I have violated my promise (of "not to post anything [about Bitcoinica]") yesterday, by posting this in the emergency announcement thread:
Thanks in advance to all the wonderful people of this forum, and at the risk of biting the hand that once sort of fed me, Bitcoinica, wtf dudes? at least put up a place holderpage at bitcoinica.com to explain your position, very unprofessional, is this show still being run by a 17 year old? Cause I remember 17, I wasn't a financial wizard, I was in the back of a night club dry humping some girl I barley know.
Nope. I wouldn't handle things like this.
Undoubtedly, I felt upset about some confusing commenters. I objectively disagreed with Intersango guys' ways of doing things and I think if Bitcoinica is still under my control, some of our customers' immediate issues can be addressed in a more timely manner.
However, I want to express my sincere apology to the General Partners of Bitcoinica LP, because I should not have criticized them when I should bear part of the responsibility by not doing my best in securing the system. The direct cause of the issue is not important, we shouldn't argue about "if someone didn't do X this thing wouldn't have happened", instead, we should say more about "if I did X this thing could be prevented". In this case, I can express these statements:
- If I have firewalled the wallet server properly (like web production servers), this thing could be prevented.
- If I have spent enough time on the re-implementation of the bitcoin client, this thing could be prevented.
- If I have set up strict access policies, and proactively communicate with Rackspace to disable certain insecure features, this thing could be prevented.
Respect for teammates is extremely crucial to achieve productivity. Everyone's reputation has been damaged badly in this event, and we shouldn't criticize each other due to the differences in the way we work. Even though I have announced that I would leave the Bitcoin economy a few days ago, I'm still actively monitoring our customers' feelings and communicating with the General Partners about the progress.
I am also extremely grateful for the Limited Partner (an investment group) of Bitcoinica LP for exceeding their legal obligation to bear the full cost of both recent attacks. Without their active support, Bitcoinica couldn't have survived until today to serve our customers well.
In the end, I would like to request everyone who cares about the community to be objective about this matter. I am no longer legally associated with Bitcoinica and I had no control over the attacked system. However, other team members are working in their greatest ability to deliver a fair solution to everyone. I have the advantage in understanding our customers (because I'm more familiar everyone using Bitcoinica) so I keep contributing some ideas as well. Please appreciate their hard work and understand the difficulties in resolving a serious security attack. We have already assured you the full compensation.
Thank you everyone for showing your support, understanding and patience.
PS. You can claim your Bitcoinica account at
https://claims.bitcoinica.com/ now.