But simply, I gave up my sole ownership a long time ago, even before the Linode hack.
You want to tell us Bitcoinica is one of the most legit Bitcoin businesses while you leave its ownership in the shadows for a "long time" (months?!) and deceive us all? I always thought you were the sole owner, and I thought Intersango only very recently took over.
I would assume responsibility for everything happened to Bitcoinica due to private transactions that were not announced.
Who is the owner isn't important. The important thing is who is liable for the customer deposits. If I hadn't announced the take-over and such thing happens, I would be 100% liable because people were trusting Bitcoinica because of my reputation. However, everyone knows that Intersango has taken over Bitcoinica so the assumed liability doesn't exist any more.
I apologize for the lack of transparency. But it really has nothing to do with legitimacy.
This is the single most important issue about modern finance that's making it so dangerous: people in charge of operations are not liable any more.
Maybe next to your user title "Founder & Lead Developer of Bitcoinica" you should add "*but not liable if sh*t happens".
When responsibility and power part ways, sh*t gets real for un-empowered parties (users in this case).