Quote from: elux on September 25, 2012, 08:26:31 AM

Quote from: davout on September 25, 2012, 08:11:32 AM

Quote from: elux on September 23, 2012, 12:39:01 PM

You could do this for charity. But bailing out Bitcoin businesses that fail hard on security is... BAD.

BF is pretty much bailing itself out by taking a forced 0% interest loan on people who have coins "on hold" there.

So... They're holding funds hostage AND reopening for business WHILE being technically bankrupt?

I don't know what can be intelligently said about that. Except that it can't possibly be legal anywhere.

*sigh*

I have no direct financial interest in this situation... but I have to say, from the available information, I share your concerns. How good the platform was seems irrelevant. A company that was admittedly netting under $3000 USD/month loses $250k USD overnight... hands 100% of that loss to users... and then is re-capitalized by the same people who took the loss? It doesn't make a lot of sense, unless the investors are privy to private information, or have some reason to believe the operators of the company will be able to make profits grow exponentially in spite of the bad publicity and lost users stemming from the theft.

No small online business is worth more than a few years' profit, so if investors do cover a loss this size, I suppose they must be doing it because either they:

   a) calculate that the platform surviving will add enough value (prevent enough loss) to the BTC community to make up for the investment.

   b) anticipate that a $1-2000 USD (each) shot in the arm to bitfloor will give them a window to recoup a significant amount of the BTC they lost personally.

   c) have a personal or significant business relationship with the company's management and believe (or at least really hope) that there really was an outside hack and theft, and honestly believe this is not that big an issue. .

I hope this has a happy ending and business goes on... I would even consider trusting money with bitfloor in the future if say, they go a year without another incident, pay back all BTC lost by their incompetence, and undergo a massive security upgrade... including proper training of all employes who have any kind of access to wallets (or customer data for that matter). Not simply changing to a dedicated server and adding a passcode.

If I had BTC in this I would not get my hopes up that this will end well. The way it has been explained publicly leaves a lot to be desired. Is there any evidence at all that bitfloors servers were compromised? All we have is one wallet file, under the control of bitfloor, totally cleaned out. They have admitted that they left the file unencrypted... but the immediate statements about 'moving on' and 'looking forward' are huge red flags. Certainly figuring out the next steps must be their priority... but who decided that aggressively attempting to identify the criminal and/or recover the lost BTC should not be one of those first steps? Are they even 100% sure that the wallet accidentally left unencrypted was the method through which the theft occurred... or are they just assuming this because it is likely? Not exactly a tight ship.

If my 2 bits are worth anything, before interested parties and potential investors make any quick decisions, they should have lot of questions answered. Not the least of which would be; What is the New York State police report number? Certainly you reported a crime of this scale to the police. Next, do you have professionals forensically analyzing the compromised server? Not to mention any PC or device which may have had access to the stolen wallet? Will you be updating those who are out money on the status of both of these investigations? I have never seen anyone be so nonchalant about losing 10x their company's annual net income. They were very quick to seek another $220,000+ USD in funding, no so quick to share real information about the alleged hack with those who actually did the losing out.

If their wallets fill up again, anticipate another failure and a quick vamoose of all corporate officers. We have these markets set up poorly. Bitfloors managers now have two options, no matter what happened with the first theft. They can scrape by on the margins with their cut of the fees, paying back the money they owe on on their 40 year plan. Or... they can wait until they're holding a million bucks, post a 5 paragraph post about the evil, unstoppable hacker who will inevitably take the rest of your money and that will be that. There is one born every minute, so I'm sure some people will happily line up to use this service again before this issue is even close to being resolved. People are going to deposit new money on top of their old "frozen" (read: nonexistent) funds? That is simply amazing to me.

One man's analysis of this situation: Very smart move by those who got out yesterday at 60-70%. If you're lucky enough to get 40% today, take it and run. Unfortunately your only choice is to dump your Bitfloor Inc debt for whatever you can get for it, before it becomes a "Satoshi stock".

To everyone who had an honest motive going in and lost out; peace, love, empathy, and good luck in the future. To whoever robbed the money... you're just a lowlife scumbag, stealing hard earned money from retires and you'll get yours eventually.

My analysis is based simply on my investigating into and understanding of the recent events involving Bitfloor, and my complete inability to predict any viable way in which they will be able to return this company to profitability. If they prove me wrong, pay everyone back and are a solvent, legitimate company 12 months from now, I will admit my poor judgement and donate 200BTC to Bitfloor Inc's favorite charity (Up to a maximum value of $7500 USD). I really hope that happens for the sake of the currency, it would be nice to see one of these big "lost money" operators finally make good, but it would be a first.