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This has no remarkable impact on Bitcoin or the community, it's just the founder of Bitcoinica (which was hacked several times) disassociating himself from Bitc

This has no remarkable impact on Bitcoin or the community, it's just the founder of Bitcoinica (which was hacked several times) disassociating himself from Bitcoin because his reputation has been decimated.

zhoutong 14y ago
If I did something seriously wrong, I would definitely admit it. The recent hack is not my fault. It just destroyed the only reason that I stay in Bitcoinica.
- ewillbefull 14y ago
  I am certainly not accusing you of any misbehavior, but even you would admit this incident did not serve your reputation well -- deservedly or not. And that is indeed your motivation for leaving.
  - berberous 14y ago
    It certainly doesn't inspire confidence in his ability to single-handedly securely run a financial company targeted by hackers, but I think he has handled himself quite well otherwise. His forthrightness with the incidents, covering of customer losses, etc. has made me respect him.
    - illumin8 14y ago
      +1. Please give him respect. It's not often that a 17 year old hacker builds a site in 4 and a half days that begins processing over $1M USD in volume. Of course it's going to be a target for hackers. Do you insult the local jewelry store owner because his diamonds got stolen?
      - polyfractal 14y ago
        Perhaps, if that jewelry store owner had his diamonds sitting on a picnic table outside the store, unsupervised.
  - zhoutong 14y ago
    Reputation damage is never the motivation for leaving. I wanted to leave long ago. The income was too attractive for me to actually leave. Without money I can finally rationally re-think my destiny.
    - muyuu 14y ago
      I strongly disapprove of the recklessness you have displayed several times, but then again you're a kid and it's understandable. I hope you are successful and that you have banked well in the Bitcoinica deal.
    - guylhem 14y ago
      "generating value for society at large" struck a chord with me. This is also something I strongly resent in my line of work. Maybe rationally rethinking one's destiny requires having first solved the money problem? Congratulations on your insights.
- malandrew 14y ago
  You said that you're leaving to pursue opportunities where you can "...build products that save people time, money and headaches." Why not make it easier for people to use bitcoins in day to day transactions? It feels to me like more effort in the bit coin community is going into making financial products for finance people than financial products for normal people doing normal things. Solutions such as those that make bitcoin transactions from one cell phone to another cell phone would be a valuable addition to the community.
- skeptical 14y ago
  I'm not a bitcoin user, but I'll have to agree with ewillbefull. Not trying to take value of our contribution to bitcoin (I don't know much about it to be honest) but, as an outsider, my reaction is: Why does this person feels the need of making such an announcement? Why didn't you took your decision silently? Also... "leaving BITCOIN"??? Sounds a bit pretentios to me... maybe "leaving BITCONICA" would be a more apropriate title?
- beosrocks 14y ago
  If I did something seriously wrong, I would definitely admit it. Trying to run a financial site without the chops to do it was seriously wrong. Of course, it was wrong of users not to do more due diligence on the service, its record, the team (you, I guess), etc - after all, it was (was) their money. The recent hack is not my fault. You've got a lot to learn.
  - dkersten 14y ago
    Trying to run a financial site without the chops to do it was seriously wrong. He was also warned when he announced Bitcoinica on HN, yet he chose to ignore those warnings.
    - koglerjs 14y ago
      eh. He chose to try anyway. That isn't ignoring advice, it's just being unable to apply it.
    - zhoutong 14y ago
      If everything the warning serves is to ask me shut down the site immediately after the launch, I have to say that I ignored them. However, I really did everything possible to prevent security attacks. I failed at trusting other partners too much - especially Linode. (You can say that the wallet wasn't securely stored, which could be my fault, but the hacker possessed the ability to log in to every single Linode server!) The recent email leak is because I added a guy who is responsible for security into our mailing list that was used for password resets. I would say that almost none of the comments in the original post provided the right warning or predicted the right cause of failure. Again, they are useful (and the described things could happen instead), but they are irrelevant. Any business can fail because of various reasons, and predicting something will eventually fail will always turn out right, just like predicting a baby will die one day. I appreciate the warnings because I didn't make any mistake they mentioned - no SQL injection, no mass assignments, no unauthorized back-end access, no CSRF/XSS, no firewall break-in (the hacker got the database from the server backups, not from the live database server). I think I've handled everything that I'm able to handle well.

