Energy has flagged in the hunt for the people behind MyBitcoin.com, the popular e-wallet service that disappeared with, according to them, 154,406 Bitcoins back in early August. After days of silence, a spokesman emerged for the site and a claims process was initiated to refund users 49 percent of their deposits, which in today's prices shakes out to $861,755.

But that still leaves 78,747 BTC ($896,929 USD at today's prices), which MyBitcoin's spokesman says were taken by hackers, unaccounted for.

The community effort to find the people responsible for MyBitcoin--or the hackers who broke into it, if that explanation is true--seems to have lost verve due to the pacifying effect of MyBitcoin's 49 percent refund, which many users reported receiving quickly (although there are some who say they have not gotten it yet) and the lack of actionable information. The spokesman for MyBitcoin, "Tom Williams," has been missing in action since about two weeks ago when he appeared in the #bitcoin-police IRC channel.

#Bitcoin-police was a fast-moving information hub at the time of the MyBitcoin incident, but has been dead of late. "Police is quiet because there's no new info coming in. The internet side seems to have been 'mined out,'" a user told Betabeat, referring to the detective work--looking up hosting providers, examining server set-ups, hunting for personal information on the people suspected of being involved--performed by members of the community. "Now it remains for someone who lost enough BTC to spend effort to actually file a report with real actual authorities," he said.

Vocal Bitcoin evangelist Bruce Wagner, who lost 25,000 BTC in the incident, is a likely candidate. He's told Bitcoiners to file complaints with the FBI in the past, as he believes there was foul play involved, but could not confirm whether there is an active investigation. "They stole (denied access) to EVERYONE's money," Mr. Wagner said over Gchat. "They later--after MUCH COMMUNITY INVESTIGATION AND FBI INVOLVEMENT --- suddenly re-appeared. NO ONE who understands ANYTHING about bitcoin believes their lies about ... being hacked."

Mr. Wagner plans to produce four episodes of his Bitcoin web show today where he will talk about MyBitcoin.

In other BTC news, the exchange Mt. Gox took over Bitomat.pl, an exchange that lost 17,000 BTC in what the owner is claiming was a technical mistake, combining the users of the first-largest and third-largest Bitcoin exchanges to solidify Mt. Gox's position as the dominant exchange.

Some members of the Bitcoin community suspect foul play (more about that later). But as promised, there is now a claims form for users who lost Bitcoins in the debacle: "Claims are manually reviewed and will be processed within 48 hours of being filed. This claim form will remain online for 30 days."

And as of Saturday night, the historically-reticent MyBitcoin has a voice: "Tom Williams," who stepped forward to field questions from the Bitcoin community via the #bitcoin-police channel on IRC, where he verified his association with the site by moving Bitcoins from the MyBitoin IP to a pre-specified address and providing the same encrypted signature that was used to sign the official statements posted on MyBitcoin.

After passing muster with the tech-savvy denizens of #bitcoin-police, a loosely-organized group of Bitcoin enthusiasts who investigate various issues in the Bitcoin community, Mr. Williams got down to tacks. "Listen: what did you think we did after the hack happened? We got shitfaced for many days. What would you do? Fuck."

MyBitcoin had half its deposits in "cold storage," he said, so it will be refunding all users 49 percent of their deposits. But he advised patience. "Cleaning up the mess takes time," he said. "We can't just start transmitting coins all over the bloody place."

MyBitcoin claims to have had 230,073 154,406 Bitcoins in its coffers at the time of the incident, which at the time translated to more than $2 million USD. The price has fluctuated considerably since then due to several high-profile incidents. At today's, or rather, this moment's prices, MyBitcoin's deposits would equate to $1.18 million USD.

MyBitcoin built its reputation by providing a free, user-friendly service targeted at newbie Bitcoin buyers. It collected scores of users, including Bitcoin evangelist and host of The Bitcoin Show Bruce Wagner, who says he had 25,000 Bitcoins--$192,500 at today's price of $7.70, but worth more than $250,000 at the time of MyBitcoin's disappearance. Mr. Wagner was also in the habit of recommending the service, especially to new users of Bitcoin. Betabeat also used the service to buy a few Bitcoins from a restaurant for the newsroom (and promptly lost all our co-workers' money).

MyBitcoin was simply the easiest and best-designed option available--and that's what has some Bitcoin users suspicious that perhaps the "hack" was an inside job. Mr. Wagner has spoken to the FBI's cyber crimes unit, which took enough interest in the case to give him a call back. He says the FBI has requested that affected users who suspect a crime report the incident online.

The counter-theory, as related by some users in the Bitcoin community--who are careful to hedge every word to avoid libel, retaliation and the chance that any action might discourage MyBitcoin's operators from refunding any Bitcoins at all--is that MyBitcoin was an elaborate hoax, designed to lure users into a false sense of security and then make off with their Bitcoins at just the right time.

