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From HN thread announcing Bitcoinica's launch, some months ago (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2973301):

"I'm going to pitch a different take than a few others: Yes, great initiative, please keep trying things and building things, but end this project now. There are no probable outcomes where you do not end up having to explain where thousands of dollars of other people's money went to some angry people. There's also very nontrivial odds of being on the wrong end of armed Federal agents, based on some of the other comments you've made here. This is a horrible, horrible first-project sort of project."

"Doing your best probably isn't enough. To have any hope you'll have to hire expensive security people and buy lots of insurance.

All you need in order to be exploited is to be using software with 0day exploits. Many known exploits are not public. In a very real sense, you are only protected to the extent that you are a small target.

As the potential payoff of a hacker approaches $1 million, the likelihood of being hacked approaches 90%. Software really is THAT insecure and bitcoin thefts are not prosecuted making it basically risk-free to steal bitcoins."

"-- spectacular failure is your destiny if you don't work very hard to prevent it

-- spectacular failure may be your destiny even if you do work very hard to prevent it"




The problem is that the only kind of person who would start such a project would be a person who would be immune to these warnings...


Wow, that gave me chills down my spine as I read the old thread.




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