Topic: [Payout Updates] Bitcoinica site is taken offline for security investigation - page 22. (Read 156693 times)

Hi phantomcircuit, could you answer my question? Thanks.

Will bitcoinica be able to pay 50% of all claims before bitcoin makes a new high for the year?

If you didn't get a confirmation email then you either did not open a claim successfully or your email provider classified it as spam.

Almost everybody has received additional emails requesting payment instructions as well.

I am glad I only have $100USD in my account but this is very frustrating waiting to see if anything will come back, in reality I would of spent more time in dollars reading this thread than the hundred is worth.
'Hello, Your account is in the queue and waiting to be reviewed.' That is all I have had in communications 2 weeks ago from bitcoinica and crew. I have not been vocal at all about this just waiting and hoping, so I can feel for those who have had thousands tied up in this fiasco.
As hard as it may be getting your records back together surely things could of been done with more clarity.

There WAS an automatic email to confirm your claim. If you didn't get it and confirmed it, then you most likely didn't successfully submit a claim. Also, people were talking about the claiming process via the wepage, only "Maria" thought it was good practice to claim funds in this thread only.

This is -ONLY- true for projects that require lot's of communication.
I can imagine checking a list of claims is emberisingly parallel and can scale pretty well with added manpower.
Each added member can check part of the claims completely independantly and only needs to communicate back some compact result.
So at the best mmm applies to some activities in this process but not to the bit that actually matters to (ex) customers.
Trying to blame mmm for not getting this sorted in the past couple of months is ridiculous.

Dude, if you think that communicating through an obscure thread on a forum about peoples lost monies is reasonable then you should have your brain checked for severe damage.
Seriously. Worst communication practices ever. There is nothing reasonable about this process whatsoever.
There is no confirmation of deposition of claim, for one.
You say claim period is closed, but i don't even know you received or accepted my claim because you didnt care to confirm it.
Careless practices.
Now stop making it look nicer than it realy is and don't patronize people.
And please take a course in communication asap, you clearly need it.

+1

I am in the same position. I big part of my funds are locked up as well.
Please help genjix.

I'm sorry, I did not know about it.

I don't believe it was ever answered.  Are you in charge of doing the disbursements now?  It would be nice if there was like a timetable for payouts.  I may be one of the few, but like most/all of my money was tied up in this.  If we could get a reasonable timetable with our first 50% payouts that would be excellent.  Thanks.

Hi genjix/phantomcircuit,

The base price of my long position is higher than 5.1 and my USD balance is zero, so will you sell my BTC to cover the lose of my long position? @what price? Thanks.

I'd swear I had answered this.

Anyways shorts close @ 4.9 longs @ 5.1

People have been asking for this from day 1 and this is the answer you have ?  "5$, not sure"

You've not answered, I suggest you send notice before and after sending payment... to avoid sending to wrong addresses.

It's up to the claimant. They can specify their payment preferences with the main ones at the moment being BTC and MtGox codes. But we're also able to provide other payment options within reason (like bank deposits).


~35% of claimants are marked accurate
~86% of total funds are marked accurate
~25% of total funds have been repaid

No people aren't getting emails when their account status changes. I want to get whether a claim is marked accurate or not added to the claim ticket.


Yep, you're right. If your account needs to be reviewed more in depth then you would get a message along the lines of either "your account will take a longer to review" or that "your account is placed at the end of the queue because...".

I don't think the "bucket shop" label is accurate. Bitcoinica did hedge the net balance of all open positions into the real BTC market (Mt.Gox). Tong even posted the piece of Ruby code performing this operation some weeks ago. So basically Bitcoinica never traded against their own customers. The only actual uncovered finnancial risks involved for them (assides from malfunction of the code) was the possibility of losses when force liquidating due to a catastrophic market movement.

Of course it would be possible that those statemens where just lies, and actually they did bet against their customers. But unless someone provides some prove for that suspicion, I take Bitcoinica's statement at their face value.

Thus, the site would rather be classified as a "Contract for Difference" derivative offer, not a "Bucket Shop".

genjix, how are the 50% disbursements going?  It's been a while since anyone's posted about getting a payment.  Just wondering if there's a hold up or if you're still making regular payments.  Do you email people to notify them that you've sent a payment?  Do people get emails notifying them that they're accurate and just in a queue for payments?

When I finally got an email about my claims status I was told that my "account is in the queue and waiting to be reviewed".  I'm assuming that means that my account just hasn't been gotten to at all yet.  Is that right?  Or does it mean that there's something wrong with my information and it needs to be reviewed in more depth?

Hello genjix,

would you mind explaining some details of how you handle your payout? It seems this could settle the worries of a lot of people here.

• (1) assumed someone is considered 100% correct, and this claim is for a position of M bitcoins and N USD.
  Is it correct then that this claimant recieves an payout of M bitcoins and N USD? Obviously, as you stated, the first round of payouts will be 50% on each part, but in any case, no conversion whatsoever happens?
• (2) you stated in the past that you will close out open positions at a fixed buy/sell rate, which is close to the BTC/USD price at the time the site was taken offline.
  Is this statement still valid?
• (2) how do you intend to handle the case that a (accurate) claim includes a position, but the opening base price of that position can't be established preciesly?

Thanks for any clarifications
-- Ichthyo

I want to explain the logic behind 50% initial payments:

For each claim you have a certainty of its validity. You have the sum of funds from before the site had the database stolen which is equal to the site's previous balance. This sum must be distributed among claims somehow.

Ideally you would mark claims that you thought were accurate and those that weren't (based on what the data indicates to us). Then you would end up with some total value which you compare to the total funds available.

If less than the total funds, then be more permissive and allow certain more claims in. Repeat the above step.

If more than the total funds, then knock out low certainty claims and maybe redistribute funds among lower certainty claims (better that someone who is maybe legitimate, gets something rather than nothing).

You then end up with claims that are refunded with a best-fit according to the available data.

However people demand funds quickly. So as a compromise, we make 50% payouts initially (for claims we are highly certain are accurate). This allows an error margin so that in the final step we can still juggle balances around to resolve payments for everybody. The only downside is that you cannot decide to pay someone 0% after you've paid them 50%.

Then once people have been refunded for 50% and the final balances are decided, the process goes back over payees and refunds them for the remaining amount. I assume the final step should not take long given that it's just making payments out for known beneficiaries.

Perhaps the donations are even real! For example, to get tax deduction. I have to look up money laundering in a dictionary first, one moment...here it is..."to channel money through an intermediary in order to conceal its source..." nevermind.

Hey phantomcircuit, mate. Aren't you very, very scared?