Does Bitcoinica Founder Zhou Tong Have Some Explaining To Do?
Bitcoinica site as it looked in 2011. Grabbed from Wayback Machine. Did Bitcoinica founder Zhou Tong steal funds, return a part of them, then pay someone to keep it quiet? Well that would seem to be the impression created by the latest revelation contained in a Youtube video discussed on Reddit. Bitcoinica - Some Background. Zhou Tong founded Bitcoinica in 2011 at the age of 17. Bitcoinica was an online trading company that enabled users to speculate on contract-for-difference market against the Bitcoin to USD exchange rate. In March 2012, Bitcoinica reported that they had lost 43,554 BTC....
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During the catastrophe of Mt. Gox, Zhou Tong and his Bitcoinica became a bit of an unproven scourge to the Bitcoin community. People were quite confident at the time that Tong had stolen funds on at least several occasions. A recent investigation further into the matter made it plain that something was going on, something very much unlike what Zhou Tong was claiming. Tong's Bitcoinica claimed to have lost 43,554 bitcoins as a result of hacking at Linode. They offered significantly little evidence to this effect, and were largely mysterious when queried for specifics. What came out in the....
On July 26, AurumXChange, MtGox and BitInstant posted a thread on the Bitcointalk forums with new evidence relating to the theft that had taken place on July 13, in which an unknown individual gained access to Bitcoinica's MtGox account and was able to withdraw the maximum 40,000 BTC and $40,000 USD. According to AurumXChange, the hacker proceeded to transfer the $40,000 USD through their service into Liberty Reserve. However, soon after the incident, AurumXChange found a request by Zhou Tong to exchange $40,000 USD on Liberty Reserve for an equivalent (minus fees) deposit into his bank....
This interview can also be found on Coinabul's official blog. A 17 year old coder and entrepreneur named Zhou Tong (pictured above) created a website last year. The growth that his website exhibited is inspirational. In less than 6 months Bitcoinica.com was home to over one million dollars in assets. That young entrepreneur sold Bitcoinica a couple months ago and the new owners are having troubles operating the site securely. Zhou Tong is one spectacular, inspiring, and very young entrepreneur and I had the opportunity to ask him about his experiences. Hopefully the questions I asked will....
The last few days have unfortunately brought one piece of grim news after another to the Bitcoin community. As if the 43000 BTC Linode theft in March was not enough, another 18457 BTC was stolen from Bitcoinica's reserves, and Zhou Tong was barely able to prevent the thief from getting his hands on 30000 more. Unfortunately, given the financial stress that Bitcoinica was already in after the Linode theft two months ago, even this smaller loss turned out to be the straw that broke the camel's back. The site was immediately shut down for security reasons, and less than one day later Zhou....
As was previously reported, Bitcoinica was shut down on May 11th, 2012 as a result of a hackerstealing 18,547 BTC (then worth about $92,500) from the service's hot wallet. Two months later, while the service was in the midst of rebuilding user data to issue refunds, a malicious entity was able to gain access to Bitcoinica's MtGox account and withdraw 40,000 BTC (then worth about $310,000) and $40,000 USD. After Zhou Tong, the creator of the service, sold Bitcoinica to Wendon Group, the Bitcoin Consultancy was hired to be responsible for maintaining the service. Once the service was shut....