Ironically, the only thing that $11k covered was the Christmas Special. Camera equipment here in Korea cost us about $8k, and scenery, source files (many which we still haven't released because we didn't finish about 10 of the skits we had planned) and editing software + some hardware upgrades for rendering ate up the rest of it.
I can't say it was a waste though as I still feel this community is stale and lacking character (or the character it has chosen is basically anti-social and troll infested). I mean, look at this thread as a clear example. The only times anyone is passionate and involved in something is when they're out for blood. It's really sad. Whenever a member of the bitcoin community stands up for what they believe in and makes a mistake, they are treated like some sort of plague by the trolls here. It's a vivid reflection of world politics, "I can't stand what's going on but I refuse to get involved, learn a skill and help change it!". Zhou Tong developed and supported an idea, as a child. Adults, with logic and reason dumped way too much money into a child's website. The website is sold to someone else. The child no longer runs or owns it, and it gets hacked. The forum's solution? Blame the child. What a sick bunch of losers they must be.
I've known Zhou Tong (never met him personally) for only about a year, but the whole time I've known him as someone who doesn't care about short term financial gain. He's turned down many offers for partnerships from exchanges and businessmen right in front of me just because he didn't see it being a good thing for bitcoin, and saw it as only a means to an end. He wanted to provide merchant services, fixed exchanges, etc, not scammy sites. He also sees Bitcoin realistically-- that it has no future through these forums and should be included alongside other real world applications, not exclusive and restrictive, constricted from ever growing.
I do know his ego and naivety all too well though. I remember getting mad at him (Vladimir was even -more- angry with him) for not changing his security policies when Vladimir basically warned him over several days to not host shit in the cloud as a practice, and Vladimir was right. Basically they had a long term disagreement. Vladimir is for linux jails, perl and collocation. Zhou is for Apple -anything-, marketing bullshit ("Our products are secure! Trust us!"), Ruby on Rails and is absolutely in love with the cloud.
It -was- stupid and careless the way Zhou ran things and Vladimir called it a hundred times. I hadn't enough experience to comment too much but always kept involved in the debates back when we casually discussed exchange's security policies etc. We all tried our best to give Zhou (a 16 year old kid at the time) the best of our collective experiences in the DCAO while he did his thing because we wanted to help keep him out of trouble. My side of the advice was mostly legal and business related (things like-- "hey, did you know running bitcoinica is probably illegal for you? You should get licensed or sell it to someone who is licensed before you end up in prison!").
I believe I was a big force in convincing him to sell Bitcoinica in the first place but I can't possibly prove that. I didn't get any commission from that sale either, I wasn't part of any bargain, I just didn't want a 17 year old ruining his life for something he saw as just a project for bitcoiners. He was very passionate about it and as a fellow developer since I was 12ish, I share the same passion. I trusted that the supposedly professional individual he was selling to (whom demanded his identity be kept private and forced an NDA although we know now it was Tihan) would take charge of the business. We also learned that this mysterious owner would also reveal his identity once it was licensed and I was told that that was why it took so long because they were working on getting a licensed company involved (which I know now was the Intersango guys).
Once things started getting rocky with the Linode hack though I realized that there was some serious trouble going on but Zhou Tong had already left the DCAO so he wasn't really accessible to me to get involved, and didn't seem keen to taking much advice anymore (I think we all pretty much assumed it was now the new owners problem). That's why when all these newbies (Whom I've already confirmed are mostly SA goons trying to troll for emotional responses) call Zhou a serial scammer and play up the situation as if he planned this from day one, I have a hard time not breaking out in laughter. I'm truly sorry for your losses (wtf@Roger!) but just as I said in the BitScalper thread, stop trusting strangers with all your money and you'll probably be better off (especially when that stranger is not even a legal adult who can't make contracts
)
Who knows, maybe Zhou is really a 40 year old dude and I've been duped. I've actually had that theory thrown to me by someone else in BitTalk Media back when we were recording the BitTalk.TV Christmas Special. I thought it was a bit absurd since I've spoken to him on the phone, but then again, maybe he was just holding a child at gunpoint to speak for him! All I know is, I still think he's only doing what he believes is best for bitcoiners and I haven't seen any arguments against him that weren't basically hearsay. (I've also been less than satisfied with his responses, but I have some common sense and realize that it could be because he's 17 years old).
For those of you who have a hard time believing things just because you're handicapped, I have a confession: I'm Atlas, Charlie Shrem is Bruno, Gavin Andreson is Satoshi and this forum is all hosted in my bedroom in Korea.
EDIT: Aww, the shad0wbitz SA troll was already banned before I could finish this response. Drat. I guess I'll settle for the other 2 SA goons in the thread.