zhoutong 14y ago

If I did something seriously wrong, I would definitely admit it. The recent hack is not my fault. It just destroyed the only reason that I stay in Bitcoinica.

ewillbefull 14y ago
I am certainly not accusing you of any misbehavior, but even you would admit this incident did not serve your reputation well -- deservedly or not. And that is indeed your motivation for leaving.
- berberous 14y ago
  It certainly doesn't inspire confidence in his ability to single-handedly securely run a financial company targeted by hackers, but I think he has handled himself quite well otherwise. His forthrightness with the incidents, covering of customer losses, etc. has made me respect him.
  - illumin8 14y ago
    +1. Please give him respect. It's not often that a 17 year old hacker builds a site in 4 and a half days that begins processing over $1M USD in volume. Of course it's going to be a target for hackers. Do you insult the local jewelry store owner because his diamonds got stolen?
    - polyfractal 14y ago
      Perhaps, if that jewelry store owner had his diamonds sitting on a picnic table outside the store, unsupervised.
- zhoutong 14y ago
  Reputation damage is never the motivation for leaving. I wanted to leave long ago. The income was too attractive for me to actually leave. Without money I can finally rationally re-think my destiny.
  - muyuu 14y ago
    I strongly disapprove of the recklessness you have displayed several times, but then again you're a kid and it's understandable. I hope you are successful and that you have banked well in the Bitcoinica deal.
  - guylhem 14y ago
    "generating value for society at large" struck a chord with me. This is also something I strongly resent in my line of work. Maybe rationally rethinking one's destiny requires having first solved the money problem? Congratulations on your insights.
malandrew 14y ago
You said that you're leaving to pursue opportunities where you can "...build products that save people time, money and headaches." Why not make it easier for people to use bitcoins in day to day transactions? It feels to me like more effort in the bit coin community is going into making financial products for finance people than financial products for normal people doing normal things. Solutions such as those that make bitcoin transactions from one cell phone to another cell phone would be a valuable addition to the community.
skeptical 14y ago
I'm not a bitcoin user, but I'll have to agree with ewillbefull. Not trying to take value of our contribution to bitcoin (I don't know much about it to be honest) but, as an outsider, my reaction is: Why does this person feels the need of making such an announcement? Why didn't you took your decision silently? Also... "leaving BITCOIN"??? Sounds a bit pretentios to me... maybe "leaving BITCONICA" would be a more apropriate title?
beosrocks 14y ago
If I did something seriously wrong, I would definitely admit it. Trying to run a financial site without the chops to do it was seriously wrong. Of course, it was wrong of users not to do more due diligence on the service, its record, the team (you, I guess), etc - after all, it was (was) their money. The recent hack is not my fault. You've got a lot to learn.
- dkersten 14y ago
  Trying to run a financial site without the chops to do it was seriously wrong. He was also warned when he announced Bitcoinica on HN, yet he chose to ignore those warnings.
  - koglerjs 14y ago
    eh. He chose to try anyway. That isn't ignoring advice, it's just being unable to apply it.
  - zhoutong 14y ago
    If everything the warning serves is to ask me shut down the site immediately after the launch, I have to say that I ignored them. However, I really did everything possible to prevent security attacks. I failed at trusting other partners too much - especially Linode. (You can say that the wallet wasn't securely stored, which could be my fault, but the hacker possessed the ability to log in to every single Linode server!) The recent email leak is because I added a guy who is responsible for security into our mailing list that was used for password resets. I would say that almost none of the comments in the original post provided the right warning or predicted the right cause of failure. Again, they are useful (and the described things could happen instead), but they are irrelevant. Any business can fail because of various reasons, and predicting something will eventually fail will always turn out right, just like predicting a baby will die one day. I appreciate the warnings because I didn't make any mistake they mentioned - no SQL injection, no mass assignments, no unauthorized back-end access, no CSRF/XSS, no firewall break-in (the hacker got the database from the server backups, not from the live database server). I think I've handled everything that I'm able to handle well.