Quote from: tvbcof on July 01, 2013, 10:04:49 PM

I met ~boussac at the conference. I always meant to relate the story here, but never got around to it. I've been focused on other things and the memories are becoming foggy. I ran into him on the last day while milling around and it was a good opportunity to chat so I introduced myself. He was clearly a bit surprised when he saw my name tag upon which I had written my bitcointalk username. A few people had that reaction.

We had a pleasant chat. I could not help but have some respect for the guy to show up in a foreign country where he had lost a bunch of people's money and pissed them off. I probably would have avoided France if the roles were reversed, but then I don't speak French.

I believe that boussac probably honestly feels that they were doing something of a favor for the community in offering a free service. I feel fairly strongly the opposite. To me, bitcoincentral bought or was given jav's customers and all their money, then they either lost or stole some percentage of the money (between 0% and 100% which we will know if a few days.)

I fairly politely made it clear that I thought they screwed up and tried to explain with precision why I felt this way. I did not feel that I was sufficiently convincing to sway boussac.

I wished boussac and his organization the best of luck going forward, and meant it since it would be a scenario where they were being honest (if incompetent) and everyone came out of this thing as well as possible.

My meeting with the guy was insufficient to determine whether bitcoincentral are crooks, but I did not expect that it would be. What evidence I could glean would support either hypothesis, and a skilled con-man is easily able to avoid producing solid evidence of things in person-2-person contact. I guess will know more in a few weeks.

A best-case scenario is that users get back the Bitcoin that they lost. If Bitcoin-central remains in business and BTC values continue to fall, it seems possible to me that they could cover a deficeit. At that point, I personally would be academically interested in the mechanics of the system failure which allowed this loss to occur. A full briefing when the dust is settled would do a lot toward convincing me, and possibly others, that it was indeed a legitimate loss and, as always, I would very much like to see the perpetrators be caught and have to account for this crime. Whoever they my be.

Which conference? Where and when?