In general, I support the hybrid approach.
I support expediting those people who have verifiable information and reputations.
I do not now, nor have I really ever, regarded "number of forum posts" as any sort of legitimate indicator of the trustworthiness of any individual. OTC ratings, yes. Verifiable forum trades, yes. Number of times some fool wrote "sub" in a thread? Not very worthwhile.
None of those are a factor as to whether we have a high degree of certainty in a person. We are not using a trust metric, but simply extraditing the process for people with a high degree of certainty.
I do not support expediting those with largest balances. In most cases, I suspect, this is disproportionate with the actual need. I also do not support expediting those with the smallest balances, for the same basic reason. (ofc, in the cases where the largest/smallest balances are the most verifiable, w/ best reps, hopefully, /obviously/ the latter applies more)
People with the largest balances may in fact take longer to verify.
I do not really support you keeping 20% for any longer on accounts you can verify with a reasonable degree of accuracy. We've made a long enough forced loan to you. I'm sure you've made enough off the interest to start paying the legal bills from this escapade.
Bitcoinica does not make money off of holding people's money. If anything it costs us in terms of time.
The reason Bitcoinica used to give people interest was to encourage people to let their money sit there so that Bitcoinica does not need to hedge as often between USD and BTC (which is costly and expensive given MtGox's fees).
I do not support the continued lack of communication with your customers. A forum thread is, at this point far less than sufficient, or acceptable. I'm really sick of having to dig around to find out what the hell is going on. Is it really that harmful to your process to send a damn email?
I'm also sick to death about hearing the badmouthing on forum and irc from the bitcoinica players. On the forum one side speaks, and on irc the other. Just keep it to yourselves.
Anyhow....I'll believe the money when it's really seen, by more than just the bitcoinica owner's friends and favorites. Until then, this is just more in a long line of words.
I never said anything on IRC nor bad-mouthed anyone.
About email: not everyone appreciates constant small updates sent to their inbox. However once we are ready to move forwards, a mass email will be sent detailing everything.