Through the emerging science of Bitcoin forensics, some leads point to hacker aliases out of Canada. But clues are far from a smoking gun. For example, the #bitcoin-police hivemind concluded that the hacker collective Hack Canada registered its domain via PrivacyShark, the anonymized domain registrar that also registered MyBitcoin.com, among a long list of other domains including bitcoinreserve.com (empty), bitcoinia.com (expired), and pussyjuicegirls.com (active), which led them to name Edmonton programmer Dalin Owen as a person of interest along with five IRC handles and the owner of digital currency exchange nanaimogold.com.

"Dalin Owen is the one name that is linked to everything, and ppl have independently named him as the guy behind mbc," one Bitcoin user told Betabeat in a private message, but--"there is no hard proof yet." Dalinowen.com has been wiped and replaced with the message, "Yes, we sold a domain name to mybitcoin, but we have nothing to do with its operation. I also referred them to Morningstar Holdings as a professional courtesy as their corporate filing services have worked well for us in the past. All of the threats of bodily harm are being sent to the local authorities. I will not respond to any more threats or intimidation."

"Many of us think Tom Williams is TheMadhatter who used to sell prepaid credit cards bought in Canada," another said. Mr. Owen may well be TheMadhatter, he added.

On IRC, Mr. Williams denied that he was TheMadhatter or Dalin Owen. He also denied Betabeat an interview. "I'm not interested in the press. No offense implied," he said. HackCanada has not responded to an email inquiry.

The Bitcoin community has done some impressive sleuthing on the MyBitcoin incident. But whether collaborative auditing can keep Bitcoin crime in check is hard to say. Now that MyBitcoin is offering restitution, Bitcoiners are less vocal about their accusations. There also hasn't been much progress on another open investigation: the Polish Bitcoin exchange that shut down around the same time as MyBitcoin, claiming to have accidentally deleted users' 17,000 Bitcoins and declaring itself up for sale for that amount before resuming trading shortly thereafter.

We're not exactly sure what constitutes receivership in a system with no central authority, or why the site's anonymous operators would feel obligated to refund its anonymous users given the utter lack of accountability. Before the statement hit, word on the street was that MyBitcoin.com, the user-friendly Bitcoin wallet that was the go-to for most Bitcoin newbies, was an elaborate ploy set up by a group of (Canadian?) hackers who swindled naive Bitcoin users for the money and the lulz. At the time it went down, MyBitcoin.com had more deposits than the third largest Bitcoin exchange, Bitomat.pl. Bitomat.pl had 17,000 BTC on hand when it went down this weekend due to human technical error. But just one Bitcoin user, the vocal Bruce Wagner, had 25,000 BTC stored at MyBitcoin when it disappeared. Betabeat had 6 BTC there, and we're surely not the only ones. At today's prices, MyBitcoin had more than $250,000 in its coffers.

Mr. Wagner, one of Bitcoin's most vocal advocates on Twitter and via the Bitcoin People Google group and The Bitcoin Show, had been encouraging others to use the service because it was the simplest Bitcoin wallet available. But he had started voicing suspicions about the service after reports from some users that their Bitcoins stored at MyBitcoin were going missing. Not long after, MyBitcoin vanished, provoking speculation that some dodgy characters were running the show and decided to cut and run before Mr. Wagner told his devotees to pull their BTC out of MyBitcoin.

The question of whether MyBitcoin's disappearance was evidence of foul play became a test of the Bitcoin hivemind. Volunteers started crowdsourcing information in the freenode #bitcoin-police IRC channel and compiling a dossier. Mr. Wagner was encouraging people to report the case to the FBI via the agency's online complaint form (not holding our breath).

MyBitcoin is based out of the popular off-shore banking hub of St. Kitts and Nevis, but vigilantes have fingered a group of Canadian hackers and the handles 'dalin,' 'nanaimogold,' and "themadhatter" have been identified as entities of interest by members of the Bitcoin community who are collaborating via IRC and other methods to get to the bottom of the story. The group has not responded to an interview request as of yet.

While operators of other Bitcoin services frequently appear on camera and do interviews with journalists, Mr. Williams offers no contact information or evidence of his existence:

On Friday of last week we noticed that one of our pooled holding servers was missing a large amount of Bitcoins. After a prompt investigation we realized that the security of our SCI (Shopping Cart Interface) system had been breached by an unknown attacker.

Our response was rash, but necessary. We simply switched the system off until we could have system-wide forensics performed. The forensics took some time, as the system is quite complex by nature.

After weighing all of our options, we have realized that we have no option but to go into receivership. We will settle all accounts with a online claim process that we are currently in the process of working out.

We will release more detailed information about the security breach, the claim process, and our balance sheet in the next few days.

There are also more than 1,600 people named "Tom Williams" on LinkedIn.

Meanwhile, the Bitcoin Police also harbor suspicions about Bitomat.pl--but there isn't as much information available about the Polish exchange.

Clarifications: This post has been updated to reflect the concerns of some members in the Bitcoin community, who make the good point that hard facts are hard to come by in Bitcoin world and it's best to hedge one's words.