I've watched the whole Instawallet fiasco like a hawk because I had some BTC in Instawallet.
I never used Instalwallet, but I did keep an eye on how davout and boussac behaved during and after the incident because they are involved in other Bitcoin projects.
I started using it before davout bought or was given the funds from Jav. Jav seemed like a trustworthy guy to me. Even after davout got a hold of things I didn't have any reason to distrust him at the time.
I was to lazy to take it out Had something like 50 BTC there, but considering they were like $3/BTC when I put them there it was $150. I finally got off my ass and removed all but 20-something BTC like the day before the 'hack'. I wonder how many others were doing the same thing and if a lot, if that triggered davout to pull the trigger.
The way they handled the situation looks to me consistent with what I'd expect from scammers.
I cannot agree with that fully. In all honesty, it seemed to me like they went through a period of confusion then put together a workable strategy to get people payed off. The nature of the solution being kind of privacy oriented made it a somewhat more difficult problem than it might have been.
I didn't get a strong sense one way or the other on the suspiciousness of the behavior early on. My best guess at this point is that from day one they planned to skim the unclaimed wallets and had to have a shutdown to do it.
When the opportunity to nail an extra $1M at the expense of robbing one person who had already called them names came along, they could not resist.
Honest people would show some signs of remorse and humility after losing so much of other people's money - they were arrogant and hostile instead.
Sorry to be disagreeable, but I'm not sure I feel exactly the same way about that either. I don't know a lot of French people, but they have a reputation for being conceited pricks. (Not all of course.) Davout and Boussac sort of match this stereotype so I personally cannot read a lot into that...and I'm a conceited prick myself but not dishonest and not a thief.
The way they handled the supposed investigation and audit was very suspicious. That is the single biggest factor in swaying me to believe that they probably are crooks.
The name calling... tearing them a new asshole, so to speak, started after I realized wallet addresses no longer were part of the URL generated pages.
Boussac didn't hide the fact that he had me on ignore from the onset, never once addressing any of my concerns whether they were presenting with candy with honey on top or not. In fact, he skipped over a many questions still unanswered today that were asked in the nicest way possible.
I personnally tested my urls on the claim form and it worked.
If you are getting a 404 error it could be that your url is made up.
All instawallet urls that have received transactions are in the database.
Boussac (Pierre) you come back after ignoring questions and the first thing you say to a guy who has lost a shedload if coins is that maybe his URL is made up.
Way to go mate. Good job.
I am not ignoring questions steelboy I am ignoring people who threaten or insult me here or via PM (they are going on my ignore list).
There were three millions wallets created on instawallet.org: how could I possibly answer to everyone ?
The reason we set up an online claim process is precisely because we cannot deal with each and every user by email, post or PM.
Had I started using other means than an online form, I would have been swamped.
I will nonetheless make sure their claims are processed fairly if they come up with a valid url.