As the title says, I was recently paid back the majority of the escrow that was owed to me by Silk Road after the hack. I'm very pleased with this development, however there's still the issue of my vendor bond, which was in fact larger than the money owed to me from escrow. About a week ago I posted a message in the vendor roundtable concerning my bond repayment, and when that failed to get any responses I posted it in the main forum; I still have no word from the site admins despite my posts and messages concerning the bond. Since, as they say, the squeaky wheel gets the grease; I decided to continue expanding out where I'm yelling about it
The following is the message I posted onto the forums:
I've asked the question of what's going to be done about bonds probably a dozen times or so in a dozen threads, and the only only answer anyone has ever given me is a shoulder shrug and vague promises that at some point in the future it will be paid back. Unlike many of the other vendors, I paid for my vendor account in December before registrations were officially open; I paid my bond directly to Sarge, who activated my account. I know there are many in the exact same situation, and it's likely that many have given up hope of ever seeing their bitcoins again. I, however, have chosen to keep on keepin' on in my efforts.
The solution I propose to you is a simple one: add the 0.9301 btc I paid for the vendor account (I can show you on the blockchain where and when I paid and I have copies of the messages to and from Sarge) onto my pending balance so that it can be repaid gradually as the other funds are. I propose that you do this for a) all vendors who paid their bonds prior to the open registration b) all vendors in general(the post-open-registration vendors might have other information on their accounts that might not make this possible) or c) just me
It's a simple, elegant solution that will shut me and a lot of other people up without your having to do much. I'm not going to bring in any conspiracy theories about the hack and/or repayment(though I have a few theories of my own), as far as this post is concerned the money is going to be paid back and the admins are fully trustworthy. However, the beauty of my idea is that if you have no intention of paying anyone back then this is just a great PR move on your part; clearly you want people to keep using the site, or else you would have taken off by now, so doing this will bring back some trust from the community without you having to give out any money yet. And if you DO intend to repay everyone, then you might as well add the bonds on now, rather than trying to figure out how to deal with a whole new clusterfuck later, plus, like I said before: it'll bring back some of the trust that's been lost.
I just want the 0.9301 added to my pending balance, so that it can be repaid in a relatively timely manner. Tactically speaking, this is a great idea for you; you either won't pay it back, in which case you lose nothing, or you will be paying it back regardless and might as well start now.
It never made sense how the vendor bonds were stolen in the first place - they shouldn't have been in the hot wallet.