I've written a message to bips.me today.

Bitcoin is currently plunging in value, and I believe that this now gives this company a change to survive.

As we've discussed, there is NO WAY that bips.me will be able to continue as a viable merchant processor (or with any other function), if it does not reimburse users whose bitcoins were stolen due to poor security in the bips.me wallet.

As I wrote previously, I believe bips.me has two options.

1) Go out of business. Shut down the bips.me website. Possibly, in the future, quietly open with a new domain, brand name, etc.

2) Reimburse users whose bitcoins were stolen in November 2013.

This is an open call to bips.me: The time to save your business by taking step #2 above is NOW. If you lost 1200 bitcoins in the theft, my guess is that less than 600 of these were held by external users. If that estimate is correct, this means you could ensure the survival of your business for less than $250,000.

Please do this, and we'll all wish you well in future endeavors.

I think I lost more than anyone else -- 90 BTC.

Anyone else who lost a significant amount, please sign up here:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1v8AL3scMErzSLPRSOhGuGXn9pzHjWNTrSE2YWEQIpxs/viewform

If there are enough of us, it will be a negotiating block, to try to settle this on fair terms for everyone.

On one side, bitcoin is the wild west, and I really doubt this was intentional on the part of bips.me -- just probably overconfidence to run a wallet service without proper security.

But on the other side, I don't think anyone will be happy if bips.me continues on as a viable business without some kind of compensation for (former) wallet holders.

It's really important that - unless you have very good evidence - that nobody make wild accusations about fraud or internal theft or anything like that. If you do that, you will open yourself up to a lawsuit from bips.me for libel. (At least that's how it would work in the USA.) And it's just not fair or ethical to accuse anyone of something for which you have no evidence.

I do however think it's reasonable, fair, and legal for the affected individuals to get together and try to negotiate as a group for some kind of compensation.

Also -- I did finally hear back from the help desk, who asked for my phone number. But nothing concrete. My guess is that basically everything was stolen they are scrambling to see if they can come up with some kind of compensation package. But that's just a guess and I could be proven wrong.

OK people. I'm one of the unlucky "whales" who stored a lot of bitcoins with bips.me.  I lost about 90 bitcoins. They haven't contacted me yet, but from what I glean from these forums, my bitcoins have already gone and been spent on Russian hookers.

So. I'm willing to accept that I will never get these bitcoins back, but I'm not willing to accept that bips.me will continue on to glory, handling bitcoin transactions for merchants, getting (more?) venture funding, etc. 

In my mind, it's 'either or' - either I get my bitcoins back, or bips.me takes their website down and opens up under a completely new name. But not both.

With this in mind, I'm seeking out other 'whales' - people who lost significant numbers of bitcoin on bips.me.  If there's enough of us, what we do is get together and hire a lawyer in Denmark, and start from there. It will be worth it.

Here is a signup form:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1v8AL3scMErzSLPRSOhGuGXn9pzHjWNTrSE2YWEQIpxs/viewform

I am the first person to sign up, with my 90 missing bitcoins.

If nobody else signs up, or if the total number of signups doesn't add up to more than 250 bitcoins, I'll give up.

Also. I very much doubt that this was an 'inside job' or some kind of fraud. Danish people don't do those sorts of things. They just don't. However, that doesn't mean that these guys shouldn't have to start from scratch again.