Wow, two of those wallets were over 1400BTC each.
I see why some people have been very worried here on the forums.
...
Heh. That is a powerful lesson in counter-party risk even if the funds do/did get returned.
Lets see...if Instawallet had, say, 20,000 BTC @ what was it, $200/BTC when they locked up, that would be about $4M. If they return all the coins at $100/BTC that is $2M.
So (again), there is a potential for a $2M profit even if everyone is made whole. Of course that would require perfect readings of the future markets, but...
- If the markets went down, A temporary theft scam would make money.
- If the markets went up, Bitcoin-Central could be shuttered.
...so there would be no loss in such a game.
Do I believe this is what happened? Not really. But it is one of a multitude of hypothesis which remain open at this point. Does it matter? Not much. The big take-away, is (for the umteenth time) if you give someone the ability to take your money, there is every possibility that they will do so. In Bitcoin-land it is a near certainty.