Quote from: manfred on February 17, 2013, 01:10:38 PM

this was written before the latest events so it was effectively outdated before it was finished.
anyway i decided to post it.

here is a draft solution to get everyone 100% of the on hold bitcoins back at a fixed price of the 21.12.2012 date, over a time frame of 7 years. of course it would need cooperating of all members and the owner. The owner/operator has got the choice, class action lawsuit and bankruptcy or investing in the company and working his arse of to earn some decent money in the future. As it stands everyone can expect very little in financial return if the side is liquidated, only the satisfaction of sending him to the gulags. He seems to have done alright with the coding just take away the business side from him.

The biggest stumbling block is COOPERATION

So here it is:
   current operator take out bank loan for 30% of all bitcoins on hold at a fixed 21.12.2012 price (not live price) and releases them (21.12.2012 is the date the coins got put on hold, i think) . The remaining 70% stay on hold. If he needs help and can not get a bank loan there is such a thing as community loans, family, friends, private investors..... also there is some return from bitcoinica.

   current owner keeps only access to hot wallet to perform admin dutys and different members hold and manage the cold storage (as long as it is out of his hands and spread to different locations it is as save as possible).

   all members accept 100% return of all on Hold bitcoins at fixed 21.12..2012 price per coin and form some sort of share company the size of the share depends in number of coins he has on hold (total about 20000). if someone is not happy with being part owner (does not trust himself, needs some money instantly....) he can sell his share immediately or at any time. Its fair to say that at the beginning the price would be very low. I am equally sure that there would be people eagerly interested to buy the coins (shares) way below market value, but the coins (share) come with some strings attached. After all a share could be worth way more than 100% at some time in future.

   every year, for the next 7 years 10% of the on hold coins become available (at the 21.12.2012 fixed price) to everyone, distributed to the number of bitcoins they hold on hold, funded from the fees from the previous year. the case is not if the people will come back to the side, they are there but have the coins on hold and cant trade. also anyone not selling straight away is locked in so to speak to trade, promote,promote, promote buy ,sell on the side. So why trade somewhere else if i pay the fees in the own company.
yes it requires somewhere in the vicinity of 5 million transactions a year and would run a loss in the first year(s). A lose, (the side not archiving the targeted number of trades) simple means that it would be deducted form the released coins and not investment of new capital.
mtgox trades over a 2 million bitcoins a month. What was Mtgoxs volume 2 years ago, what will it be in 2 years time?
With the exception of the operator (loan and implementation of new features, p2p on webside and Android, iPhone app....) no one else invests any new money and only max. 70% of the on hold coins are risk of being lost. The risk will be, if the side is profitable in the long term and make some decent money. Whats needed is new users and hoards of them.
Depending how many believe that bitcoins are ready for the next step, being widespread accepted as a peer to peer payment option, the number of trades required is small if the ball gets rolling. Only trading with the bitcoins, it is impossible to archive, it needs the implementation of p2p transaction service and smartphone apps. (to pay my hotel/hostel room, my meal, any gadget.......a simple scan with the phone bitcoins transferred done.

Summery, Potentially full 100% of the bitcoins everybody gets back, but not at a live price and over 7 years time span. Live price is simply not possible at the current price.
Lets say i have 100 on hold at a price of 10 euro. So 300 euro worth of coins (30% of 21.12.2012 price, not 30 bitcoins) would be released immediately, the other 70% remain on hold. after then every year 100 euro worth of coins (10% of 21.12.2012 price, not 10 bitcoins) become available.
If the price in 7 years time is at 100 euro per bitcoin 1 bitcoin is credited to the account.
If the price in 7 years time is at 2 euro per bitcoin then 50 bitcoins are credied to the account.
Effectively about 20000 shares at about 10 euro each at start and start capital roughly 60000.

The idea is that the company make a profit as well by then not just give us the money back.
I know it is not possible to please everybody, but a possible 100% return of an investment of an insolvent company with no new money put in (only owners loan) is a good start.

Widespread cooperation is the achilles heel, also his Android Iphone coding skills would need to be verified.
This is a quick thought with a lot of room for improvements to save as many of the gambled coins as possible.
I can see no criminal intent as far as i can tell he never tried to hide, its a case of youth inexperience and plain old greed. Having no business plan in place, in order to get paid for the work deceits to gamble.

Official liquidation is about 6% from 21.12.2012 date, or?

Again, this possible solution was thought up before the latest events.

Latest hack seems inside job, how many coins does his ex partner have on hold?

I don't think the biggest stumbling block is cooperation it's security and that the current owner is an admitted scammer where the original loss of coins was down to him using bitmarket users funds to help his own gambling habit ( just because he came out and owned up to it doesn't mean he didn't commit theft - he did and for all we know he has those coins as he hasn't provided proof to the contrary). Due to those actions and this latest hack where I believe he stole the coins purely based on his past actions ( I have zero reason to put any sort of faith in him) bitmarket is dead. The chance anyone has of getting any thing substantial back is low and this self admitted "scammer" will get off without any repercussions like the rest have so far. Take the losses and move on.

We can say all we want about him taking out loans to pay people back but who in reality would do that? - no one, he will walk off and my guess is cash in his haul of coins in small amounts now or at a much later date ( again he has provided no proof that he doesn't have the coins as someone in a previous post suggested).

I'm not angry but annoyed and just being a realist.

None of these exchanges are secure you can never be fully protected from hackers all you can do is mitigate against the risks and that costs money. I doubt any of these exchanges have invested anything remotely required to a standard where institutions which handle financial transactions should. You can probably get evidence of this by asking them to fill out a standard infosec questionnaire which most third parties have to fill out when they are doing business with companies who handle sensitive data or data which falls in to PCI scope.