To those Bitfloor users who PM'ed me their email addresses in response to this reddit post, I provided the following email update on May 6, 2013.

Hi Bitfloor users,

Today, Arstechnica published a piece about how Bitfloor’s shutdown is affecting users awaiting the return of their USD balances.

The tally of USD funds owed to you all grabbed a lot of peoples’ attention. I think that number was part of the reason the story was widely retweeted, so thanks for sharing that info with me. [As of May 13th, the tally stands at $523,000 owed to 191 users.]

After the story went live, Bitfloor’s legal counsel responded to Arstechnica and provided the first official communication about the status of funds since Roman’s post to the website on May 1. The lawyer’s name is John Snyder, and his practice website is here. I consider this a small victory, since we probably wouldn’t have heard any new information today if it weren’t for the negative press, and we now know that Bitfloor has retained a lawyer to help resolve this issue.

The information Mr. Snyder provided is not extensive (read the article for the exact statement), and it does not provide specifics about what’s going on at the bank or what timetable or method we might expect for the return of funds. However, Mr. Snyder asserts that the USD balances in Bitfloor’s closed accounts are sufficient to cover all balances owed to users, and he states that the delay in processing refunds is due to the bank being uncooperative.

A lawyer I spoke to, who is among the affected Bitfloor users, said it is reasonable for us to consider Mr. Snyder’s statement to be credible, although it’s not conclusive. This lawyer is doing a bit more research on Mr. Snyder to double-check his credibility, and he will share any information he learns with me.

Based on my brief conversations with the lawyers who found me through the reddit thread, my impression is that we shouldn’t undertake legal action prematurely. All of us need to be aware that — should any single one of us initiate a class action lawsuit — while Bitfloor is still honestly working to return funds, we could unnecessarily delay the return of funds and/or deplete funds with unnecessary legal expense. To put this in perspective: if a class action lawsuit were required, we would expect to lose 30-50% of any recovered funds just to legal fees.

A lawsuit would only be productive if Bitfloor cannot otherwise be compelled to honor its obligations to us. So far, based on the few bits of credible information we have, there’s still reason to believe Bitfloor intends to honor its obligations and reason to believe that delays due to the bank’s actions will eventually be resolved.

For the time being, until new information arises, my opinion is that our best bet is to extend our patience a bit longer but remain vigilant.

I’ll send another update Wednesday.

See you on reddit,

AudenX