.  I hope you can recover something.

if it was a MtGox code, then only MtGox would know where it was redeemed at.  But yea, it is certainly true that Bitcoinica can see what IP initiated the transfers.

[paulie_w]

roger if you don't mind my asking, was this the majority of your btc holdings?

[iCEBREAKER]

Haha, now to spread FUD (because that is what the forums are for now right?) MtGox is bitconica hacker

Pirate secretly owns MtGox and uses stolen Bitcoinica funds to spam the blockchain with SatoshiDice transactions.

Therefore, Bitcoin is DOOMED.

Quick, send me all your coins before the hackers steal your organs!

(How'd I do?)

[coblee]

Roger, I'm sorry to hear of your loss. In the end, you can't really trust anyone else to keep your coins safe. Looking back, this answer was actually not very good:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=63694.msg745976#msg745976

[N12]

Can I ask you why you have such large amount of money in a third party site?

I was attracted by the high interest rates and the money I thought I could earn by depositing bitcoins with them.
I never made a single trade on Bitcoinica.
I simply held a balance and collected interest.

I hope you will soon get at least rest of your coins back.

[Clipse]

Can we stop blaming those who invested due to promises made by bitcoinica ie. interest rates, safe holdings etc.

Its getting rediculous the constant blame on the clients and pointing out that they gambled and knew they could lose the earnings. In hindsight it allways looks like a bad decision but these bad decisions is not the fault of the client but only that of those who handled the client's money.

Guess what, no one would knowingly deposit their funds if they have any idea intially that its a gamble and they may/may not get their funds back so please stop fucking pressing the issue onto the clients ie. memorydealer in this case.

[minorman]

...
I'm a core Bitcoin proselytizer.
I'm responsible partly or in full for:

www.Bitinstant.com
www.coinlab.com
www.lovebitcoins.org
www.ogrr.com
www.bitcoinchipin.com
www.memorydealers.com
National Bitcoin radio adds @ $2,800 a month for over the last year.
The Bitcoin Bet.
Bitcoin Billboard
Numerous national radio interviews.
Several more projects that are in the works including a Bitcoin competitor to newegg.com.

For the last 1.5 years I have spent every waking moment promoting Bitcoin,  and my 24,841 Bitcoins were to be used exactly for that.

Hacker, Tihan,  Zhou,  Patrick, Donald, Amir, or anyone else with access to my money,  please return it to
16HMoS4TryH7wWsAv2PtvxiHX8QGXMGczi

so that I can continue to effectively promote Bitcoin.
Returning my funds will likely make everyone's worth even more in the long run.
I promise I will continue using them to help advance Bitcoin.

Roger Ver
roger@memorydealers.com
Cell +1-408-313-1853

I'm truely sorry for your loss, Roger. It really hurts to see a true pillar of the Bitcoin community suffer this kind of setback.

Sad. 

[justusranvier]

Can we stop blaming those who invested due to promises made by bitcoinica ie. interest rates, safe holdings etc.

Its getting rediculous the constant blame on the clients and pointing out that they gambled and knew they could lose the earnings. In hindsight it allways looks like a bad decision but these bad decisions is not the fault of the client but only that of those who handled the client's money.

Guess what, no one would knowingly deposit their funds if they have any idea intially that its a gamble and they may/may not get their funds back so please stop fucking pressing the issue onto the clients ie. memorydealer in this case.

Are you familiar with the concept of root cause analysis?

It's a technique of examining mistakes in order to learn how to prevent them in the future. It's also a way that one can learn from the mistakes of others without needing to experience the mistake directly.

If one avoids examining all causes of a mistake because considering internal causes is called, "blaming the victim" the effectiveness of the technique is greatly reduced.

[casascius]

This is what strikes me as odd.

When the Bitcoinica servers were deleted, I wonder... "What's Rackspace's response to Bitcoinica's queries of 'we really need your help, surely you have a backup?"  Nowhere did I read the results of them pushing Rackspace for the backups.  You would think that if Rackspace doesn't keep backups for their own business continuity and that once someone pushes delete, data is gone forever, that that would be a significant public relations fiasco for Rackspace.  I find it hard to believe the data is truly gone... unless of course nobody asked.

Even at my payroll business, we take backups and we don't really offer restorations when people delete their own data because it's to save our ass not theirs, but if someone REALLY needed a restore because it meant hundreds of thousands of dollars to their customers and they were willing to pay a grand or two in fees to prove it, I'd flip over backwards for them and restore whatever the hell they want.  I am highly suspicious of the notion that the data was gone the moment it was deleted.  And the fact that screenshots were taken of the deletion and paraded around - just in case virtual servers being deleted sounded too stupid to be believable - makes it even more ridiculous to me.

When 40k BTC and 40k USD moves somewhere, I am amazed that we hear nothing of where it went - no BTC withdrawal address so we can track the coins - and I'm genuinely interested to hear how anybody got 40k USD out of MtGox instantly when the usual wait time is much longer.  Why isn't anybody telling us "our history shows it went out as a wire" or "our history shows it went out as a MtGox code and MtGox has frozen whoever redeemed it"...

[teflone]

This is what strikes me as odd.

When the Bitcoinica servers were deleted, I wonder... "What's Rackspace's response to Bitcoinica's queries of 'we really need your help, surely you have a backup?"  Nowhere did I read the results of them pushing Rackspace for the backups.  You would think that if Rackspace doesn't keep backups for their own business continuity and that once someone pushes delete, data is gone forever, that that would be a significant public relations fiasco for Rackspace.

When 40k BTC and 40k USD moves somewhere, I am amazed that we hear nothing of where it went - no BTC withdrawal address so we can track the coins - and I'm genuinely interested to hear how anybody got 40k USD out of MtGox instantly when the usual wait time is much longer.  Why isn't anybody telling us "our history shows it went out as a wire" or "our history shows it went out as a MtGox code and MtGox has frozen whoever redeemed it"...

Lets all read this again...   

[Bitcoin Oz]

This is what strikes me as odd.

When the Bitcoinica servers were deleted, I wonder... "What's Rackspace's response to Bitcoinica's queries of 'we really need your help, surely you have a backup?"  Nowhere did I read the results of them pushing Rackspace for the backups.  You would think that if Rackspace doesn't keep backups for their own business continuity and that once someone pushes delete, data is gone forever, that that would be a significant public relations fiasco for Rackspace.

When 40k BTC and 40k USD moves somewhere, I am amazed that we hear nothing of where it went - no BTC withdrawal address so we can track the coins - and I'm genuinely interested to hear how anybody got 40k USD out of MtGox instantly when the usual wait time is much longer.  Why isn't anybody telling us "our history shows it went out as a wire" or "our history shows it went out as a MtGox code and MtGox has frozen whoever redeemed it"...

Lets all read this again...   

This

[Scott J]

I was wondering how the hacker managed to withdraw such a large amount - so quickly - while honest MtGox customers have to wait weeks.

[davout]

Probably mtgox codes used at other exchanges.