Bitcoinica sued for $460,000 by 'out-of-pocket' punters
Virtual bank accused of holding onto dosh after heist
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
The operators of a website that earlier this year reported that a hacker had stolen units of virtual currency worth hundreds of thousands of pounds are being sued by four users that claim to be owed more than $460,000.
According to documents submitted to a US court, four users of the Bitcoinica website have sued those involved in running the site, claiming that they have "knowingly and willfully conspired and agreed upon themselves to hinder, delay and deprive" them of their right to withdraw their money from the site.
In addition the four users claim that those involved "acted willfully and with the intent to cause injury" to them and that therefore they had been "guilty of malice, oppression and/or fraud in conscious disregard" for their rights and should be liable to pay "punitive damages".
In May the Bitcoinica site, which allowed users to trade real currency for virtual Bitcoin units (BTC), announced that 18,547 BTC had been stolen by a hacker of its systems. Currently a BTC is worth approximately $10. The operators said at the time that it would honour all "withdrawal requests" from those that had made deposits via its exchange. It subsequently announced that those making such claims would be provided with 50% of what they claimed in an initial payment.
More than 43,000 BTC were reportedly stolen from Bitcoinica following a hacking incident in March.
Since the second breach Bitcoinica has remained closed to trading whilst "the transitional process" for upgrading the exchange "to a professional level of security" is completed. The four users have only been able to withdraw half their money from the site and are claiming that those involved in running the site have acted in breach of contract by failing to repay $460,457.20 they claim they are still owed, according to the court documents.
Copyright © 2012, Out-Law.com
Out-Law.com is part of international law firm Pinsent Masons.
COMMENTS
Re: Caveat emptor
The argument in favour of bitcoins appears to run as follows:
"Fiat currency is a massive ponzi scheme backed by inadequate collateral and weak ineffective regulation. The answer to this problem is to put your money in a massive ponzi scheme backed by absolutely zero collateral and no regulation whatsoever."
I know the bitcoin astroturfers will be furiously hitting the red arrow a few pixels away from this comment, but who in their right mind would trust even a single Zimbabwean Dollar to an outfit that has a domain registered with a proxy owner, no address on their website and is not registered with a Financial Services Authority or similar anywhere in the world?
Re: Caveat emptor
If only they had put their wealth in a currency backed by the gold standard!
I read an article about Bitcoins and the fact that one guy had invested all his life savings in Bitcoins.
My immediate thought was 'what an idiot'.
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Data control in the cloud
Cloud based data management
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
